Ryanair Openly Criticized by Office of Fair Trading
Stewart PerryThe UK government’s consumer and competition authority has just recently accused the low cost carrier Ryanair of playing a “funny game” with its passengers. The chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, John Fingleton, spoke out against Ryanair’s credit and debit card charges.
During the interview, Mr Fingleton said that Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some low frequency payment mechanism and said that since people can pay with these, the charge is optional. However, it’s almost like taunting consumers and pointing out that what they are doing is within a narrow letter of the law, but that does not make it right.
Although Ryanair does advertise its taxes and other fees right upfront, it only reveals this end credit card charge at the end of booking. Under consumer law, companies should advertise all compulsory charges upfront. However, since customers can avoid the £5 debit or credit card fee by using Mastercard pre-pay, Ryanair says that it does not have to include these charges on advertised fares.
Mr Fingleton said that on some level it is almost childish. It’s like playing a silly game with passengers, which ends up costing them money. This is not a kind of game that most people like to play.
However, Ryanair seems unaffected by the comments from John Fingleton and simply laughed at his concerns. Then Ryanair followed up by announcing a £4 Fingleton Fare sale. Starting on January 4th, Ryanair will release one million £4 fares. However, the price will only be available to passengers who pay with a MasterCard Prepaid card and travel with carry on luggage only.
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Filed under Business & Finance, Europe News, Travel News, UK News