Forty-Niner wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:36 am
I find the Ryanair website very easy to use. It clearly explains that if you do not reserve seats you can only check in two days before the flight.
However if you do reserve seats you are able to check in online and print your tickets up to 60 days before flights.
They have a fleet of modern aircraft with an efficient and courteous cabin crew and have the best punctuality record of any airline in Europe.
I fly over for Orient matches, arriving Monday for the Crewe game and will be returning on Sunday after the Colchester match.
The return fare, including seat reservations is £36. The cheapest alternative airline is £148.
If that's what dOh Nut calls a cynical p*ss take then i'm happy to be the victim.
The website fine? Really. I went on and paid for out and return, entered card etc only to find the return had not registered, despite ticking the payment box. The system don’t seem to like doing out and back in one cycle. No problem, So went through again and did the return again. All the way to the end, paid, got timed out.
No problem, waited 15 minutes as told and started again. Got right through to the end, card details, payment checking etc and timed out again despite being pretty quick second time. Now I’m wondering if the system is taking my money before timing out. Have I paid 2 times?
Another wait, another keying in card details, another payment processing check, another time out. Card details now entered three times. So wait an hour, same cycle, fast input, timed out. Getting the picture.
So now I’ve entered my card 4 times, been through the checking payment bit 4 times and the system still tells me I need to check in. And what has been taken from my card? Expensive seats? Claims?
Each cycle results in an itinerary email, fortunately I went through theses worked out no money appears to have been taken. But I’ll be checking my credit card statement for sure.
Fifth time I used their chat process, typed in details requested, they then booked the seats and passed me to the payment screen again, which worked. Wow, two hours entered card details 5 times and I’ve got my seats. Wonderful system.
Had it have worked it would have been simple, not complex, other than getting timed out, without the option to continue with more time if needed. Smart programming. No, crap programming they need to look at other time-based ordering systems.
The first time out was probably due to entering API stuff and ploughing through all the offers for cars, insurance and hotels. Having timed out once, the system just repeated it again and again and again. I ain’t slow on a keyboard. A glitch.
So repeated goes and two plus hours. The help line couldn’t give me the seats I wanted, so gave us different ones, no problem. By now I’d take anything at any price just to check in. But when we later checked the ones we wanted were still available. Seems he couldn’t get them either. A little allocation system glitch methinks. When is an available sear not available. On Ryanair. I suspect that having tried to book them 2 hours earlier their system had them pending allocation so they looked available but were flagged as in the process of being allocated. Which couldn’t be completed due to the time out glitch.
There is also a bug when you auto fill the billing name and address. The town disappears when you check the tick box accepting terms, so has to be re-entered. Post code is fine though. Poor programming. But a minor irritation.
It is also not clear about booking in return flights. Some airlines have the time limit for checking in outbound, often 2 days like Ryanair, however once ready your are then allowed to do both at the same time. You can only do this with Ryanair if you reserve your seat, 60 days. That is certainly not clear. If like me the seats allocation didn’t matter, then you cannot do the return flight, in my case until away, inconvenient. Hence why we paid, see the cycle above.
Basically if you pay to reserves seats both ways, sweet, if you don’t then expect to go through the check in process twice. A subtle difference which is not clear. Not made any clearer by the preflight email which tells you it’s free to check in your flights up to two hours before or pay £55 at the airport. Only clear once you know. Not clear if you don’t.
Interestingly not being bothered about seat allocation on a short flight didn’t bother reserving at first. So despite being far from full plane their allocation system ensured me and my partner were about as far away from each other as possible. That’ll learn me. Never experienced that before.
As for price. with booking £170 return per ticket to Lanzarote. If I was paying £50 each I’d be less critical as well. That price is nothing special.
