"Ryanair’s tactics included rolling out facial recognition procedures for people who bought tickets via a third party, claiming that was necessary for security. It then “totally or intermittently blocked booking attempts by travel agencies”, including by blocking payment methods and mass-deleting accounts. The airline then “imposed partnership agreements” on agencies which banned sales of Ryanair flights in combinations with other carriers, and blocked bookings to force them to sign up. Only in April this year did it allow agencies’ websites to link up with its own services, allowing effective competition. The competition authority said Ryanair’s actions had “blocked, hindered or made such purchases more difficult and/or economically or technically burdensome when combined with flights operated by other carriers and/or other tourism and insurance services”.
That is ... pretty rich.
A couple of years ago I was going to go see my brother in the UK who lived near Stansted. As such Ryanair would have been the most convenient airline. The shere number of dark patterns I encountered trying to book the ticket was such that when I got to the payment page and they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a £20 spread in the exchange rate I rage quit. I should have known better even then, but now I will only use them if I have literally no other choice. With luck that means "never."
I'm always happy to see the various EU competition authorities pushing back on this kind of thing.
I’m finding this more and more. Uber does it, and even Walgreens does it when I’m in the US and tap my card it suggests that I pay in my home currency. This seems to be a new vector companies have found for ripping off their customers.
Of course foreign exchange offices have been doing this scam since forever ("no fees!")...
---
Edit - note that with a bureau d'exchange my objection is not that they charge for the exchange; clearly that is the exact business that they are in. It's the "no fees" etc. marketing that hides from the less astute punters exactly how (and how much) they are paying for the service. I'd like to see that outlawed and direct costs of the exchange up front (e.g. "Exchange £100 for $121.5 at a cost of £10 compared to the base rate")
I had that with very small shops in non-touristy areas of Mexico where it was absolutely clear to not be a scam attempts by the shops owner. They had no idea what the terminal asked.
Makes sense that shop owners in non-touristy areas haven't seen them before, as you'll only see that when the card has a default currency that differs from the default currency of the terminal.
So if your Mexican merchants "don't know" what their terminal says? Either you were their first foreigner, or they're useful idiots, or they know.
Charging significantly more to accept foreign currencies goes back thousands of years.
Needed to get another member of staff to explain to her that the local currency option would work fine.
> I will only use them if I have literally no other choice
Even with the £20 increase they were likely cheaper than the alternative, if it exists. If this is going to push you into not using them, basically every other airline will be ruled out for you. EasyJet are exactly the same. BA/KLM/Air France/Aer Lingus are all the same on their short hop flights (I’ve actually never flown Lufthansa so I can’t comment on them). The short haul European routes are a race to the bottom.
When you compare list prices for flights with them versus almost any other airline you are comparing apples with oranges. The only way to figure out exactly what you'll pay is to go through the entirety of their checkout procedure. My experiences with those other airlines for short haul flights are quite different.
Honestly, on many routes, I think this is true far less often than it used to be.
You forgot to mention picking the "No I don't need travel insurance" option shoved in the middle of the list of travel insurance prices, which defaults to you buying travel insurance from Ryanair.
Do you already have their spyware app installed and tracking you on your phone, to avoid being charged £50 for a plain boarding pass which you print yourself?
You're describing some other airline's website, surely. If you'd used Ryanair's site you would not be unaware of its fuckery.
And clicking "I don't need insurance" is easy.
The only place in I've had any troubles paying with card (or easily find a cashmachine) in recent time have been Turkey outside the big cities.
OTAs were blocked because they just run scam, and Ryanair customer supports had many problems with dealing with them.
Some example from Kiwi:
- if flight gets cancelled and refunded, OTA pockets the refund, does not give anything to custemer
- OTA does not provide customer with email used to make booking. Makes any changes like extra luggage or seat difficult
- If flight gets rescheduled, OTA may not inform customer
- Not possible to add extra child etc...
I would only use OTA like Kiwi when booking flight in very exotic country, and I have no idea how to checkin in chinese.
Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?
Ryanair is cheap, they charge extra for everything. But the tradeoff is you get where you are going for cheap if you avoid all the extras, including bottled water.
I wonder how that works out for them.
I also wonder if the time is ripe for some company to disrupt advertising by simply doing what google did on launch in 2000.
The way regulation works in the EU is typically EU comes up with regulation for countries to implement, then they implement the laws via their national system, then everything is handled "locally". So just leaving the EU doesn't mean that all of those things just stop being active, you need to go through the process of removing the local laws before.
UK gov is too busy enforcing the death of anonymity online anyway.
I know it happens in other countries, but can you actually get away with this in a civilized and non-authoritarian country today? Eventually you're gonna have to do/say something about it, if people keep opening up new cases about it.
> The social media giant was fined €200 million in April for breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) over the binary choice it gives EU users to either pay to access ad-free versions of the platforms or agree to being tracked and profiled for Meta’s ads.
> In a press statement, the Commission said the revised offer would give users an “effective choice” between consenting to their personal data being used to show them fully personalised ads or handing over less personal data and seeing “more limited personalised advertising”.
Seems like there will be a more nuanced choice available in January, than "pay us or we'll track you"
Amusingly my voluntary subscription was just under the cut-off amount and I cancelled it as soon as this came in. I bought a subscription to The Economist instead.
You have the choice of not viewing the website.
Legitimately welcoming discussion here as I'm keen to hear the other side.
From a business perspective, I get why Ryanair would want more direct control - fewer fees, more customer data, stronger branding. But the moment you start restricting where people can buy your product, you step into antitrust territory and risk killing the very demand you’re trying to secure. Travel is already stressful enough without making it harder to find good deals. For most people, accessibility and transparency matter more than who gets to capture the commission. Punishing intermediaries almost always ends up punishing the customer instead.
So from a fairness and consumer standpoint, this fine seems justified. And as a frequent traveler, I just want all the options, not gatekeeping.
And I am also always confused about the non-transparency that people mention about their fees. When you do the checkout, you select the services you want and pay for those. There used to be a time when other airlines would have a lot of things included in the basic ticket price, but that's not the case anymore, so it's not different. And I think this was an inevitable in an industry with small profit margins where price differentiation would bring gains.
aquir•2h ago