Spain fines budget airlines €150M over 'abusive' cabin bag and seat charges
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's these kind of things, as in TFA, that makes life miserable for tourists.
We booked one in France through Avis. Rocked up and they wanted either a €2000 refundable deposit or a €350 non-refundable waiver. We were deep into a home renovation, couldn't afford the refundable option if we also wanted food on holiday, had to take the hit.
That's over the top of a €950 10 day rental for a 3 year old Seat, its gearbox nearing the end of its short cruel life.
And we were treated like this because we'd used a reseller. The person before us didn't have our experience and the guy there was happy enough to explain how they hide details like this from comparison websites and everyone assumes they'll get the standard rental agreement. Loads of people get stung on the waiver.
I'm guessing the 'waiver' is for their enhanced insurance, which means you don't pay anything extra if there are any damages.
I've rented hundreds of cars in Europe over the past two decades, and never had an issue. I booked through whatever site is the cheapest (which often is their own site, once you sign up for the loyalty programme). Never took the extras they try to sell. Car seats are carried by airlines for free (even Ryanair), so you don't need to pay for those.
What made it feel like thievery was we knew nothing about it until we were in France with two kids who had just had enough of travel, and we were already an eye-watering sum on that we wouldn't get back if we tried to shop elsewhere.
Again, the direct customers didn't have this. They had been asked these questions, made these choices as part of the initial order, where they had time to prepare financially, or shop around.
It's in this way very similar to how some airlines feel they can double your flight cost as you are literally stepping onto the plane. You have no choice.
Especially for car rentals where even a single paperwork error can cause a huge problem if an accident occurs.
It's always been unpleasant interacting with them, but I haven't seen anything abusive. Usually I'm told I either have to leave a huge deposit or buy insurance. Is this what the abuse is supposed to be? I don't love it, but I can't say it's a crazy notion.
All sorts of BS, like “we have to phone your insurance company to verify your coverages” (at 11pm), or same with credit card, etc, to be “allowed” to waive their insurance. Oh, and the regular car you reserved, and several of them you can see on the lot? They’re unavailable. And the manager isn’t here to authorize a discount on a larger or premium vehicle. And so on.
"Sorry, our security system was unable to verify you." No explanation of what that was, or meant, or what was being verified. Despite dozens of incident free rentals in the past, etc., no issues on my license, etc. "We are not going to be able to rent to you."
Hand over my credit card and start pulling up an Uber to go to a nearby Enterprise. "Fine, whatever, just put my refund back on this card."
"Sorry, prepaid rentals are non-refundable."
"I didn't get to rent anything, as you just pointed out."
Had to go to Corporate to reverse that one, was about 2 minutes from a chargeback.
The difference in customer service has always been gigantic for at least the last 2 decades.
I don't know if it still holds as I have been driving between places since the pandemic given the eye watering prices of rentals.
But agreed; should be (probably is) illegal.
The way people took the piss with the bags they brought on board before was ridiculous and resulted in a big delay of people trying to find space for their oversized bags of stuff they absolutely don't need for their weekend trip.
Personally, I rarely check bags (mostly if I need checked for outdoor activities) but the money has basically nothing to do with it.
Ironically, that’s been very much improved. With Delta and Alaska now, it’s actually quite rare that I get to baggage claim and my bags are not already there.
Maybe checked bags are free, and people with carry-on bags board last (unless they have kids)
If it was up to me, all passengers for say the past 7 years will get a full refund of all their baggage fees + 100 EUR + 10% interest compounded per year.
Congratulations, you have an airline monopoly because everyone went bankrupt or became so imperilled they had to merge to survive.
The government didn't pay those heinous fees, yet they end up with the money? Like seriously, who does that make sense to other than corrupt bureaucrats? The obvious thing would be as you suggest to refund fees directly to those that were charged. Maybe then levy a fine on top of those refunds as a punishment that goes to the government just to add salt to the wound.
So charging for carry on bags is a logical approach if you wish to minimize the operating costs of the airline which budget airlines do.
>It is abusive, because it's basically lying about the real cost of the ticket.
In the US every airline that does this makes it comically clear. Spirit, the one people always make fun of for nickel and diming, has multiple screens before you book telling you that it'll cost extra for bags. Every other airline does similar.
Yes queue the 'but I have 9 children' posts, obviously then you need to pay a bag fee.
I've seen tons of people with 3 bags, huge bags, and things like that. Frustratingly, this mostly affects people like me who don't do that, because I'll be the one asked to put my relatively small backpack under the seat because they're out of space, and being close to 2 metres it's not like I have tons of space to start with. Never too happy about that.
I haven't flown in a while, but generally RyanAir has been pretty relaxed about this, probably because it's just not worth the hassle and all of that. But seriously, fuck these people and fuck their fucking bags and I don't blame RyanAir for placing some incentives to stop the excesses.
I can clearly see the slippery slope if rules like this were not be enforced.
This is true but if we want to play the pure fairness game should someone who is 150 pounds pay less than someone who is 200 pounds? What about a 90 pound kid? These are drastic differences in weight and all 3 humans would likely fit in the dimensions of 1 standard economy seat.
Arbitrarily charging upwards of $200 USD to check a bag at the gate because your carry on personal item was 0.5 pounds too heavy doesn't seem reasonable. A lot of consumer grade scales aren't even accurate to half a pound, you may have done the work to measure it and be wrong because you don't have a high precision scale that's as accurate as the industrial scale at the airport.
