10214 Ryanair extras??

I have just booked my first ever Ryanair flight for October also and was very impressed with the fairs to Rome from East Midlands. (I normally fly from Newcastle but will be taking my Leicester based godmother with me). But the costs just rocketed as I went through the booking. I had to tread very carefully through the website because there were automatic extras (I notice Easyjet do this with the insurance, you have to double click no if you don't want it).

But like you I was annoyed to see my bill go up £16 for my debit card payment. I actually backtracked on the website thinking this must be a mistake, but no, it is £4 for each section of the journey for each person.

What a swizz!!!!
maralyn

We run an internet travel company dealing mainly with ferries . The charge to the travel agent for credit cards is around 1.5% and debit cards around 16p! Businesses have to mark up a little to cover administration, fraud risk etc but Ryanair are now really taking the p...
The 'extras' are certainly not transparent. Ryanair has been the subject of questions in the House of Commons on occasion. Maybe we should all write to our MP.
It's certainly a swizz.

[quote=coppicer;95041]Have I been asleep? I have not booked a flight since April as we have driven down this summer but have just booked for late October. What has happened to FREE priority boarding if you do check and go (on line check-in). They want £4!!. Also it is now £4 if you use delta (same as credit card). If I had booked optional extras they would have been far more than flight. When did they sneek all this through. I have seen nothing in the press and you have to delve into the bowels of the website to find the costs. Are there any more changes (increases) I have missed??[/quote]
I can only speak as I find but on every flight I have booked with Ryanair even with the annoying add ons,they have been without exception the cheapest by a country mile,and I have yet to experience the slightest problem with every aspect of their service.I have just booked 2 flights from East Midlands to Rimini
in September total cost return £ 56 75.beat that anyone ?

[quote=coppicer;95041]Are there any more changes (increases) I have missed??[/quote]
I understand that Mr O'Leary was most impressed during a recent visit to Germany when he discovered that one must buy a 50 cent ticket in order to access the toilets in autobahn rest areas. Apparently, he speculated aloud about the income-generating possibilities of this when there is a captive market.

:bigergrin:

Al

[quote=AllanMason;95068]I understand that Mr O'Leary was most impressed during a recent visit to Germany when he discovered that one must buy a 50 cent ticket in order to access the toilets in autobahn rest areas. Apparently, he speculated aloud about the income-generating possibilities of this when there is a captive market.

:bigergrin:

Al[/quote]

[I][B]Pecunia non olet[/B][/I] (Latin for "money does not smell") is a Latin saying.
The Roman Emperor Vespasian[U] [/U] reintroduced a toilet tax on public toilets within Rome's sewer system. When his son Titus criticized him, he supposedly pointed out that a coin did not smell, even though it came from urine.

Another little add-on you have to be aware of is the £4 charge for each suitcase. Also buy any soft drinks or water after you pass through security but beforeboarding as Ryanair charge 4/5 euros on board.

[quote=ron austin;95058]I can only speak as I find but on every flight I have booked with Ryanair even with the annoying add ons,they have been without exception the cheapest by a country mile,and I have yet to experience the slightest problem with every aspect of their service.I have just booked 2 flights from East Midlands to Rimini
in September total cost return £ 56 75.beat that anyone ?[/quote]

Yes Ryanair is undoubtedly cheap and I travel regularly with them, however the sneaky way the 'add-ons' have increased or hiked up in such a short period are not transparent to the point where they could be breaching trade descriptions. What next? Charging to use the toilet? Charging for the in-flight safety instructions? They are certainly rather ingenious in finding ways to make extra revenue.

Hmmm now what was that Nicholas Cage movie called again....

That's right....Con-air.

Maybe Ryanair should be forced to change their name to this.

However much they may be disliked people still fly with Ryanair because they are in the main the cheapest way to travel to certain parts of Italy ,including here in Marche. They are no frills, and for that price what can be expected. We have just booked flights and the add ons seemed clear to me, and even with them you have a very cheap flight.
If morally they are considered bad , there are other options and other airlines, perhaps not so convenient to your destination, but still possible. So the choice is with the customer.
Unless I am missing something here, I have no complaints with them, they made it possible for us to visit Italy easily when we were going through the buying process, and continue to make it easy for friends and guests to visit us.
A

I quite agree with Angie. I always find it quite easy to understand their charges. We never check in baggage as we hate waiting at the other end and so we always travel light.
Ryanair fly from our local airport Bournemouth and its so convenient. I find Ryanair staff always pleasant and helpful and if it wasn't such a cheap price we wouldn't travel as often. They have to make money somewhere just as any business does. They really fill a need for anyone who has to travel and is poor - you can go for the basic service for a rock bottom price.
When we are going on holidays we always buy stuff on board, drinks food etc as we feel obliged due to the very cheap flight.
If you can afford a holiday home you can afford to buy stuff on board for goodness sake!

