Ryanair Tries To Defend Canceling Tickets Bought On Third Party Sites

from the but-why?!? dept

Wed, Aug 27th 2008 7:33am — Mike Masnick

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 tickets ~~without any refund~~ just seemed to do the opposite: to piss off travelers who had happily paid for Ryanair tickets.

The 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

19 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Jesse, 27 Aug 2008 @ 7:48am

How can this not be illegal? Is Ryanair receiving money for these tickets? I'm guessing so. Are they delivering a service? No. I don't understand how is isn't illegal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- discojohnson, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:09am
  
  Re:
  per the original article
  
  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 ]
  - Dennis, 27 Aug 2008 @ 9:00am
    
    Re: Re:
    Thanks for pointing that out, discojohnson.
    
    We have updated this post to clarify that point..
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
jay, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:08am

Greed isn't legal?
Shame on them, then.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
discojohnson, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:11am

sorry
i hate double posting, but Mike check your facts from the original article about your comment regarding "And then to have Ryanair flat-out cancel the tickets without any refund"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Theoden, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:44am
  
  Re: sorry
  According to the story, A spokesman for the Air Transport Users Council said, “... Ryanair should have made it impossible for these internet travel agents to buy its tickets in the first place. We urge Ryanair not to cancel existing tickets with no option of a refund.”
  
  Sounds like Mike got the facts right!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
MarkL, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:27am

Avoiding price comparisons
I actually thought this made perfect sense, as by banning the other sites from Ryanair.com it removes the only chance customers have to automatically compare ryanair's prices to competing carriers.

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 ]
- PaulT (profile), 27 Aug 2008 @ 9:19am
  
  Re: Avoiding price comparisons
  I understand what you're saying, but this is actually a rather counter-intuitive move. Yes, Ryanair customers can't use that service to discover that they're not the cheapest on that particular route. But this is only a gain if you assume that the people using the price comparison sites will now go to Ryanair's website instead - certainly not a guaranteed outcome, especially as the flights were apparently sold largely as a part of a package deal.
  
  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 ]
  - MarkL, 27 Aug 2008 @ 2:07pm
    
    Re: Re: Avoiding price comparisons
    For almost any airline other than Ryanair, I'd agree that it's stupid, but Ryanair by it's sheer size has incredible mindshare as the 'first destination' if you're looking to fly short haul at the right price.
    
    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 ]
Overcast, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:55am

I suspect, soon you can add them to the list of 'unprofitable' airlines :)

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 ]
Randy, 27 Aug 2008 @ 8:59am

Refunds went to the right place
The refunds were to the 3rd party sites, not to the individual cusomters whose flights were cancelled. In this case, the refunds are going to the correct 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 ]
Joe, 27 Aug 2008 @ 9:55am

Right in line with O'Leary's style
Ryanair's ceo - Mike O'Leary is infamous for his abrasive personality, making Donald Trump come off as delicate by comparison. Really - it's a 'I don't like it so screw you all' kind of attitude.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
LeRoy, 27 Aug 2008 @ 10:21am

Best reason I have heard
This is the best reason I can think of for avoiding Ryanair in any way, shape or form!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Steve R. (profile), 27 Aug 2008 @ 11:00am

More than Copyright
The actions of Ryanair point to the continued trend of corporations to claim that they have a unilateral right to define how a product may be used post-sale. Besides imposing onerous terms of service (TOS, they also assert that they can change the TOS at any time (even retroactively). Copyright is simply being used as the legal "hook" for justifying these onerous claims.

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 ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2008 @ 11:31am

Are these sites actually buying the tickets first from Ryanair? I always though in the US anyways that sites like Expedia, Orbitz, etc. just basically sell through airline's ticket site and tack on $20 or so convenience charge? So like a front end only?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2008 @ 11:44am

It seems that copyright is becoming an all-purpose claim when it involves anything on the internet. It's getting annoying.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ray, 28 Aug 2008 @ 3:58am

Spokesman likens it to illegal downloading
In one interview on an Irish radio station a Ryanair spokesman likened what the third party company was doing to file sharing, specifically illegal music downloading. I really don't know how they thought that this was in any way a fair or valid comparison.

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 ]
Lou Paglia, 29 Aug 2008 @ 6:02pm

don't agree necessarily
but it is a pretty intuitive move if you look at this like ticket scalping. The surplus is being taken above what you are commanding in the marketplace but you don't want to raise prices for everyone.

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 ]
Colm, 1 Sep 2008 @ 1:19am

Another statement of the bleeding obvious..
Ryanair? Pissing off customers?

Perish the thought...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]