Ryanair refusing to reimburse cancelled flight

[mooneus]

Hi, I hope someone can help or point me in the right direction.

In June I went to Copenhagen for my birthday weekend. Our return flight on a Saturday evening was cancelled by Ryanair. The next flight back they had was not until the Wednesday. I spotted Easyjet had some seats left on the Monday evening on the same route, so I booked those as we needed to get back for work.

There was a lady on the desk at Copenhagen airport - I don't think she was a Ryanair employee. She told us that the best thing to do is to book accommodation and flights ourselves and ask Ryanair to reimburse you. In fact she went as far as saying we could call Ryanair customer services, but we would be on hold for ages and they'd just tell us the same thing she did. So we booked a hotel and planned to take the Easyjet flights.

Since we returned I have been back and forth with Ryanair about this and it's only now - 5 months later that something is being done. I submitted all our receipts and expenses to them. However, today I received an email to say the maximum we are entitled to is €250 (£215) each. This is sufficient to cover our accommodation and some of the additional expenses on the other days we were in Copenhagen, but definitely didn't stretch to cover the flights with Easyjet. Ryanair said they had no obligation to reimburse us for the new flights because apparently the process is we needed to go to Ryanair to tell them they cancelled our flights and they would find us a suitable alternative. Only if the alternative is not suitable, that is when they would reimburse to fly on a different airline. Given what the lady at Copenhagen Airport told us, we felt we were ok to book wiht Easyjet. And also like she said we could be waiting hours to get through to their customer service to get us on a new flight, by that time the seats on the Easyjet flight could have been sold and we'd miss on days at work.

Has anyone experienced this before or know what to do? All I want is to be reimbursed for the Easyjet flights because Ryanair cancelled our original flight.

Thanks

Im not sure why you would have taken the advice of someone who doesn’t work for Ryanair. You should have tried to get hold of Ryanair first and asked what to do. I doubt they would reimburse if you haven’t followed the correct process.

Have a look on line - travel journalist Simon Calder often writes about these kind of topics. You can find out what your legal rights are and the process to follow - Ryan air won’t tell you that as they likely don’t want to pay out any more money than they can get away with

Have a look at this OP

://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/holiday-cancellations-and-compensation/if-your-flights-delayed-or-cancelled/

I had a similar situation - but with EasyJet as the cancelled flight and rebooked with another airline. Was given the same advice by someone at the airport and unfortunately I never got reimbursed from easyJet for my new (expensive!) flights. Hopefully the law is in favour and you get somewhere - I gave up in the end as I could never get through on the phone and they never responded to emails.

There are two types of claim - you can claim compensation for the flight being cancelled (a set amount) and expenses that you incurred (eg flight and hotel). Ryanair don't make it very clear but you can put in both these claims (we recently had to do it, they are separate forms). If they won't pay your expenses you can escalate it to an independent arbitrator called Aviation ADR. We are awaiting a decision on ours as they wouldn't pay part of it (they did pay for our new flights but they were also Ryanair ones). Also, MSE website is very good for explaining all your right on flight cancellation. Good luck!