A disabled man’s mobility vehicle is damaged on a Ryanair flight. A payment row follows

A mobility scooter broken while in transit with Ryanair and a bizarre-looking flight cancellation with the same airline prompted readers to contact us in recent weeks.

First up is a reader who emigrated to Denmark a couple of years ago because, he said, “as a disabled person it is hard to get a job in Ireland”. He returned in October “when I got a new job in Ireland and I realised that my family needed me more as a father rather than a breadwinner”.

“For the previous year I had been flying to and from Denmark with my mobility scooter with no issue, but on my last flight back to Dublin, Ryanair damaged the folding mechanism on it,” he says. “This scooter was a brand new one which I had just bought in Denmark – it had 33 miles on it.”

After what he says was a month of arguing with Ryanair, the airline “initially admitted responsibility and agreed to pay”.

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Our reader says the scooter was made in China and describes the Danish distributor as “extremely unhelpful”. The company had no distributor in Ireland “so I sourced and paid for the part myself from the Netherlands”.

He had a receipt for the purchase.

“I told Ryanair this. A local, well-respected Irish firm did the repair. The plan was that Ryanair would pay them but payment wasn’t forthcoming and I needed my mobility scooter back, so I paid them with the understanding that the repair company would reimburse me the money once they got paid. This meant I was now out of pocket by just over €311.33.”

He says that several weeks went by with no payment “to myself or the repair company. Ryanair did their usual ‘do nothing’ to emails and I even got the aviation authority to take up my case. It appears they have no powers to compel Ryanair to do anything, however.”

He says he has been told that Ryanair has paid the Dutch company for the part, but says that company has not been paid, while there is also confusion about the whereabouts of the money to the Irish repair company, which also says it has not been paid.

“The long and short of this is that Ryanair could have solved this issue in minutes if they had just bothered calling me and/or assigning a dedicated case officer. Constantly going through different agents meant information wasn’t getting to the right people and they subsequently made mistakes that have put me out of pocket.”

Ryanair said it was wrong to suggest there was a month of arguing with the airline after which it agreed to pay for the damaged scooter. In fact, it said, it responded to the initial correspondence two weeks after it was sent

In response to our first reader’s concerns Ryanair offered a robust defence. In the first instance it pointed out that baggage handling at Copenhagen Airport is provided by a third-party service provider [and] not Ryanair. We’re not entirely sure why this is relevant as our understanding is that our reader’s contract is with the airline and not any third party who it employs – but we will park that for now.

“Despite this, Ryanair agreed to cover the cost of repair to [our reader’s] mobility scooter,” the company said.

The statement went on to say that while our reader’s circumstances are “regrettable”, it disputed several of the claims he made.

Ryanair said it was wrong to suggest there was a month of arguing with the airline after which it agreed to pay for the damaged scooter. In fact, it said, it responded to the initial correspondence two weeks after it was sent seeking invoices relating to the repair.

Once those invoices were sent, the spokeswoman told us that the airline had responded the “very next day” to say a payment[ of €101.33 had been sent to the Dutch company where the part had been sourced and that it would contact the Irish repair company directly.

The statement said Ryanair did that and sent €210 to the Irish repair company a day later.

The airline also questioned our reader’s point that he “sourced and paid for the part myself from the Netherlands” and claims he “did not advise Ryanair that he would pay [that company] directly.

The statement says it never told our reader he would be paid directly by Ryanair for the repairs.

“At no point has Ryanair’s treatment of [our reader] been “shabby” and the facts are undisputable. Ryanair received two invoices on November 3rd and we processed payment to both vendors by November 4th. We have provided proof of payment and to assist this customer further we have now sought further information from both vendors as to why they claim that [they] haven’t been paid when they clearly have.”

‘Outrageous behaviour’

Next we hear from Jim O’Brien. Last June he made a booking for a one-way flight to Rome for himself and his wife, with a departure date and time from Dublin of 10:45am on February 23rd.

Towards the end of last November, the airline sent him an email to say the flight time had been changed to 16.50 on the same day which meant he would not be arriving in Rome until 20.50. It also meant that he would be missing a big chunk of the first day of his break away.

He says he was told he “could either accept this change or get a refund. [Ryanair] effectively moved us on to a later flight unilaterally for no reason while continuing to sell the 10.45am flight but now selling the seats at more than twice the price [€880 for two people], thus ruining the first day of our trip.”

In early December he engaged in correspondence with Ryanair’s online chat and was told that the 10.45am flight “should not be on sale and that it was “an error in the system”.

He told us he had screenshots of this correspondence. “I made it clear that I neither wished a refund nor to move to a flight that ruined the first day of our trip. I wished to take the flight I had booked six months previously.”

He said the information he had been given via the chat service was not accurate “as this flight continued to be sold for several weeks and indeed took off at 10.45am on February 23rd, 2023. Subsequently, we have made a complaint to Competition and Consumer Protection Commission who now wish me to refer the complaint to their consumer protection division.”

He describes what happened as “absolutely outrageous behaviour. I cannot as a consumer unilaterally get a refund for a flight that I decide doesn’t suit me and, similarly, [Ryanair] cannot unilaterally throw us off a flight we have booked six months previously in order to sell the seats at a higher price.” He says he believes it is at the very least unethical and should never have occurred.

In response Ryanair sent us a statement. First the airline confirmed that our reader had booked the flight, as he said, and that his flight was rescheduled, as he said. The statement then takes issue with our reader’s account.

“Mr O’Brien claims that he was advised he ‘could either accept this change or get a refund’. This is incorrect,” the statement says, and suggests that he was told he could accept the flight time change, change the flight for free or apply for a refund.

“However, we regret that on December 2nd last, when Mr O’Brien contacted Ryanair via Twitter, the customer service agent failed to progress his query and move him to the earlier flight from Dublin to Rome on February 23rd.”