Useless Lo-cost Airline Websites
I have just spent nearly an hour trying to book a flight on Ryanair within 10 days, and another on Easyjet within 2 weeks. I need to confirm both urgently so that other people can make arrangements to fit.
Dear God, what a performance. Ryanir's website seems to have lost all the flights in the system. I tried a large number of different combinations of valid routes and dates, and got the same response each time. No flights offered.
So I turn to the telephone. Yup, you guessed it, the numbers on the Ryanair website are wrong, so you pay to hear a message giving another number. Then you pay to hear a recording saying that they are open Monday to Saturday (yes that's right, it IS Saturday) and you've got to call within those times. Email? Forget it, no address offered.
OK, so give upon Ryanair, start on Easyjet. Download the Winter timetable; yes, that's good, there are flights on the days I want them in November. Start the booking process; you've got it again, no flights on the days the timetable says there are. Try, just in case the flights I want are full, to book at any time up to March next year. No flights available.
Back to the telephone. Ah, £1 a minute; that's a nice little earner; set the website up to frustrate people and then charge them £10-£15 to call to get a booking. No thanks; I'll call a "Customer Service" number for only 10p per minute. No matter what I do, I end up having a conversation with a sodding robot. So I send an email asking which is wrong, the timetable or the system, and get a response promising an answer IN 5 DAYS time!
Now, everyone's website can go wrong from time to time, especially if the cretins in charge of it get it wrong.
But it takes a special kind of genius to do that, and then set up a "system" that treats your customers with such total, absolute contempt.
I would like to fly on these airlines because it's cheap. I know exactly what to expect in terms of treatment while checking in, boarding and on board, and I accept it; it's what I've paid for. If I want politeness, competence and good service from booking to landing I will pay 4 times as much and go BA. If I want to save money and be herded around like a sheep by a lot of spotty teenagers with no interpersonal skills or indeed training I'll go loco or Flybe, the hyco loco. It's my choice.
But why do the locos have to make it so unpleasant even to get a booking without hassle?
WHY CAN'T THEY SORT OUT THEIR AWFUL, LABORIOUS DISFUNCTIONAL WEBSITES AND/OR PROVIDE SOME KIND OF REASONABLE SERVICE WHEN THE WEBSITE DOESN'T WORK?
Pause.
Rant over. And I've booked BA for both flights. And it wasn't that much more expensive.
Pppppphew.