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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

Ryanair used to do some things that were quite remarkably devious - the option to not by travel insurance was in the middle of drop-down list of countries!

To make sure I had remembered that correctly I looked it up and here is a description of it:

https://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/ryanair-to-change-hidden-tr...

NB I've travelled with Ryanair quite a lot and actually don't mind the actual flights but it is wise to manage expectations about the kind of company you are actually dealing with.

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I have this example archived. Screenshots and explanation here: https://old.deceptive.design/trick_questions/

Conference video showing this example from 2010: https://youtu.be/zaubGV2OG5U?si=8PkLWhxHFSGQWuWw&t=597

It's not quite as bad as I expected (still bad), since it does at least clearly tell you how to not buy it, in normal size type even. Except then they decided to make it out of place alphabetically (and it seems to have moved at least once, since the other article says it was "between Denmark and Finland" because it was sorted under "don't").

Cool website. It’s a pity it’s no longer a wiki. Perhaps if you used the extension RequestAccount with a restriction of editing to only confirmed users you would be able to keep it a wiki.

Yea quite devious, in a weird way I suppose the dark patterns also serve as an IQ test that favors younger tech-literates who are familiar with web patterns and are also on a budget (though not all).

I used Ryanair a lot while studying abroad in Europe and the €20 flights were real if you jumped through the hoops, which was quite magical.

I once had a flight booked to Paris, but it landed in an airport 2 hours outside of Paris and the train/bus would’ve been 2x the flight cost, so being short of money I just didn’t take the trip and lost €20 :)

The dark patterns favor the patient readers who are able to think through and make informed choices. That wouldn’t be most of the younger tech literates.

I made the mistake of not checking a bag when I ordered at the website. Had to pay 70 euro dropping off my suitcase at the airport.

It's a mistake that I will only make once and never again!

Like a bootcamp training.

> However he disagreed that the ‘don’t insure me’ option was hidden, and said that 98% of Ryanair’s passengers could “find a way to decline insurance”.

I'm not surprised, but still a bit impressed by the ability to lie like this. Somehow I doubt even 9% of their passengers would know it was between Denmark and Finland.

Even in that quote 2% of people are possibly scammed out of their money, which is probably tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

An unknown percentage of people actually want the insurance. If only 2% bought it despite such an extreme dark pattern, the 98-percentile of customers is much better than I would have expected.

It's true you don't know who wants it, but I thought capitalism was supposed to work by mutual consent and transparency of contract. If even one person is deceived, that's a scam! I doubt out of tens or hundreds of thousands of people all of them figured this out and wanted the insurance.

You can use keyboard to navigate a dropdown box by typing initial letters.

The problem is you would expect the option for "no insurance" to be separated from the rest or at least not be under the letter "d".

I mean yes it is all very deceptive, but I remember being able to buy cheap ryan air tickets just fine with this trick.

I remember when they were seeking approval to provide blow jobs on flights (free in business class iirc.) The only thing that they won’t up charge. They even tried to get approval to charge for bathroom access.

Wild company, but they are entirely on brand.

To be fair, consumers have driven airlines this way. They’ve shown that they’ll buy based almost entirely on price and suffer any amount of agony in exchange.

I just don’t find basic economy or early flights or shitty airlines worth the bad stress.

The advantage of Ryanair and a lot of the other low cost carriers is that they do a lot of point to point flights between regional hubs - for example we flew Edinburgh to Marrakesh with them a few years back which was fine and I think they were the only airline offering direct flights. Going via Heathrow, Gatwick or CDG would have been a nightmare and we were only going for a few days.

I assumed you were making some poorly executed joke, but no!

https://www.smh.com.au/national/ryanair-ceo-talks-free-sex-o...

> He then asked the translator the German word for oral sex. After being told there wasn't one, he remarked "terrible sex life in Germany".

Which, of course, isn't true.

It's not true though, they call it 'blasen'.

I Will always be grateful to Ryanair for having allowed young me to travel cheaply, and I accepted most dark patterns, but I draw the line at the fact they appear to force you to book near seats when traveling with minors, even tho, by law, they have to allocate seats to you like that.

I’ve told people this before as I distinctly remember it being a thing and no one ever believes me!

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