For having a person who could be helping someone with real issues print a piece of paper instead, yes.
- Prohibit showing the QR code from a PDF on your phone (it has to be printed on physical paper, or you have to use the app instead)
- Make it intentionally hard/impossible to get your boarding pass bought from a third-party reseller into their first-party app
In other words, my "non-real issue" was entirely manufactured by Ryanair to extract more money from me (by frustrating third-party resellers without outright banning them in a way that makes them prone to competitive lawsuits)
This doesn't seem like it can be anything but ripping people off for making a mistake, or as charitably as I can possibly get making people who made a mistake subsidize flights for the more meticulous people in an attempt to make tickets (appear to) cost less to get more business.
There's even an entire second-order cottage industry benefiting from that practice: At the airport I was trying to board, there was a copyshop offering PDF printouts for 50 cent a page (yay) – except if the page is a boarding pass, for which the rate is then 10€.
Yes, they employ a person to specifically check what you're printing...
The costs are so high because they want to really really disincentive people from using staff for this kind of thing, so on average they won't have to hire as much staff.
This is one reason why some RyanAir flights can be as low as €20 (whereas e.g. KLM is €200 for a similar or identical flight).
On bigger airports it's not a huge problem because you can typically use the machines, which are free.
But checking in in-person is €0 only if there's more than 2 hours left until the planned departure, it is €55 if there is less. So in practice, a lot of people end up paying €75 for something that's free when flying with other airlines.
In Ryanair's defence, they explain it on their site. But if you are booking via e.g. Kiwi.com, you will probably never visit Ryanair's site and you will miss this detail.
A court in Vienna previously ruled against them, but they just ignore that everywhere else.
And that's exactly why they even do this in the first place!
They can't outright ban Kiwi.com from reselling their tickets, so they fight a proxy fight on the backs of their own customers.
I'm glad to hear that they have at least dropped their fee significantly; back when I ran into this issue, they were charging over 100€.
I ask because RyanAir has official documentation at https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-us/articles/12889667116433-Wh... and https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-us/sections/12488861427857-Bo....
The way I parse them is if you're flying anywhere, unless it's from Morocco or specific airports listed in their FAQ then you don't need to physically print your boarding pass as long as you can pull it up on your phone. This would include foreign travelers such as someone from the US who is flying between countries in the EU based on there not being an explicit call out for that.
Ryanair's app (unlike other airlines') intentionally does not allow loading a boarding pass/reservation using just your name and reservation code to discourage these third-party resellers – at the expense of their customers.
But yeah, I never fly with them; uncomfortable, annoying, only Boeings etc. I’ll pay more, it’s fine.
A better approach would be to offer an incentive for tickets on your phone (as long as it wasn't a data grab)
Their hand bag requirement is substantially smaller than most other airlines.
It's 16" x 12" x 6" (40cm x 30cm x 15cm) with a 4.4 lb (2 kg) max weight. That depth 6" / 15cm measurement is substantially smaller than most other airlines as well as the weight. Most other airlines have 2-3" (~5cm) more in depth and allow triple the weight. It makes a noticeable difference if you plan a trip with 2 backpacks.
If you happen to need to check it at the gate, they charge $80-$220 USD depending on where you're coming from and going to.
As it stands, forgetting that Wizz Air requires bags 6cm smaller than easyJet and then getting told you can either pay more than your ticket cost originally or go home, but only sometimes if you get "caught", is just a bit... I dunno, uncivilized, I guess?
If you make it say, £15 in advance, £20 at the airport, that is enough to encourage people to do it in advance as long as bags are all checked, you don't need to be punitive.
Surely if they ban cabin bag and seat charges, then the base fare is just going to go up for everyone?
Memes and jokes aside, I actually find Ryanair to be a better service a lot of the time compared to Easyjet and more transparent with pricing, even though Easyjet is almost always more expensive on the routes I fly.
If they just universally enforced that all oversize bags paid the £15 or whatever priority fee, instead of some people just getting unlucky because they didn't bring a tape measure on holiday and are 3cm over, I think it could even be net positive revenue wise.
I just went through this a week ago and I was shocked RyanAir was doing this as I was sure this was not legal in the EU.
The issues with WizzAir:
-Administrative fees of 9 Euro on each flight, for each passenger.
-Trolley bag (10 kg) an extra of around 60 Euros.
-Want have the same fare for 48 hours? Pay an extra 12 Euros.
-After that, checked in bag, is around 40 Euros per flight.
-Check in at the airport costs around 40 Euros.
-Online check in costs 5 Euros, and the say they mail you the tickets two days before.
-They don't mail you the tickets and they don't say anywhere you can only print the tickets on the same day of the flight (atrocious if the flight is at 6 am).
-You can get a refund for a cancelled flight, but the refund link cannot be found on their site. You have a post on Trip Advisor that points to that site.
-If you have paid for a small check in bag (10 kg) but bring that bag to the plane that's an extra 58 Euros (I can live with that).
-The boarding queue may stop for around 15 minutes, because a client needs to pay 58+58 Euros and the boarding attendant is unable to calculate such a complicated mathematical operation, needing the intervention of another boarding attendant (busy). That is a big no NO!
-Of course the web site has "bugs" and you may encounter "issues" that may force you to restart your session, specifically when asking for a refund...
-The "bugs" do not depend on the browser, or the OS (tested on Windows, OSX and Linux).