Comments on: Ryanair’s outrageous visa check policy

By: Nigel

Nigel — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:55:21 +0000

I promised myself off Ryan air but my wife booked a ticket & the same illegal visa thing happened to me. They create their own law & the watchdogs do nothing. It’s the peasants who ensure Ryanair endures anyway: like Macdonalds. Bad food? Unhealthy? Skanky? Two pounds? I’m in!

By: Corey

Corey — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:18:15 +0000

My case is somewhat different. I had a checked bag and so went to the check in counter to check the bag. I gave the lady my documents and boarding pass. I realized later, while being denied boarding, that she “forgot” to stamp my boarding pass. I missed the flight and had to rebook, paying ryanair’s 100euro fee to do so. They have since failed to refund that money and failed to take responsibility for their employee messing up.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d say she was told to “forget” on purpose just to get us non EU citizens into the situation of missing a flight, and then paying 100euro to rebook.

I am from the US and so don’t really know EU business laws. It is surely unethical what happened. Does anyone know if it was illegal? –cdh@cox.net

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:26:25 +0000

i sympathise with you. My girlfriend and i were denied boarding 3 days ago because of the same issue. Missed the flight only because the asshole of a ground’s crew closed the gate 5 minutes before departure knowing that i ran my heart out back to the check in counter through the security checks. Sadly, i can only give them my 2 cents with a complaint letter. 600 euros of France down the drain.

By: An Li

An Li — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:12:40 +0000

I like your complaint. It happen to me recently too. It is not the lowest and cheapest airline that they brag about. I also have travelled many times to France and well aware that I do not require a visa to enter the country. I feel the airline is discriminating other nationalities.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:57:05 +0000

Believe it or not this is an *improvement* over the way this used to work. Previously you had to PAY £5 per person per flight to be allowed to go to the check-in desk to have your visa checked, even if you met all other criteria for web check-in! If you hadn’t paid, you had to first go to their ticket desk to pay the fee, THEN go to the check-in desk for the check. There was no way around this (believe me I tried!). Fortunately they did offer a refund on this fee though it was a painful, slow and complicated process. No amount of reasoning would get them to skip the fee+refund process. Fortunately this situation only lasted a couple of months and now we have the process you’ve described which is still absurd, but it’s a lot better than it was!

By: -DjD-

-DjD- — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:48:22 +0000

True, it does say something about getting a stamp, but as I mention above, the wording here could be improved.

More importantly though, the question is how much notice needs to be given when operating in a different way than what’s expected. Usually a change in policy that could significantly affect your customers is brought with ample notifications and even a phase in period to accommodate people that missed it the first time.

For example, if hotels suddenly started canceling reservations unless you phoned the day before to confirm your arrival, I’d expect a significant effort on their part to notify customers of the change as well as some flexibility when the program first rolled out.

If Ryanair really has customer convenience in mind with this policy (and not just trying to scam people out of more money), there are some simple things they can change to improve it.

By: Some Random Internetter

Some Random Internetter — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:00:22 +0000

Pierre – For everyone who says “I’ll never fly RA again!”, there’s someone else who says “Hooray, more free seats for me.”. Those who know how to “work” RA have a great time flying for £2 return.

David –
I’m sorry you missed your concert, but I can’t see your point. It’s written on your boarding card “Must be Stamped before Security”. It’s right there. I believe it also comes up when you buy the ticket online. It says “must be stamped”, but you didn’t get it stamped. I can’t see your grounds for complaint?

By: Pierre

Pierre — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:48:26 +0000

I can pretty well remember former Ryanair’s spokesman David Gering during a Belgian TV show. He said that given the low-price strategy of the company, Ryanair will never intend to comply with EU regulations in terms of reimbursement or passengers care. So basically (and this happened to me once) if your flight is cancelled you’ll never get more that what you paid for your ticket although by law Ryanair would have to pay indemnities, take care of your hotel costs, …

You write “it will be a loooong time before Ryanair sees another cent from us”. Strangely many people complain about Ryanair, the rude way they treat customers (can we still speak about “customers” in the case of Ryanair ?) and still this company makes profits and is the only one to outperform the Dow Jones (see my article at http://customersminds.blogspot.com/2009/06/lheure-ou-british-airways-propose-ses.html) .
What do you think about this ?

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Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:52:50 +0000

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