Chloe Bryan-Brown
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Why is it compulsory to pay for baggage with Ryanair even when you don’t have any? I regularly travel to Carcassonne because I have a house near by. The only luggage I take is my handbag, and yet there is no option but to pay the £7 for baggage or £4 for priority boarding, which I don’t want either. They are compulsory charges — thus making the advertised cost of the flights disingenuous to say the least, misrepresentation at worst. Chrissy Emms, via e-mail
Chloë Bryan-Brown of Times Travel responds: You don’t have to pay for baggage or priority boarding if not required. Ryanair says you can “deselect” paying for baggage or priority boarding by clicking the “Remove” button which appears after the screen prompts showing the charges for “Online check-in/Priority Boarding” flash up. I found the Remove button was hard to see and agree it is very annoying to have to deselect services you don’t want rather than opting to pay for them if required.
But it appears that “deselection” is becoming a common feature on some airline websites, and customers need to keep on their toes. The Trading Standards Institute said that as long as the “remove” button was visible, desselection would probably not be considered misleading in this instance.
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Never pay for priority booking on Ryanair or Easyjet. It;s a con. If there is a bus from the terminal to the aircraft you will be boarded first on the bus-but there is still no guarantee you will be first onto the aircraft. If you forget to deselect insurance with Ryanair you have 14 days to cancel
Lolly, London,
Whatever you do - don't pay for your Ryanair flights with a credit card. Use a debit card instead. You will still be charged an exorbitant amount, but at least it's less than half what you would pay for the credit card.
Lolly, London,
I have just made a single booking with Ryanair for 5 passengers. I notice that they applied the credit charge 5 times over. How can this be justified.?
Heather Roberts, Florence, Itlay
Why not lobby relevant national/european authorities to regulate and outlaw these grossly unfair practices that have regretably become the norm on many airlines? Surely legislation can be the cure and outlaw these practices as unfair contract terms. It could specifically provide that airlines must allow one item of baggage free of charge on all inter-european flights. critics will rely on unwarranted interference and anti-competition measures but where profit is paramount the likes of Ryanair and others will always push the boundaries of explotation. Any members of the European Parliament out there want to take up the baton and lead the possie to campaign for change in this area?
Gabriel, Dublin,
It is a typical cheap trick by RyanAir to charge passengers for something that they do not want and then make it difficult to cancel the purchase.
We flew to Berlin on RyanAir recently and soon realised that the so-called 'priority booking' service was a joke. Most passengers had inadvertently bought the same service and the little yellow bits of paper handed out at check-in were compltely ignored by all RyanAir staff.
The sooner Trading Standards investigates this dodgy practice the better.
Bethany, Nottingham, England