Ryanair finally plays fair over paid fare
A reader based in Belgium is furious with Ryanair after a flight he was due to take with his family last year was cancelled at short notice.
This reader was scheduled to fly from Brussels Zaventem to Barcelona with his wife and two children on the morning of October 29th with a view to returning later that week.
However at 7.30pm on the evening before the flight was due to depart he got an email from Ryanair stating that "due to handling agent strike in Brussels Zaventem Airport your Ryanair scheduled flight will be operating from Brussels Charleroi on the 29th October 2018".
The following morning he and his family took a taxi to Charleroi airport. “We could not take our car as our return flight was still to Zaventem,” he writes.
“At the check-in desk we were told that the email was sent in error and that there were no replacement flights from Charleroi planned. We needed then to get a taxi home as there were no other options to fly to Barcelona.”
When the family returned to their home at about 8am on October 29th, they saw a new email from Ryanair, this time stating that the flight had simply been cancelled.
“Had we been correctly informed of the cancellation of the flight we would not have incurred the taxi costs,” he writes. He says those costs amounted to just over €222.
He applied for and received a refund for the flights, but he was of the view that Ryanair had wrongly “directed us to an alternative airport but [had] refused to compensate us for their error. This does not relate to [a refund] for the cancelled flight but to the unnecessary costs incurred,” he says.
He made a claim for the taxi fare and was told by Ryanair that he would not be refunded for it. He refused to let it lie and decided to take a Small Claims Court case against Ryanair in Ireland "for language reasons".
Initially the airline offered a robust defence. He sent us correspondence in which it said the email our reader was sent stated “that the flight not only was to depart from Brussels Charleroi but the date of the flight was changed to October 31st”.
The Ryanair defence went on to say that “it is the respondent’s [Ryanair] case that there was no reason for the claimant to travel to Charleroi airport and the costs incurred are or not the liability of the respondent.”
It called for a dismissal of the case.
But the email Ryanair was referring to and the email our reader received on the night before his flight was due to depart differed significantly. The one he received clearly stated that the flight had been moved to a different airport, but on the same date.
He highlighted the difference again to Ryanair and, as the day of the court hearing came closer, he received an email from the airline’s solicitors.
This is what it said in full.
“We refer to previous correspondence and thank you for the below. We are advised by our client that the receipt your [sic] provided was properly incurred in the circumstances of your claim. Our client apologises for the administrative oversight that caused a defence to be filed. Our client has instructed us to offer you a settlement in this claim for the sum claimed €222.10. We will advise the Registrar today that we have communicated with you on this case. We look forward to hearing from you.”
Our reader concludes his email to us by highlighting what he believes is the central issue – the great lengths Ryanair appeared willing to go to avoid a claim for €222.10 that was properly owed to him.
We made contact with Ryanair.
In a statement it said there had been “seven days of baggage handler strikes at Brussels Zaventem from Thursday October 25th to Wednesday October 31st during which all Ryanair flights on Brussels Zaventem based aircraft were cancelled and switched to depart from Brussels Charleroi”.
It said passengers scheduled to fly from Zaventem on the days in question “all received similar flight cancellation emails referenced to their date of travel. The customer received an email at 6.30pm on October 28th stating their flight on October 29th had been ‘moved’ to Brussels Charleroi when in fact it was cancelled. A revised (correct) email was then sent on the morning of October 29th at 7.12am hours advising that their flight from Zaventem was cancelled and the customer chose to take a refund for the cancelled flight.”
The statement goes on to say: “When the customer claimed for their taxi expenses to Charleroi, the claim was rejected because our customer service team reviewed the second email which only referred to the Zaventem cancellation and they did not realise that the customer had received the earlier October 28th email advising that the flight was moved to depart from Charleroi.
“When the customer submitted their small claims case our team forwarded an actual email that had been issued for a flight cancelled on October 31st when in fact their flight (and email) was dated October 29th. When our lawyers realised the date error on the email, we re-checked the file and discovered the incorrect email and immediately instructed our lawyers to pay his claim in full which was processed and accepted on May 30th. Since this error occurred we have put in place a procedure with our lawyers to ensure it will not reoccur.”
Insurance cover refused after family death
A reader called Maggie has been in touch because the pieces we have featured on the topic in recent weeks have “struck a chord” with her.
She and her Australian husband live in Dublin. They booked and paid for flights and accommodation in Sorrento, Italy with TopFlight last year, 2018. The cost was €2,000.
Her husband's sister (since deceased) who lived in Australia, was ill with cancer at the time but was doing well. "She and her husband had visited us a couple of months prior and we had no reason to think she would not make a full recovery. In late September we received bad news from Australia that Sue's condition had worsened," Maggie writes.
“At that point her husband told us she would possibly not see her next birthday in June 2019. Of course we were devastated and our first instinct was to travel to Australia then and there. We called our travel insurance to ask if we would be covered if we had to cancel our Italian holiday and we were told we would not be covered as the illness of the family member pre-existed the booking of our Italian holiday.”
She called the tour operator TopFlight, explained the situation “and asked if it was possible to give us a voucher so we could use the holiday at another point or perhaps next year. They refused and said we should have known from the small print that the holiday was not transferable or postponable.”
Do you agree that refusing cover for travel cancellation because a family member had an illness that existed before we booked our holiday is unreasonable?
So they spoke to the ill woman’s family and heard that she was having more chemotherapy “and would hopefully be more ready for a visit by the end of October. We decided to proceed with the Italian holiday. We purchased flexible return flights to Australia for late October and continued to plan for our Sorrento holiday.