We've always used them because they are the cheapest but the add-ons are iritating. Priority boarding was originally for parents with young children and free, then anyone for £2, then this year £4. We booked our flights in February, so some of the additional charges didn't hit us. They were late in both directions this year though. We always buy water and so forth after security at the airport even if it is expensive. Had fun this year demonstrating air pressure to the kids - seal the empty water bottle at 35,000 feet then watch it get crushed as we descend. Great fun!

I also fly to Belfast fairly often with work and use them, and find them ok. On-line check-in makes life soooo easy - 1 bag with laptop as hand luggage - get to airport - straight to security and through. This year we had only 1 checked-in bag and the rest as hand-luggage, and for the first time in our experience they stopped everyone at secirity in Pisa and we had to check hand luggage size and weight.

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]When I started this thread it was not to Ryanair bash. I too find them great to get from the UK to Italy cheaply and would be here less without them. However I get almost daily emails about flights for €15 / £15 /£10 etc so why can't I have an email about the increases to the 'extras'. I do not mind paying them - it's the underhand way they are introduced. Ryanair like to 'tell it like it is' over some things but not others!!! Come on Mr O'Leary - be up front with us??[/FONT] :nah:

[quote=ron austin;95058]I can only speak as I find but on every flight I have booked with Ryanair even with the annoying add ons,they have been without exception the cheapest by a country mile,and I have yet to experience the slightest problem with every aspect of their service.I have just booked 2 flights from East Midlands to Rimini
in September total cost return £ 56 75.beat that anyone ?[/quote]

I find their fares vary variable. We have a choice of Ancona/Pescara with Ryanair; Bologna with BA [longer drive in Italy but saves the long drive to Stansted] or Rome with Easyjet [again from Gatwick saves the drive to Stansted for us]. I usually compare prices on all routes before booking, during the July/August period Ryanair were frequently more expensive than BA by a long way, and our Christmas flight with Ryanair are only £10-15 cheaper than BA and we are just hoping we get no problems - 'if we do we know Ryanair will just leave us to sort it out for ourselves.

It is true that we have still managed to book two returns to Italy for around £50 for two people - but this is only when we make our travel arrangements around the cheap fares - I'm not complaining, just pointing out that they are not nec always the cheapest.

I detest Ryanair! And I don't agree that they are always cheaper - my husband and I live in Lecce and for our september trip to the UK we are flying Alitalia, which cost 440 euros (all-in, no sneaky extras) rather than 425 with ryanair, before adding on suitcases, priority boarding and all the rest. For a "budget" airline I think that's pretty hefty. Plus, their infant fee is 20 euros and alitalia only 8!! So we will even have the enormous privilege of boarding first with our baby too!!

Katier, I dont think rereading the posts that anyone has said that Ryanair is always the cheapest, just that in some cases, and if you are able to plan ahead it may be. I find it odd that people feel so strongly about an airline, but then there is always the choice to be able to avoid them and fly with someone else.should you wish to.
A

For our September trip to Pisa for the 2 of us I have paid £64.76 total cost.
I say thank you Mr O'Leary.
We all would like priority boarding but what does it really matter in the end.
If all the people with youngsters go Alitalia then I say great, then we won't have to put up with crying and kicking of the seats when they sit behind us!!!

:laughs::laughs:

[quote=coppicer;95041]Have I been asleep? I have not booked a flight since April as we have driven down this summer but have just booked for late October. What has happened to FREE priority boarding if you do check and go (on line check-in). They want £4!!. Also it is now £4 if you use delta (same as credit card). If I had booked optional extras they would have been far more than flight. When did they sneek all this through. I have seen nothing in the press and you have to delve into the bowels of the website to find the costs. Are there any more changes (increases) I have missed??[/quote]
Update:

Just booked for November with my new Co-op Visa Electron card. No card fees!
Very easy to use just pay cash in at the post office or a Co-op bank and you can use your card immediately online.
I was also able to book priority boarding for only one member of my party (me).
Before all party members had to have it, or none. I shall be doing the Ryanair scamper alone this trip :bigergrin:

Interestingly Ryanair are not showing any availability LTN-CIA after November!!

Pip pip

[quote=borrini;95131]For our September trip to Pisa for the 2 of us I have paid £64.76 total cost.
I say thank you Mr O'Leary.
We all would like priority boarding but what does it really matter in the end.
If all the people with youngsters go Alitalia then I say great, then we won't have to put up with crying and kicking of the seats when they sit behind us!!!

:laughs::laughs:[/quote]
Glad to see the British "tolerance" to children still alive and kicking although the name sounds Italian.

