Ryanair criticised by Office of Fair Trading boss

Airline responds with £4 sale

The UK government's consumer and competition authority has accused low cost carrier Ryanair of playing a "funny game".

John Fingleton, the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, spoke out against Ryanair's credit and debit card charges in an interview with the Independent.

In the interview, Mr Fingleton said:"Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some low frequency payment mechanism and say: 'Well, because you can pay with that [the charge is optional].

"It's almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: 'Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it's within the narrow letter of the law'."

While the budget carrier advertises taxes and other fees upfront, it only reveals credit card charges at the end of booking.

Under consumer law, companies should advertise all compulsory charges.

But, as customers can avoid the £5 debit or credit card fee by using Mastercard pre-pay, Ryanair says it doesn't have to include these charges on advertised fares. Until last month, payments by Electron card were free.

Mr Fingleton said the practice was "almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: 'Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it's within the narrow letter of the law'.

"On some level, it's quite puerile, it's almost childish... This is just playing silly games at the margins of it all and we might or might not go running after something like that."

Ryanair "laughed off" the comments from John Fingleton by announcing a "£4 Fingleton Fares" sale.

From midnight tonight (Jan 4) it will release one million £4 fares, but the low price is only available to passengers who pay with a MasterCard Prepaid and travel with carry on luggage only.

Ryanair also made a four point rebuttal to the claims: "There are no hidden fees or charges on the Ryanair.com website; All non discretionary fees and charges are included in all Ryanair’s advertised prices; Ryanair’s payment handling fees are discretionary and are free for passengers using Ryanair’s recommended Mastercard debit cards; and Ryanair’s insurance services are purchased by customers on an opt in, not an opt out basis, as wrongly claimed by Mr Fingleton."
 
The airline added: "Ryanair fails to understand why it was singled out for these inaccurate criticisms by Mr Fingleton, when its charges policies are copied by high fare UK airlines."

www.ryanair.com   www.oft.gov.uk