Ryanair Tries To Defend Canceling Tickets Bought On Third Party Sites
from the but-why?!? dept
A few weeks back, we wrote about Ryanair's decision to cancel flight tickets that had been bought by travelers via third party websites. This made no sense to us whatsoever. These third party websites were acting as resellers, and doing something that seemed perfectly legal: providing new avenues for travelers to buy Ryanair tickets. And then to have Ryanair flat-out cancel the ticketsThe airline is now defending the decision, but is doing an awful job of it. First, it complains that these other sites were jacking up the price on Ryanair tickets. Fair enough, but if the travelers were still willing to pay those fees, where's the problem? Everyone got what they wanted in that scenario, as opposed to the current scenario where everyone is worse off: the travelers are out money without the plane tickets they thought they had bought, Ryanair has a bunch of really pissed off customers and the third party sites are none too happy as well. How is that possibly a better situation?
Then Ryanair claims that these 3rd party sites are violating its copyright in reselling its tickets, but it's difficult to see how such a claim could stick. First of all, as long as the sites are legitimately passing on the lead or buying the tickets themselves, then where's the copyright violation? It's certainly not in visiting Ryanair's website. It's not in displaying the prices (which Ryanair admits are different than its own, and prices aren't copyrightable anyway). So, again, we're left wondering how this move could possibly make sense for Ryanair?
Update: As pointed out in the comments by discojohnson, the original article at the Independent reports that refunds were given to the websites involved, but the decision to refund the customers themselves was then left to up to those particular websites. We have corrected this post to reflect that clarification.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: copyright, flights, third party sites
Companies: ryanair
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Ryanair will give refunds to all of the websites involved, [Ryanair CEO] Mr O'Leary said, but passing on those refunds to intending passengers would be a matter for the websites.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
We have updated this post to clarify that point..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Greed isn't legal?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
sorry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: sorry
Sounds like Mike got the facts right!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Avoiding price comparisons
On a great many routes, especially if you book only a few days before, Ryanair is not always the cheapest carrier, especially when the additional charges are factored in. Now Ryanair don't need to worry about their customers knowing this unless they go to the hassle of checking out a few sites every time, and manually adding up all the charges.
Clever move, but clearly very anti-consumer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Avoiding price comparisons
Customers just searching for the cheapest flight or holiday will not now be given Ryanair as an option, so they will lose sales in that way. they'll probably still buy holidays, just not with Ryanair flights. In addition, this move will have generated significant ill will among those customers who had their flights cancelled. These customers may choose to buy from a different airline in future, again losing sales.
So, no, it's not a particularly clever move.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Avoiding price comparisons
I'm always amazed at how successful this is - time after time I speak to people who paid more to fly Ryanair because they weren't even aware that other airlines served their local airport and weren't aware that there are sites that would have shown them a lower price. Remember that in Europe, the majority of traffic is on low-cost airlines that don't appear in the 'aggregator' sites, so virtually nobody uses them for shorthaul - this move is to ensure they continue to not use them!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There's no way I'd buy tickets or anything from a company who would pull that. They could have easily cut the forward practice of it and allowed customers who already bought tickets to use them, that would be a smart move, if this was their intention.
But the customer's just the guy in the middle here who gets the slap in the face.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Refunds went to the right place
It's not desireable for RyanAir to refund the cost of the tickets back to the customer. As an example lets said I paid $600 through a 3rd party site for my round-trip flight on RA. If the 3rd party site increased the cost of the ticket by $50 over the RA cost, does that mean that RA should refund me the $600?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Right in line with O'Leary's style
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Best reason I have heard
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More than Copyright
If this trend continues the consumer will be stripped of all rights to the use of a product. Not only will all rights be stripped, but the consumer will be stuck with a significant "liability" exposure if the product is not used in the "approved" manner.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Spokesman likens it to illegal downloading
I think that you will find the real reason that Ryanair don't want third parties selling Ryanair flights is that Ryanair then lose out on any possibility of selling additional services, such as car hire and hotel rooms. Ryanair gets anice chunk of revenue from these avenues and if people don't visit the site then Ryanair have no oppoptunity to offer these services.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
don't agree necessarily
What I don't agree with is if RyanAir did this with no notification. They should be dealing with this in a business-to-business manner if they do not want their tickets re-sold. The consumers shouldn't be punished unless they have notified all of this in clear advance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Another statement of the bleeding obvious..
Perish the thought...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]