I have always been one of the first to acknowledge Ryanair for their business acumen if not always their ethics. However, their decision to penalise early-bookers in the current climate leaves me scratching my head. Surely early booking customers are valuable to an airline business: their monies paid are in the cash pool for longer which has to be a good thing for an airline. And early bookings help to underpin certainty of operation.
But Ryanair management has chosen to throw early bookers under the proverbial bus. Those who booked after June 10th are to be treated completely differently. Now - I'm not just moaning here. As a very frequent traveller with Ryanair, I hold bookings under both sets of rules. Though I can't see why it makes sense for a business to stitch-up its early-booking customers and make additional allowances only for those who booked late. Sure, the late-bookers will be well disposed to deliver repeat business, but the early-bookers will be wholly unimpressed, and their future business risks being lost entirely.
One of my (many) Ryanair bookings made for this year has just fallen foul of this two-tier policy. I had a MAN-KIR-MAN booking due to fly later this week: it was booked early. But passengers arriving in Eire are currently required by law to self-isolate for 14 days which makes this short break trip impossible to do in practice. I did not want a refund: I wanted to re-date my flights to future replacement dates when (hopefully) the Irish government will have lifted the quarantine rule.
I priced up alternative flights for 18-21 March 2021. If booking these flights afresh as a completely new booking, the price quote is £117.68 for the 'standard' rate which includes priority and two bags. So how much to CHANGE my existing August booking made on the same fare basis to these same March 2021 dates? Answer: £104 supplement over fare originally paid, which is made up of £90 change fee plus £7 and £7 for fare difference on each sector. That £90 change fee alone is actually more than the cost of the entire original booking. Now, if the supplement for the date change was limited to the £14 fare difference, I'd rebook without a second thought. But a NINETY POUNDS change fee? Come on ...
I enquired about the situation via the Ryanair Chatbox at around 14:40 yesterday and was referred to the customer service agent queue. By end of hours at 21:00 there had been no response at all.
So today I phoned Ryanair to ask them about this, as the website homepage suggests free date changes if your travel is impacted by COVID-19. I think Eire's 14-day compulsory isolation rule should fall squarely into that category. But I was told that the fee-free date change only applies to BOOKINGS MADE AFTER JUNE 10th. Why this cut-off? It makes no sense. And I do hold other bookings which will benefit from the post June 10th guarantee, by the way.
Obviously, my decision based on this is no new booking to Kerry. Why would I take the risk, when I can't forecast when the Irish Government will lift their quarantine rule anyway? And I certainly don't trust Ryanair not to stitch me up again in similar circumstances.
So here's the score. Ryanair get to keep my fare for this week's Kerry flights. Well done revenue management team: what a win!
But here's the other side of that deal. I do around 40 Ryanair sectors in a typical year. I currently hold around £400 in vouchers from flights cancelled by Ryanair themselves earlier this year. I was planning to use those to make new bookings. But not now. Not after this stitch-up. Why would I trust them with early bookings again when people who booked after June 10th have not been subjected to this stitch-up? No ... I'll now sit back and let my original money paid out to me flow back as these vouchers hit their one year anniversary dates. Beyond this, I'll continue to book Ryanair where they're the only operator on a route but choose the alternative whenever available (unless it is Air Europa who make Ryanair look like saints!). Bookings made by me (including for friends and family) generally amount to around £3000-worth of business in a typical year. I'd reckon they can forget around two-thirds of this going forward, in favour of airlines which have treated me well through this crisis. Roll of honour includes: SAS, Aer Lingus, British Airways, EasyJet, Iberia Express, Air Baltic, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, TAP, TAP Express, Norwegian, WizzAir (yes, they got it right too!). Still waiting on Belavia, though time is still on their side.
So the customer has plenty of more trustworthy alternatives to consider if Ryanair wishes to pursue their rip-off change-fee policy ... Why do this???