[quote=borrini;95131]For our September trip to Pisa for the 2 of us I have paid £64.76 total cost.
I say thank you Mr O'Leary.
We all would like priority boarding but what does it really matter in the end.
If all the people with youngsters go Alitalia then I say great, then we won't have to put up with crying and kicking of the seats when they sit behind us!!!

:laughs::laughs:[/quote]

Well that's a bit of a dig. Like everybody else I was just expressing an opinion, and the fact that it's quite incredible that a scheduled airline can offer the same price flights as a budget airline.

I only feel strongly about ryanair because I have been travelling with them for 10 years first from pisa and now from brindisi. They started out great, so cheap, and I think you still can get great deals for many destinations, but since flying from brindisi I haven't found one good deal and having to fork out more and more each time I book for the various extras is annoying.

sorry to offend the ryanair supporters

Lets face it Ryanair are shit ........ cheap sometimes, othertimes not at all .... MOL's attiude stinks and he freely admits it does......

perhaps we're all missing the point here - we have choice. If we choose to holiday or buy a holiday home in Italy or indeed to pop back to visit relatives in the Uk, we have a choice of Italian airports to leave from and British airports to arrive at. We can also drive. Not many years ago it was either Alitalia or BA, and one or two charter companies. The price then to Rome was pounds 130 return whoever you went with - we tend to pay the same per person now as we always travel in the school holidays. I am not on the pay role of Ryanair by any means but we have to get real- Borrini hit the nail on the head: If you can afford to buyholiday home in Italy/holiday in Italy you should not be griping about £4 here or £5 there for your flight

maybe I'm the odd one out here - I live here because my husband is from here and I didn't choose to come here to live the dolce vita. We work and earn Italian salaries which don't really measure up to UK standards.

I greatly value Ryanair and wish to see them have the best standards in aircraft and to increase their routes. For this they need profit to be able to invest. Their service to Le Marche from the UK, which is the service I care about, has no competition and yet, apart from peak season, I can travel for less than the cost of a train fare from Manchester to London; amazing. There is plenty of competition on routes between the UK and Spain/Portugal yet costs are comparable or higher. It is my choice if I take their 'extras' except for the booking fee so now I am looking into getting an Electron card. Ryanair fly to regions of Italy where there is no alternative, let's encourage rather than condemn.

What I would like to see is Ryanair, or someone else, re-opening the service from Liverpool to Ancona. Ryanair ran this route for just one season. I travelled on it twice, once in the depths of Winter, and the aircraft loading seemed pretty good to me. I don't understand why it was culled.

I can also put in a good word for service reliability. In about sixteen flights in the last couple of years only one has been more than a few minutes late and many have been early.

Let's get some perspective here. The opening poster was not 'griping' or denigrating Ryanair. I'm sure he/she is grateful for a relatively cheap no-frills airline which does fly to regions where there are no alternaives as Sherwood points out. What many of us object to is the 'subtle' (or devious?) way Ryanair sneaks in the add-ons. I'm sorry but £24 for 1 bag and airline check-in is a bit more than the "£4 here or £5 there" that F Bowers refers to and £8 credit/debit card fee is, as I mentioned in my earlier post as an internet travel agent, a huge and unreasonable mark-up. it seems to me that Ryanair is playing a marketing game by keeping the basic fares artificially low(and they've now been forced to display taxes clearly) to entice people then offsetting this with the add-ons.
I am neither a Ryanair detractor or a member of it's fan club....It's a business and I am a customer...I will continue to use it if it suits me.

The '£4 here and £5 there' are ok if it's 1 or 2 people. Add 3 kids into the mix, and it starts to mount up. And its '£4 here and £5 there' per person - each way! You can easily add another £100 or £200 to your flight costs. I'm not anti-Ryanair. They are still the cheapest, Stansted is still our nearest airport and so we'll still use them - until an alternative presents itself. But it makes me wonder where else they will get their money from? Charge you to walk across the tarmac? To use the steps to board the plane? Breathe on the plane? Per flight attendant? Sorry - getting cynical now but I do wonder.

I wish they'd have on-line check-in for EU countries. I use it when going to Ireland - hand luggage only, no need to queue to check in, straight to security, no hanging around to get your bags the other end and Priority boarding included in that.

[quote=M&C;95223]
I wish they'd have on-line check-in for EU countries. I use it when going to Ireland - hand luggage only, no need to queue to check in, straight to security, no hanging around to get your bags the other end and Priority boarding included in that.
[/quote]

Easyjet do.You think Ryanair would to.

