Ryanair Accused of Frustrating Passengers to Get Them to Spend More
Jackie Reddy August 26, 2019
Ryanair has been ranked last in a survey of well-known British brands, reports customer service watchdog Which?. The low-cost airline received a score of just 45 percent when it comes to overall customer service satisfaction and respondents described the carrier as “greedy”, “sneaky” and “arrogant”.
Low-cost airline Ryanair has been named and shamed as the company that offers the worst level of customer service in the United Kingdom, reports British consumer watchdog Which?. In June, Which? surveyed 3,967 members of the public in order to gauge their overall experiences of some of the country’s most well-known brands.
Explaining some of its methodology in a statement, the watchdog said, “Respondents rated whether or not the companies make them feel valued, how helpful and knowledgeable their staff are, and how they handle complaints. Which? collected overall ratings for customer service at each brand, which were used to calculate individual customer service scores.”
In addition to being asked to rate the level of service they received on a scale from “very poor” all the way up to “excellent”, Which? explained that, “Respondents were also given a list of 50 adjectives and asked which they associated most strongly with each brand.”
In terms of its overall level of customer service, Ryanair received a score of 45 percent and when those surveyed were questioned as to how the carrier dealt with complaints and grievances, half of the surveyed participants gave the airline the lowest possible rating.
As if these ratings didn’t say enough about its perceived level of service, when asked to describe the airline, chosen adjectives included “greedy”, “sneaky” and “arrogant”. A surveyed participant also added, “Ryanair seem to make things deliberately difficult in order to make more money out of their customers.”
Offering his comments on the results of the survey, Harry Rose, editor of Which? Magazine, said, “Ryanair seem to make things deliberately difficult in order to make more money out of their customers.”
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I know that you get what you pay for with FR, but what mainly pees me off is their underhand methods to make more money. I recently flew with them from Girona to Luton and I didn't want to pay extra to reserve a seat as I was travelling alone, so would therefore accept whatever I ended up with. On checking-in online the day before, the system allocated me a centre seat in something like row 17, which was at least not too far back in the cabin. To my big surprise on boarding the aircraft after the usual awful cattle-herding gate experience, I found that I actually had the whole row of 3 seats to myself! In fact, the flight must have (unusually) been no more than 50% full, with about a third of all window and aisle seats after my row being unoccupied. I get that they try and scare people into buying window and aisle seat allocation in advance, by preying on their insecurities of being split up from friends and family, but surely in the 24 hours before departure, any unreserved seats should go back into the pot, as they do with other carriers? Obviously I did move to a window seat, as did many others in rows behind me, and the flight was otherwise pleasant enough (can't believe I'm saying that!) but it's all so unnecessary, mean and petty of FR to not be more unrestrictive.....
You get what you paid for. If you can afford to fly, pay for a better services on a quality airline or just shut up and suffer flying Ryanair/Easyjet/etc in silence.
We flew TLV to Paphos, Cyprus last year. Downloaded the app at their urging which would have our boarding passes on it. We had paid extra for seats/early boarding. At the gate, the app would not show the boarding passes. We tried everything. As the last people boarded, the gate attendants finally told us Oh, the app doesn't work in Israel. Really? So why did you push me to use the app for the flight? We had no choice but to pay something like 40eu for them print us a boarding pass. It was just so shitty; they knew what was going on, but squeezed us for the euros anyway. It was our first and ONLY time flying them. Much nicer to go with Vueling.
I flew with them in June and must say the way their website is set up is confusing. By reading comments on travel sites I managed to figure out what I needed but wasn't 100% sure I had it the right way to save money. The flight was fine and still way cheaper than other airlines I looked at.
Flew with them once in 2000 - never again. Total money-grubbers & you're lucky if you actually get anything you pay for.