Ryanair Flight Change Fee Waiver

Urethra Franklin.

Hi, maybe someone can help me with this. I booked return flights to Amsterdam for the 13th and 17th of March. On the morning of the 13th I changed the dates of my flights due to the Coronavirus, I had not checked in for either flight at this time. I was charged a 70 euro flight change fee as well as 16 euro more for flight cost difference. Ryanair announced on the same day that they were waiving the fee for anyone due to fly on the 13th to the 31st. As per Ryanair's announcement I should not have charged the change fee but I am not sure how to go about getting in contact with them. When I originally booked those flights they were pretty last minute and with the flight change fee on top it has bought the total to 300 euro.

I tried their online chat service as soon as it opened the following day and I was waiting for nearly 5 hours, nobody ever got back to me. I lodged 2 complaints via email but I've been told emailing Ryanair is hopeless, I messaged them on Facebook, I made 2 posts on their Facebook announcement about the flight fee waiver; I haven't called them as it costs 15 cent a minute and I've read stories recently where people have tried calling them for over 2 hours and still are not getting a reply before giving up.

Wuff Wuff

Urethra Franklin. wrote: »

Hi, maybe someone can help me with this. I booked return flights to Amsterdam for the 13th and 17th of March. On the morning of the 13th I changed the dates of my flights due to the Coronavirus, I had not checked in for either flight at this time. I was charged a 70 euro flight change fee as well as 16 euro more for flight cost difference. Ryanair announced on the same day that they were waiving the fee for anyone due to fly on the 13th to the 31st. As per Ryanair's announcement I should not have charged the change fee but I am not sure how to go about getting in contact with them. When I originally booked those flights they were pretty last minute and with the flight change fee on top it has bought the total to 300 euro.

I tried their online chat service as soon as it opened the following day and I was waiting for nearly 5 hours, nobody ever got back to me. I lodged 2 complaints via email but I've been told emailing Ryanair is hopeless, I messaged them on Facebook, I made 2 posts on their Facebook announcement about the flight fee waiver; I haven't called them as it costs 15 cent a minute and I've read stories recently where people have tried calling them for over 2 hours and still are not getting a reply before giving up.

You changed it before the announcement, you're not gonna get anywhere with them and will only run up a phone bill trying to chase them for it

ted1

You were premature, not entitled to a refund but may get one out of good will.

Urethra Franklin.

Wuff Wuff wrote: »

You changed it before the announcement, you're not gonna get anywhere with them and will only run up a phone bill trying to chase them for it

ted1 wrote: »

You were premature, not entitled to a refund but may get one out of good will.

I have no idea what time they announced it at but their announcement states
"From today until Tue 31 Mar, Ryanair will waive the flight change fee for customers who wish to change their travel plans due to the current Covid-19 outbreak. This policy applies to all existing and new bookings”, it does not specify a time point other than Mar 13th, that is specific as the post gets; March 13th. My job deals a lot with terminology and complaints and statements, such as the one above so perhaps I am taking it too literally (this is what happens in my line of work, we literally will obsess over a comma or a word to see if it brings new meaning to the statement) but from my understanding of the statement, it specifies "from today" i.e. Mar 13th, not Mar 13th at 2 pm, Mar 13th from noon, Mar 13th from the release of this announcement release, etc; Mar 13th encompasses 24 hours, "today" signifies an entire day; not from a specific time point within that day. I changed my flights around half 11 in the morning as well as my 4 hour window until my flight was closing in (you cannot change flights once your flight is due to take off within 4 hours).

Is there some way people have been able to contact them in the past that they have found successful? I genuinely believe they do not have anyone working their chatline as I logged onto the chatline as soon as it opened but somehow I was still too far down the queue 5 hours later for them to talk to me, despite being one of the first people to log onto the chat that morning (I understand they're busier than usual, but I'm wondering if they know they're just going to be too inundated with queries to let anyone even work those lines during the pandemic, I logged on as soon as it opened, so to not be dealt with in 5 hours suggests to me that perhaps no one was being dealt with as I would have logged on a lot earlier than most people, meaning I would have been one of the first people to have their query dealt with, and most people would have given up before the 5 hour mark).

spurious

I have contacted them on twitter before and when asked to DM them did so. It is the only way I found to contact a real person. Unsolicited DMs didn't work.

911sc

Ryanair has not really waived the fee for changing flight.....would have been too good to be true.

Here is my experience:

My flight Paris-Dublin for Sunday 15 March was purchased for €107 a week ago.
I was to fly out to Paris on Thursday 12th, but decided against as things were taking a bad turn.

Following announcement made by Ryanair on Friday 13th, i thought i would change my Sunday flight for a later date (Thursday fare was lost, but was ok to purchase a new Dublin-Paris seat).

Sunday:
I logged onto Ryanair site , and any Paris-Dublin flight/any day til end of year were fix price of €128... I therefore had to pay €21 to re-schedule.
I logged off, and for the craic, checked flight prices, random dates/days til end of year. Surprise, flights were between €29 and €89, depending on weeks/days.

Monday:
I tried to change again that flight.... I logged on, and all flights were now fixed prices @ €152...so an other charge of €24 this time to change...
I logged off, and checked flight prices, random dates/days til end of year. Surprise, flights were between €29 and €89 still.


Ryainair is price-fixing their flights if you want to change your flight..

ted1

911sc wrote: »

Ryanair has not really waived the fee for changing flight.....would have been too good to be true.

Here is my experience:

My flight Paris-Dublin for Sunday 15 March was purchased for €107 a week ago.
I was to fly out to Paris on Thursday 12th, but decided against as things were taking a bad turn.

Following announcement made by Ryanair on Friday 13th, i thought i would change my Sunday flight for a later date (Thursday fare was lost, but was ok to purchase a new Dublin-Paris seat).

Sunday:
I logged onto Ryanair site , and any Paris-Dublin flight/any day til end of year were fix price of €128... I therefore had to pay €21 to re-schedule.
I logged off, and for the craic, checked flight prices, random dates/days til end of year. Surprise, flights were between €29 and €89, depending on weeks/days.

Monday:
I tried to change again that flight.... I logged on, and all flights were now fixed prices @ €152...so an other charge of €24 this time to change...
I logged off, and checked flight prices, random dates/days til end of year. Surprise, flights were between €29 and €89 still.


Ryainair is price-fixing their flights if you want to change your flight..

Had you booked bags? Priority boarding or any of the extras?

911sc

nothing extra was booked

njburke

That's the same experience I had last Thursday. No change fee but dearer to change compared to fresh booking. I'm going to sit it out to see if they cancel.