Ryanair sceptics should sit down and take deep breaths before reading what follows, since it recounts what in my view is good service.
We travelled to Stansted on the 21st, and stood at the baggage carousel until only one bag was going round and round.
It was the same make as ours, but bigger, heavier and scruffier than ours.
Things went ping in our minds: some gormless sod had retrieved our bag, not theirs.
We took the bag over to the Ryanair luggage desk in arrivals, and explained what we thought had happened.
Two really pleasant ladies told us that this happened frequently, not to worry, in most cases the swap of suitcase happened sooner or later.
They hauled up the reservation code and tried to phone the mobile number on the reservation, but no reply. They sent a text message as well as a vocal message, and even sent an email in case the pax had a fancy iPhone/blackberry.
They took our details, and issued a PIR, with a number to call for the follow up.
We phoned later in the day, but there was no news.
Next day, they phoned us to say that the gormless pax had gone off to South Africa, still with the wrong bag, but she had been in touch and would be back in STN on the 30th (today), she would arrange the swap, and they would send the bag on the next FR flight to our local airport.
We had a call this morning from FR baggage STN, saying that the suitcase was with them and they were putting it on the next flight to our local airport.
We have just had a call from our local airport saying that they await our pleasure to collect our well-travelled suitcase.
Every chain of the process carried out their tasks efficiently, courteously and reassuringly.
I had to post this rather dull story to put down a marker that sometimes FR do things well.