So will Ryanair change its ways...?

RuggieBear

According to the Advertising standards Authority Ryanair should have to include the vat/taxes in thier advertised prices. Wonder if they will from now on?:rolleyes:

http://www.asai.ie/newsletter/detail.tmpl?SKU=20060703173102


Found Ryanair's response to this complaint quite amusing too...

http://www.asai.ie/newsletter/detail.tmpl?SKU=20060703164939

Gone West

RuggieBear wrote:

According to the Advertising standards Authority Ryanair should have to include the vat/taxes in thier advertised prices. Wonder if they will from now on?:rolleyes:

http://www.asai.ie/newsletter/detail.tmpl?SKU=20060703173102


Found Ryanair's response to this complaint quite amusing too...

http://www.asai.ie/newsletter/detail.tmpl?SKU=20060703164939

roffels
in fairness to Ryanair, they are in the right here.
While I disagree with them not including the taxes in the price, the email was private(even if it was sent to 100,000 people) and has nothing to do with the ASAI

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

I think we all know that a flight price quote from Ryanair doesn't include taxes, credit card charges, luggage charges and so on...

bardcom

So according to your logic, if Ryanair had snailmail posted the same ad using real names and addresses, then that's not convered by ASAI either.

Don't think so....the ASAI is a self-regulatory body that covers all commercial advertising and promotions. The email and texts sent by Ryanair are not private, but commercial. It's a pretty weak argument - nah it's rubbish to say that an email sent to 100,000 people is private.

FuzzyLogic wrote:

roffels
in fairness to Ryanair, they are in the right here.
While I disagree with them not including the taxes in the price, the email was private(even if it was sent to 100,000 people) and has nothing to do with the ASAI

blorg

The ASAI has absolutely no powers of enforcement whatsoever. Ryanair routinely just ignore them.

RuggieBear

blorg wrote:

The ASAI has absolutely no powers of enforcement whatsoever. Ryanair routinely just ignore them.

If that's the case it makes them a completely pointless body.

Linoge

Ikky Poo2 wrote:

I think we all know that a flight price quote from Ryanair doesn't include taxes, credit card charges, luggage charges and so on...

Since when is "everyone knows that" a valid argument?

RuggieBear wrote:

If that's the case it makes them a completely pointless body.

Yeah, what is the point in having a voluntary body if the members ignore it?

Is there any legislation that covers advertising standards?

blorg

Linoge wrote:

Yeah, what is the point in having a voluntary body if the members ignore it?

I am not 100% sure but I strongly suspect Ryanair is not a member. It's a problem with self-regulation. In other European countries Ryanair has been fined for misleading advertising (not that the amounts would particularly bother them though.)

In fairness to Ryanair, the most common complaint is the non-including of extra taxes and charges in the fare and they are _far_ from the only airline that do this (I know it is an EU regulation that all unavoidable charges should be included in advertising, but airlines have not traditionally done this.) So it is unfair to single them out in this regard.

Quote from Aer Lingus email I received on Tuesday, for example:

"All fares are subject to terms and conditions, availability and are one-way excluding taxes and charges."

murphaph

Three cheers for Ryanair this week. Got a nice cheap flight to england at short notice, then security at DUB wouldn't let me carry a chain on as hand luggage, thought "fcuk", Ryanair gonna sting me now. The pretty and pleasant check in girl just winked and said "ah it's ok". Bag also appeared on the belt at the other end within seconds of my arrival. I've ye to actually have a bad experience with Ryaair, despite all the naysayers. AerLingus (while good also) have actually delayed/inconvenienced me more times than Ryanair and I use them both equally. How can they include all taxes and charges though? The luggage charge will always vary and the credit and debit card charge is different too, even airport tax is out of their control and could be changed just after an ad goes to print. I think it's a well established rule at this stage that airline tix prices are ex taxes and charges.

John R

murphaph wrote:

How can they include all taxes and charges though? The luggage charge will always vary and the credit and debit card charge is different too, even airport tax is out of their control and could be changed just after an ad goes to print. I think it's a well established rule at this stage that airline tix prices are ex taxes and charges.

How is it then that practically every other industry manages to price their products inclusively then?

