New firm offers to carry luggage to avoid Ryanair extra bag charge

Lapin

An Irish luggage-carrying company is targeting millions of Ryanair's customers with the launch of a new website.

Is this a runner ?

SendMyBag is a door-to- door luggage transportation service which picks up bags at people's houses and then delivers them to their holiday destinations, with the idea being that it allows fliers to travel luggage-free.

The online service launched an Irish website on Friday, SendMyBag.ie. Since being founded in 2010, the company now employs 12 people and has handled over 100,000 bags. They say that they are focusing on the 20pc of Ryanair's more than 80 million passengers who take a check-in bag with them on a flight........At the moment, Irish customers can get up to 30kg of luggage brought to and from most of mainland Europe for €80 return, with €5.50 charged on every kilogramme above 30kg.

Full Link

It seems like they are providing a service to save passengers the hassle of lugging their own luggage around rather than actually undercutting Ryanair's charges as the headline suggests.

Nothing wrong with that, but the logistics must be huge. Would you need to send your bags off a day ahead in order for them to be at your destination before you when youy arrive?

Not sure I'd bother with it myself as a single traveller, but I can see where it might be useful for people travelling with kids and elderly etc.

I wish them well, but it must be a very risky business to get into.

longhalloween

Lapin wrote: »

Irish customers can get up to 30kg of luggage brought to and from most of mainland Europe for €80 return, with €5.50 charged on every kilogramme above 30kg

That's really expensive.

Cessna_Pilot

Ditto very expensive and not a chance I'd risk sending on all my holiday gear with them. Sounds ridiculas in my opinion.

CelticRambler

£1/kg up to 30kg - no more than Ryanair's rate and a lot less for high-season flights.

It makes sense if you've bought a load of stuff on holidays, especially the kind of thing that you can't take in hand-luggage, and don't necessarily need it the day you get home (probably better off having it turn up a few days later) or if you're going on the kind of trip where you need to bring a lot of "just in case" gear. And if you've got a long trek to the airport, it certainly makes sense to have that stuff picked up from where you're staying instead of lugging it on and off buses, metros, trams, whatever.

But in fact it's just a bog-standard courrier service re-packaged for marketing purposes, so no (real) risk for the company involved.

highlydebased

Might be handy if emigrating and want to avoid having many bags in tow!

L1011

highlydebased wrote: »

Might be handy if emigrating and want to avoid having many bags in tow!

Its not priced at that either though - there's much cheaper shipping for those purposes.

I'd guess its probably more for people who're going on a few week trip to one place - its been an option for years though.

munchkin_utd

I could see a few uses for it, and travelling with small kids would be one.
€40 for 30kg (so 50% more than normal luggage allowance) isn't terribly expensive and the small premium might be worth it if as said before youre travelling on buses and whatnot with kids and rucksacks etc - and that extra bag with a few weeks of clothes would be worth sending on in advance to avoid the hassle.
Not everyone lives a 10minute drive from the airport or has folks to drop (or at destination collect) them with their heavy luggage and obviously this is a niche market that someone has identified.

BTW, its not the only service of its kind in existance. German rail has a similar service that takes the hassle out of long distance rail journies where luggage is collected from your home and delivered to your destination.
http://www.bahn.de/p/view/angebot/gepaeck/kuriergepaeck.shtml