Why am I so stupid?? Mistake booking flights

[MrsFinchleysFlan]

I was booking Ryanair flights earlier to fly home for Christmas. I usually use the app, but I wanted to check I had the best price by putting the same flights into the Ryanair site in incognito mode. I did it quickly and put some random letters in for the names.

For some reason the baggage was cheaper, so I went ahead and booked the flights though the browser in incognito mode (after logging in to my account) after carefully checking I had the right dates.

BUT DID I CHANGE THE NAMES?? NO I DID NOT 😵😲😲

They apparently allow name changes for free up to 48 hours after booking, but only by 3 letters! So now they want £400 to change the names!

Their customer service opens tomorrow morning. What can I say to beg them just to make the changes for free??

And why was the baggage cheaper in incognito mode??

Oh op this absolutely sucks. I can't say "I would never fly Ryan Air" because we absolutely do, as the flights can be so much cheaper. (We flew 30pp return to Europe over the summer holidays, which would have been ten times that if not more with any other airline, plus not many flew into where we needed to go) but they are bastards, and you do need to check check and check with them. Luckily the only time I made a similar mistake was when we'd booked long haul flights with a transfer from American Airlines to British Airways. I'd messed up everyone's birth dates, as like you was just sort of comparing prices and found a bargain, so quickly booked, without going back and amending it. Luckily American Airlines were absolutely great and changed it over the phone no issues and offered to sort out the fuck up on the BA flight for me too, as they could access the flights for their "sister airline" at the same time. This makes me even more cross on your behalf as its clearly so easy to fix, if they WANT to be nice. I wish I could boycott Ryan Air like many claim to do, but we travel alot and do rely on being able to get to and from a few places cheaply due to family being spread over Europe. Still hate them though!

The entire point of Ryanair is that they’re cheap, and don’t do all of this because they need to make money. They have tiny profit margin per passenger and so they rely on people paying for this type of thing or cancelling and rebooking

The cheapest thing to do here might be to change your names to whatever you entered and get new passports.

This is awful, I’m so sorry, I would never have known that would happen!! I did know that sometimes trying to trick a browser into knowing that you haven’t been there before will the prices, but I didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to change the names!! Complete nightmare, Agree with the poster who said it might be cheaper just to book again. What a horrible mistake, totally easily done though. Hope you get sorted.

This. It’s also why you end up queueing down a stairs for irritatingly long periods before getting onto the plane — the quick turnover between incoming and outgoing flight is another way of cost-paring. It’s not fun, but it’s part of what makes them cheap.

Exactly. It’s the choice you make when you book with them. They’re not a new airline, everyone knows that this is what you get.

This is why I never fly Ryanair. They are such petty dicks. I imagine it’s incredibly quick & easy for an agent to go into the booking and change the name. They should just charge a 20 quid admin fee and do the right thing for mistakes like these. I’m sure I’ll get a load of backlash for this but we gotta keep fighting the system by any means possible imo…If they won’t change it you could always tell your bank you don’t recognise the transaction and get a refund…I mean, it’s not your name on the booking after all 🧐

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.

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.

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

You pay peanuts you get monkeys

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?

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.

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

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.

I know, and I'm kicking myself and kicking myself!

I've since learned they have a 24 hour cooling off period for flights in the US, but nothing the same over here. I think it would be fairer to have similar!

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.

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.

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 .

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

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.

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

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

@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!

@AgnethaF yep, definitely not. No second chances once you've pressed the button!

(well, there are limited second chances, but these are limited to changing 3 characters in a name, changing Smith John to John Smith, and changing eg. LHR-BER to BER-LHR)