There are government taxes and outside charges on all kinds of services, the airline industry is not unique in this.

If the taxes/charges change then the prices change, no one is expecting them to advertise a fare at a set price and keep it at that for all time. Just like every other product they should honestly advertise the complete fare at the time of the ad.

The idea that everyone knows the reality is crap, how many times have people come on here moaning that it is cheaper to fly to <wherever> with RA than get a taxi from Swords to the Airport? The lie that flights cost as little as €1 has sunk in with a lot of people.

The fact that each airline applies different taxes/charges for the same routes just adds to the farce. It is a simple slight-of-hand marketing tool that the airlines have been allowed to get away with for far too long.

To be fair to RA, the rest of the airlines are equally as guilty but as long as one does it they all will. Imagine if one carrier suddenly switched to inclusive fare marketing, how many idiots would immediately discount "fares from €60 return" in favour of "fares from €0.99 return* not including taxes, charges, special airoplane bog roll, etc."from another airline?

Linoge

John R wrote:

How
The fact that each airline applies different taxes/charges for the same routes just adds to the farce.

That reminded me of this.

Wikipedia wrote:

Disguising fares as taxes
The UK newspaper The Guardian has alleged [18] that the insurance fee which Ryanair charges each passenger (charged on every passenger booking together with other additional travel taxes and charges) is unreasonably high.

The insurance surcharge amounted to more than 10% of Ryanair's average fare, the newspaper estimated.

Ryanair declined to disclose its exact outlay on insurance. The Guardian estimates that in the year to March 2005 passengers would have paid £87 million in surcharges. EasyJet, which has a similarly sized fleet, paid £19 million for 2005 disaster insurance.

Ryanair introduced insurance surcharge in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to cover a spike in the cost of insuring planes. The charge was initially £1.85 but has since increased by 70% to £3.15 (May 2006). Experts claim that during the period the cost of cover has fallen to relatively normal rates.

Rivals easyJet spoksman claimed that "Ryanair's insurance charges appear to be far higher than they actually incur (…) Either this is poor cost management on Ryanair's behalf or it's a fuel surcharge in disguise."

Ryanair retaliated by pointing out that, even with taxes included, their average fare is well below easyJet. Ryanair spokesman Peter Sherrard said easyJet "charged each passenger last year £14 more per ticket than Ryanair thereby overcharging their passengers by £413 million".

Also, campaigners for the disabled accused Ryanair of profiteering from another part of "taxes and charges" tab – the £0.33 wheelchair levy. [19] The levy is used to cover the cost of transporting disabled passengers onto its planes. Ryanair is the only major airline operating in Britain to impose such charges.

The UK newspaper The Telegraph estimates that in 12 months up to May 2006 Ryanair received nearly £12 million through the levy. The governmental body Disability Rights Commission (DRC), which analysed the 2004 Stansted airport practice data, said that the levy should be no more than 2p – the company would still have collected £700,000 this way.

Telegraph quoted Michael O'Leary defending Ryanair's position: "We estimate it costs £25 [per person] to transport disabled passengers at Stansted, and we carry 1.5 million such passengers every year."

British Airways said it had absorbed cost to transport disabled travellers into its ticket prices. EasyJet estimated that services for the disabled added no more than 10p to the price of a ticket.

blorg

I completely agree; they should include them. Some do - such as Easyjet - but they are in the minority (Easyjet does _not_ however include their debit/credit card surcharge.)

Airport "tax" while to an extent out of their control does not actually tend to change that much (it is generally fixed for a multi-year period) and it would be perfectly acceptable just to quote the tax in force at the time of placing the ad.

The VISA charge/luggage issue is not a problem, they just need to advertise the cheapest fare it is actually possible to buy (e.g. including the unavoidable charges, hand luggage only and the lowest debit card charge where applicable.)

There is currently a proposal before the European Commission to require transparent inclusive airline pricing and Ryanair has stated that they welcome this and hope it will be implemented sooner rather than later:

http://www.euractiv.com/en/transport/airlines-ordered-advertise-real-prices/article-156834

I suspect Ryanair _are_ perfectly happy to do fully inclusive pricing if everyone else is also forced to because at the end of the day their average inclusive price is still lower than anyone else's.