Why am I so stupid?? Mistake booking flights

Do they really rinse them though?

they have low cost seats. I’m flying home from Milan with them for €94 - with a carry on bag. That same flight would’ve cost me £130 minimum with easyJet.

I didn't say that Ryanair were cowboys - just that their interest doesn't lie in delighting customers when they have an opportunity to rinse them for more money.

They’re not cowboys.

they’re a low cost airline that does exactly what it says on the tin.

.

Apologies - I really hope MN fix the glitch soon that leaves your message intact after you've posted it, so it looks like it hasn't posted.

Their main policy is to devise very hard and fast rules, with no wiggle room whatsoever, to encourage people in based on the headline price and then to (they hope) end up paying more for basic 'extras' that many people (especially first-time customers) wouldn't necessarily expect to be excluded.

Technically, you can fly by paying the stated price and not a penny more, but they obviously hope that they'll get more money off you somehow; so there's no way whatsoever that they'll concede and lose an opportunity to charge you more (often a lot more) money if you've made a mistake which means that you can't use your flight if you don't.

They're a bit like the airline equivalent of the parking cowboys, who will swoop the second they can to impose a large and disproportionate fine if you very slightly stray from their very strict rules. No, it wouldn't have made a difference to them that you were five minutes delayed in getting back when the car park is three quarters empty anyway, or that you clearly accidentally pressed a letter O instead of a number 0 if you had to input your registration - but it's a huge part of their business model to cash in on people's tiny mistakes, disappointment and misery.

The larger airlines are not much better. I got the first name and surname the wrong way round for 1 of the 4 of us with Aegean and called them within 5 minutes of booking. The f'rs still charged me a name change fee.

RyanAir is AWFUL, but sadly sometimes they are the only existing airlines, so no choice.

OP, just try the chat the minute they reopen and go from there. Blame a computer malfunction or something, the agent wont' care, but if you don't try to speak to them, nothing will happen anyway.

at worst they refuse and then it might be cheaper to cancel and rebook.

We have all done some stupid shit, you are not stupid because you see it was a stupid mistake, it's life!

@MrsFinchleysFlan Is there definitely no 24hr cooling off period for Ryanair? I thought there was…? Sorry this has happened to you. I do this with dummy bookings myself!

Why wouldn’t you just have typed the names instead of bashing the keyboard like a toddler?

Presumably you sought compensation under the statutory provisions that are in place for this type of situation?

If you fly Ryanair regularly, your time will come, and you’ll remember this thread!

In the meantime, here’s one small example of Ryanair.
Some years ago I booked flights for a 1 week holiday to Tenerife. A couple of weeks before the trip, I got an email from Ryanair saying my outbound flight was cancelled. Not the return flight, just the outbound. They wouldn’t give me a refund for the cancelled flight, but they offered to move it several days later, meaning my holiday would only be about 3 days. They also wouldn’t give me a refund for the return flight, nor would they change it for free, as that flight wasn’t cancelled, so they expected me to get it. Quite how they thought I’d be getting to Tenerife I don’t know, given that they’d cancelled the flight that was going to take me there! Each attempt at calling customer services or using their online chat took literally an hour before anyone responded. In the end we had to book a new outbound flight with a different airline, and lost several hundred pounds. Ryanair never refunded us, or gave us credit, or anything at all. They pride themselves on being shit.

BA have a 24 hour cooling off period for flight bookings, subject to a couple of caveats.,.details will be on ba.com

Don't beat yourself up OP. Easily done . Sometimes I think they do it on purpose . I always book on laptop as I can see the whole page at once to try to avoid mistakes .

I must admit I thought all airlines in the UK had a 24 hour cooling off period, even Ryanair.

This should be brought in in the UK for all transport as it's so easy to make a mistake when booking.

I imagine it’s incredibly quick & easy for an agent to go into the booking and change the name.

But Ryanair's point is that they don't want to have to pay for agents at all. Humans cost money, so they want rid of as many as possible. So their charges are extremely high for things like this as a punishment for needing them in the first place. It's why they charged huge amounts for printing a boarding pass at the airport. It's to make you do things yourself instead of having Ryanair do it for you.

Yes, I agree. We all do the odd daft things. Be kind to yourself. And if you are kind to yourself, it will also help you to be kind to others when they make mistakes.

Their whole policy is that you have to stick to their policy. It's really nice and clear.

They changed my flights when I messed up booking a seat for a baby. I'd put wrong names and bought the wrong type of seat. They refunded and I rebought.

I don't get the hate for ryanair. They do what they say they do. They're cheap because of this. If you want better service or more luggage etc then you have to pay more. It's like buying a budget kettle and complaining it takes longer than a bosch one.

Oh no! I’ve compare prices in the same way before, could have easily happened to me. Could you claim it back on your credit card?

You pay peanuts you get monkeys

Realistically though this isn’t just a little mistake. OP didn’t take the two minutes to put actual names in.

In the interests of balance I must point out that I booked flights with BA last year but used my married name, forgetting that my passport is in my maiden name (I'm actually divorced but have never changed it). I was able to change my name for free or a small admin fee, can't remember which, but what they didn't tell me was that it meant I'd need a manual check-in. I couldn't check in and book seats online and, when I arrived at the airport, the woman said she needed to call customer services or something because my ticket needed to be reissued when I'd changed my name and that hadn't been done on the phone when I'd 'sorted' it. That would have been ok but it involved her ringing an office in another part or HR and getting no reply - this was 10am on a weekday in the height of summer. We'd allowed 4 hours for a short haul flight but it was rammed and time was ticking away and we'd lost over an hour just to get to the front of the queue, whereas if we'd known this was necessary we would have got there a lot earlier and seen the supervisor straight away. She kept saying, 'Sorry, there's nothing I can do if they don't pick up the phone!' Eventually someone did pick up and it was ok but it was incredibly stressful while we were waiting.

I see so much hate for RA but all companies fuck up and from time to time and I have always found RA very clear and transparent about what you do and don't get.

As soon as you said Ryanair I knew they’d refuse. Their whole policy is to be as difficult as possible. I avoid them at all costs. In the past I’ve chosen to pay double the price to fly with a different airline.