“However, in early October we got the news that Sue was dying and we realised we needed to get there as soon as we could. We changed the dates on our Australian tickets and left for Australia on October 8th.”
Sue passed away the following day.
“Before we left for Australia I called Topflight again and told them what was happening and asked if there was something they could do in the circumstances. I said we would be happy if we could offer the holiday to somebody who needed a holiday. I said it made no sense to have a beautiful sea-view hotel room in a hotel in Sorrento be empty for a week when a little effort on their part could ensure that somebody could avail of the holiday we had paid for. They refused.”
She said she called the AA – the company she has travel insurance with – when she came back. “They sent claim forms, but to be honest we were too tired and upset to do anything further. Based on their earlier refusal it felt like we would only upset ourselves further to get doctor’s statements, death certs, etc from Australia and then be refused again anyway.
“It’s only now I feel ready to pursue it. Do you agree that refusing cover for travel cancellation because a family member had an illness that existed before we booked our holiday is unreasonable? How could anyone possibly know that a family member at the other end of the world who had been doing really well despite her cancer, would suddenly deteriorate and die? Isn’t that exactly why we take out travel insurance?”
We contacted the AA. Its spokesman Conor Faughnan said there were a "few matters that need to be considered here".
He said AA Travel Insurance does not cover for holiday cancellation if the reason for the cancellation is in relation to a pre-existing condition affecting a close relative which is known to the customer at the time of purchasing the holiday, if a terminal diagnosis was received prior to the trip being booked, or [if] the relative is on a waiting list for surgery, in-patient treatment or investigation at any hospital or clinic at the time the trip is booked, or [if] during the 90 days immediately prior to the trip being booked, the relative had required surgery, in-patient treatment or hospital consultations.
He said it was not immediately clear if our customer’s sister-in-law had received a terminal diagnosis prior to the trip being booked or if her diagnosis changed at a later stage. “It would appear that this customer’s sister-in-law was receiving regular in-patient treatment for her cancer, although I cannot say with certainty that this was the case. If this was the case then, as a result, cover for cancellation relating to this illness would be excluded.”
He said this was standard on virtually all travel insurance unless you go to specialist insurers. Including cover for pre-existing illness in scenarios one, two or three mentioned above as standard would make the cover excessively expensive for the average holiday-goer.
“However, if it is the case that this customer’s sister-in-law had not received treatment in the 90 days prior to the holiday booking and did not have a terminal diagnosis prior to booking the trip, then the customer would be entitled to make a claim for the cancellation.”
Driven to the brink over Brexit change to licence
David got in touch to complain about “the fiasco that is UK driving licence exchanges following the Brexit scaremongering in March”.
UK licence holders in Ireland have been advised to change their licences as they will be invalid in the event of a no-deal Brexit. David said he exchanged his UK licence at a National Driver Licence Service centre [on March 30th].
“On the day I was not told that there could be up to a three-month waiting period. At the time I had already pre-paid for a car hire in Italy starting June 23rd. Had I been informed of the waiting period I would never have exchanged my licence on the day.”
Towards the end of May he started to get concerned as the NDLS was advertising that there was a 2-3 month waiting period for UK licence exchanges. He rang the NDLS, which reviewed his application and said it “should” be out at the start of June.
“From the first week of June I started calling daily. I was told it could not be escalated until after 12 weeks (12 weeks being up on June 22nd, the day before I was due to fly out) had passed and had to follow due process. I contacted the DVLS in Swansea who confirmed that, as of June 4th, they had not been contacted by the NDLS regarding the licence exchange.
He said the DVLA needs at least five working days to process email requests. “As it stands, I am flying out to Italy with my family and will not be able to pick up my pre-paid car as I physically won’t have a driving licence. ”
He believes he should have been told about the long waiting period in March. He wonders why there is no escalation process and he wants to know why they only started processing his application on June 7th, more than two months after he applied. He also points out that “they have physically left me without a licence for three months.”
We contacted the Road Safety Authority under which the NDLS operates to find out more. A spokesman said processing times for a UK licence exchange takes "an average of 10-15 days . . . for non-complex exchange cases. Complex cases will take longer."
The spokesman accepted that this reader's situation had not been handled correctly
He said that unlike non-exchange licence applications “we sometimes need to engage with the original foreign licensing authority to check licence entitlements / endorsements, which can lead to longer delays as we await a response. Therefore waiting times can vary depending on the nature of the application.”
He added that because of Brexit there has been a fivefold increase in UK and Northern Ireland applications this year. “Managing this level of demand gave rise to delays dealing with exceptional cases. The RSA has put extra manpower into processing UK licence exchanges.”
However, the spokesman said a thorough investigation of this specific case had been carried out and he accepted that this reader’s situation had not been handled correctly.
The spokesman apologised to our reader and said the story had prompted a review which was been overseen by the RSA chief executive and changes would be implemented to “make sure nothing like this ever happens again”.
Watch the ticks when buying tickets
Sarah and her two daughters went to Riverdance in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin last month. “I purchased the tickets through the Ticketmaster on my IPhone and downloaded the tickets on my screen so they could be scanned at the door,” she writes.
“When I was selecting my three seats there was no mention that the ones I chose were restricted viewing – when we were in the dress circle we had a pole blocking our view,” she writes.
She is “really upset that I spent around €120 on tickets that were restricted viewing. Should Ticketmaster not have warned me before I purchased these tickets? When I printed the tickets off later, they did say Restricted Viewing, but you only discover this when you have already paid for them.”
We sent details of her complaint to Ticketmaster.
In response the company said: “During the purchase process the customer accepted additional Terms & Conditions by way of a tick box which advised the seats they were purchasing were restricted view.”