[QUOTE=AllanMason;95068]I understand that Mr O'Leary was most impressed during a recent visit to Germany when he discovered that one must buy a 50 cent ticket in order to access the toilets in autobahn rest areas. Apparently, he speculated aloud about the income-generating possibilities of this when there is a captive market.

:bigergrin:

Al[/QUOTE]
I've heard he really is considering making people pay to use the loos! Apparently, he says that within a few months he'll find that he can take one of the loos out and replace it with 2 more seats instead...

I have also been shocked recently by all the non-transparent add-ons. I booked flights to Parma in September during the sale. The flights were free, and for 3 people + an infant the final cost was £245! Still a bargain but I was particularly disgusted about the £4 per person per journey charge to pay. There is no other way to pay than with a credit or debit card. At least the check in charges CAN be avoided if you travel with hand luggage only and check in online. The card charges are just daylight robbery - the admin charges at their end can't possibly be based on each person and each flight! I'd actually rather they admitted they're putting fares up due to fuel price increases rather than pretending they're not and then sticking it on at the end.

You always use Ryanair gift vouchers to pay for flights.They don't charge you for using them.

[quote=Fox;95234] There is no other way to pay than with a credit or debit card. At least the check in charges CAN be avoided if you travel with hand luggage only and check in online. The card charges are just daylight robbery - [/quote]

For the moment get an Electron card, untill Ryanair start charging for them too!

Pip pip

Special offers on Ryanair until midnight tomorrow. £5.00 each way inclusive taxes.

[quote=F Bower;95203] I am not on the pay role of Ryanair by any means but we have to get real- Borrini hit the nail on the head: If you can afford to buyholiday home in Italy/holiday in Italy you should not be griping about £4 here or £5 there for your flight[/quote]

I think that the reason many people can afford to holiday/buy a second home is because they do not let themselves be parted from their money through rip-offs. The issue to me is more the hidden charges that sometimes prove impossible to remove unless you write in (circa travel insurance on the RyanAir website last year. New EU rules should however sort most of these bait and switch techniques out.

However the bigger issue is probably that you should pray that your local airport doesn't get sacrificed by Ryan Air in the next "efficiency drive" especially if you live on a "Ryan Air only" route.

"moved to italiauncovered.co.uk"

Well said Torchiarolan ......

and it is a business model we benefit from, and works for the shareholders just so long as you don't ever have to rely on brand loyalty and have no competition. The shame is that the business model is based upon Southwest Airlines who don;t seem to have found it necessary to do all the bad things Ryanair say and do...

PS

Published on the 29-07-2008
The antitrust authority on Monday fined Irish low-cost airline Ryanair 54,100 euros for a misleading publicity campaign that advertised flights ''from just 10 euros one-way, taxes included''.

The watchdog said the price in the ad, which appeared on the Ryanair website in April 2007, failed to take into account additional costs racked up by passengers using a credit card to book their tickets.

Well, they only have to add "ancillary services not included" and they would be right.

I also see Ryanair as like a bus or train service. The only difference being having to arrive early at the airport, check in, etc, etc. I travel to Leeds for work a fair bit - 2 hours up the road by train from Peterborough. Stansted - Italy also takes 2 hours. The train is - it has to be said though, a bit more comfortable and a peak return is £45 (with no hidden extras, btw) but then I'm not paying. If I were traveling to the US, for example, I wouldn't use them but for short haul trips they're ok.

And to address the "£4 here and £5 there" thing again - the reason we CAN afford to holiday in Italy is because of Ryanair but we still have to make sacrifices during the year to cover it. But hidden costs are starting to bite. For example - for all 5 of us (2 adults and 3 kids) - a 'small' cost of £4 for priority boarding adds another £40 to our total bill. We only put 1 hold bag in this year to cut costs, next year - if we go back - we'll be taking hand luggage only! So it's not actually a "£4 here and £5 there" for a family - it's more "£40 here and £50 there and the odd £8".

I booked flights just this week and unless I'm missing something it is NOT just a matter of "£4 here and £5 there" which, for a family of 5 or 6 certainly does add up. If you go to the drop down menu for baggage and check-in then 0 bags(ie hand luggage) is free but if you put baggage in the hold you HAVE to check-in at the airport which is IN ADDITION to the £4 per bag per journey so:
1 bag + airline check-in = £24
2 bags+airline check-in = £56
3 bags+airline check-in =£88
If you don't believe me go through the booking procedure as an experiment (it's easy to do as card details come right at the end)
So the relatively small sum of £4 per bag(per journey) becomes a nonsense when they add the airport check-in.
The credit/fee is another matter which I won't get started on again!
It is now only possible to avail of these cheap, heavily-advertised fares if you can manage with hand luggage and pay with an Electron card...AT THE MOMENT...I'm sure the add-ons will soon bite these services.