Why am I so stupid?? Mistake booking flights

You actually do, you just have to click to see them. I just did it this week, you can xhr k dates, times, names, price , everything (and I always check three times and get someone else to check too before paying)

I'm paying 50 quid return to Stockholm next month, I'm perfectly happy with all of Ryanairs rules and regulations.
I fly with them several times a year, never any problems. All of the add on fees are clear and explained, I rarely use any of them. You get exactly what you pay for
OP put random letters in for passenger names, and then booked the flight! It's not Ryanair at fault here. I don't even know how she managed it, you don't need names in to compare prices, and you get opportunities to check details before paying anyway.

Same time last year I got similar. Son paid slightly less doing the journey in reverse. But when England played Finland last year the fare was a lot higher.

TBF I don't think anyone's really doing any rinsing, £109 return for that route is a very good deal IMHO, and you may well be getting that for below cost , but whatever the reasons it's a deal worth grabbing with both hands...

🤣

Re "rinsing customers", I'm flying to Helsinki next month. Return fare £109 including cabin luggage. Don't need hold luggage as I'm only going for 4 days. When I booked I checked BA fares - over £200 each way for similarly timed flights. I don't think it's Ryanair doing the rinsing.

Yeah, I’ve also heard booking systems can see what device you’re on and alter prices to suit. Plus, sometimes prices do simply change 🤷🏻‍♀️

As PPs have said, budget airlines are not even covering their costs with some of their cheapest fares. They want to offer people who want no frills who book early and don’t need to change anything, cheap travel. They do that pretty well.

You pay well over the odds if you book late or make a mistake or need to change a flight date or time. That’s where they make their money.

You think easyJet are better than Ryanair and make less changes? 🤔

Ryan air make their money off peoples mistakes, not offering flights at €30 - so when there is an issue, or a flight delay or bad weather issues etc. there’s feck all staff to help deal with it, and the ones you can get hold of will have the mantra of ‘computer days no’ down.
It’s why I don’t fly with them. By the time you paid the extras for a family of 4 EasyJet and other airlines aren’t much more expensive. And can be cheaper.
If it was just me and a knapsack I suppose I might risk it.

The best bit about this is the fake names are random letters… ‘Ms gdjsy qrqrqrw ?’ I’m pronouncing that correctly?

Going through life with a name like jhghu ssgcgg is probably better than flying Ryanair. They'd agree.

That’s not a bad shout. Unless they’re Irish passports? They’re very valuable at the moment, one of the easiest to travel on, so a good fake would set you back £10k per passport I reckon. Although, may be handy to have anyway for your kids for freedom of movement in the EU??
Have a think OP

Yes, I think that's a safe assumption.

🤣🤣🤣

how on earth are they to get new passports under fake names? I can only assume you are trying to be funny?

It's not quite as simple as tapping keys on a keyboard. It's more to do with the incredibly complicated way airfares are priced. I haven't got the time to go into detail but it is based on a zillion factors, very dynamic. You'll have people sitting right next to each other who paid different prices. Hell, it seems you pay less when you book online using incognito mode, I didn't know about that one.

It's not the labour of the person on the computer that costs.

Sorry this happened to you, OP, but I'm not surprised Ruinair didn't help. Their entire schtick is "we don't give a shit, what do you expect for £29.99". Check out their social media, it's how they market themselves and to be fair they are sometimes quite funny. Just be aware that you get what you pay for with them. A cheap flight and not much else.

I hate Ryan Air, not only because of their non existent customer service but because they piss about with flight times right up to the last minute so any other associated services you have booked such as parking also have to be changed and any additional fees incurred as a result are payable by you, not to mention the hassle.

But if the argument is you should only pay enough to cover the costs of a transaction or service then bear in mind a lot of the basic Ryanair fares (especially off peak off season) get absolutely nowhere close to covering the costs the airline incurs in flying the passenger from A to B...

If people want to demand only paying a tenner for an admin charge then OK, fair enough, but then they have say goodbye to most if not all sub-£100 basic returns to Europe in the off season.

If you’re definitely change the name, then do it asap! Im an ex travel agent and they use to charge name change fee plus any difference in fare. Ryanair charges a name change fee plus any difference in fare for a full name change. The fee is £115 online or £160 if you contact an agent or go to the airport. If the new fare is higher than the original fare, you will pay the difference in addition to the name change fee.
Easyjet to do this as well, I had one customer who had booked a year before, and then 1 month before the flight he needed to change one of the name and it was over £500 name change fee, due to the difference in fare! He said he would rather get his mate to change his name by deed pole and a new passport as it was cheaper! don’t wait till near Christmas when they same seats will be more expensive.

And for winning the internet tonight by making me giggle with this comment, I will start the go fund me for the change fees 😂

PS second place to the MNetter who said cheaper to change passport and name legally.

I once booked easyJet flights in my married name, forgetting my passport still displayed my maiden name (it had 9 years left when we got married and it seemed wasteful to update). I'd booked flights for me, DH and DD and only realised the day before we were due to fly . . I spoke to them and was completely blown away by the fact the lovely woman simply changed the name on the booking. I was expecting a whopping charge. Ryanair may well be more callous but if you're honest and extremely self-deprecating (as I was) it might work!

Incognito middle can be cheaper, in particular if you are doing lots of different searches for flights. The search algorithm recognises you are seriously looking to book so will increase prices the longer you are searching to encourage you to make the booking as quickly as possible

I'd guess they'd claim that they had potentially already turned away other people wanting to bring extra luggage, owing to weight considerations on the plane, hence you had to pay for reserving that capacity.

I thought of that and asked if I could still buy extra luggage. They said I could buy more but I could not reduce. So they had plenty of space/weight allowance available.

But there's a big gulf between them making the admin changes free of charge and charging a fortune for somebody to tap a few keys on a keyboard. If they charged a tenner, surely that would cover their costs.

Like with the parking companies with very dubious ethics, the extra charges bear no relation at all to any loss that they've suffered or work for them to rectify it.