Complaints are important for companies aiming at improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Yet, most companies don’t answer complaints (50-60% according to the interview of Prof. Davidow you can listen below), which is a very frustrating experience for complainants. This is what you should expect if you ever want to complaint to Ryanair. What you also may expect from Ryanair’s answer to your complaint is a defensive attitude. Based on my long complaining experience and the numerous “fights” I’ve won, here are my tips. In this article you’ll also find some distraction in the form of a complaint letter (probably the best I’ve ever read) sent by a dissatisfied customer to Ryanair.
What does the future look like for Ryanair ? Well, if you want to read our post-covid predictions for Ryanair, take a look at this article. You might not like it, but we think Ryanair’s future isn’t actually that bad.
Table of contents
- What to expect from Ryanair’s handling of your complaint
- Complaining to Ryanair: the winning strategy
- The best complaint letter ever sent to Ryanair
Ryanair’s worst practices
Although Ryanair made its complaints’ statistics public in 2014 (and quite frankly they weren’t that bad) the 2019 pilots’ strikes shed light on other, less positive, practices. Passengers could expect systematic denial of their rights and long waiting days.
Trying to get compensation from Ryanair is a lengthy process that often ends up in disappointment. Remember for instance in 2018 passengers who received no compensation or those who got a check which eventually got bounced.
What should you expect if you send a complaint letter to Ryanair?
Let’s be honest. You should expect nothing but a denial letter. For a long time Ryanair has loudly claimed its focus on low-costs rather than on service quality. Although Ryanair’s CEO is trying to change things and regain market share, on the field bad employees’ habits are hard to break. This is actually quite common about firms in general and airlines in particular. They first focus on defending their interests rather than being customer centric. You may remember the story of Dave Carroll and United Airlines (don’t miss Dave Carroll’s interview here), or that of Kenny and Crédit Mutuel. Both achieved millions views on YouTube.
Unfortunately Ryanair’s bad practices tend to propagate to other airlines those days. A study published by consumer watchdog Which? in 2017 revealed that airlines’ decision to refuse compensation to passengers was incorrect:
- in 83% of cases for Norwegian
- in 77% of cases for Ryanair
- in 69% of cases for Thomson
- in 73% of cases for Iberia
- in 48% of cases for British Airways
A Scientist’s View on Customer Claims Management
Prof. Moshe Davidow is one of the world’s leading experts in customer complaint management. We had the pleasure of producing a podcast with him on the topic of customer satisfaction. In the excerpt below, he discusses the issue of customer complaint management and gives us several insights on what practices companies should follow.
What should you do to enforce your rights
It happened to me that on my way to the RecSys conference in Vancouver, my flight was delayed 5 hours. I was flying with Air Canada from Brussels on that day. I wasn’t expecting any issues in getting compensated but Air Canada opposed all kinds of fallacious arguments to refuse compensation. The case had to be brought to court and I eventually won. I took slightly over a year to win.
I knew I was right and I had taken all precautions to prove it:
- I innocently asked a flight attendant what the reason for the delay was and I recorded it (“tires had to be changed and there was no tire available at the departure airport”)
- I didn’t take advantage of the free miles voucher Air Canada gave us when we arrived (which would have forfeited my rights)
- I kept all receipts
- I took pictures of the delay announced on the screen
I asked RefundMyTicket to act on my behalf but even they faced difficulties and took the case to court 12 months after the flight. Once the legal process started however, Air Canada magically started to cooperate and paid the expected compensation
This is what you should do to get compensated by Ryanair
If your flight is delayed and if you think you are eligible for a compensation, don’t lose your time writing a complaint letter to Ryanair (except if you want to vent your frustration; in that case use this form). Let professionals do it for you. They have better chances of success and will handle everything for you. The only thing you need is patience. A lot of patience.
Here are a list of firms that can handle your claim on your behalf. They work on a no-cure-no-pay principle. Pay nothing, submit your claim and wait. I used RefundMyTicket but there are many other firms of this kind: FlightRight or AirHelp.
Success fee vary from one company to the other. Make sure to compare before making a decision. Once you have “hired” a company to handle your claim you won’t be able to change.
A complaint letter to Ryanair that makes history
I stumbled upon an amazing complaint letter recently on the Dear Customer Relations website. This letter was originally posted by James Lockley on Facebook and ridicules Ryanair’s employees’ bad practices. It’s an amazing piece of text that will certainly make your day, especially if you once flew with the Irish airline.
What most struck me in the answers provided by Ryanair’s employees is their total lack of empathy, inability to be creative and deviate from the rules, and their unwillingness to take initiative. Initiatives taken to better satisfy a customer should be rewarded; a company where they aren’t or where employees are afraid of taking initiatives is totally wrong on what service quality and satisfaction means.
It seems that O’Leary still has a much to do to improve his firm’s brand image.
Happy reading …
[pdf-embedder url=”https://dev.intotheminds.com/app/uploads/complaint-letter-ryanair.pdf”]
Dear Sir/Madam,I am writing for the attention of your customer experience team. I am definitely a customer, and believe me, you didn’t fail providing us with an experience.
My wife and I had booked to fly from Stansted on the Thursday 17th April, evening flight to Bratislava. After 2 hours of fun, fun, fun, stuck on the M25 doing 20 mph, we arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there.
We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake. He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait and all would be ok. We stood patiently in the line for 20 minutes. We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to as Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight and we had missed it. We complained that we had done as instructed and she said it was the child’s fault because he should have advised her that we were trying to board a closing flight and that because he hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane.
Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well,…… After establishing that the child had not informed Vacant we were here, and Vacant had forgotten to do a last call and that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was in fact a Customer Shouting Desk. We complained and requested the attention of a manager.
Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out. He was so aggressive I can only assume he had accidentally inserted something sharp into somewhere private and been unable to remove it before he came to work. He was definitely a middle Gimp. I know this as Vacant and Not That Bright were clearly quite scared of him, and he can’t have been a Big Cheese as he was talking directly to customers and we all know from the papers that no-one in Big Cheese management at Ryan Air has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer.
Middle Gimp had clearly listen hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence.
‘Check in opens 3 hours before the flight’ he barked repeatedly as if it was the answer to every question in life. We tried to ask Middle Gimp direct questions about why it was necessary for us to miss the flight because the Child had forgotten to do his job, and Vacant had forgotten to do hers.
‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?.
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘What colour are my trousers?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘My tinkle is hurting, could you take a look if I promise not to tell anyone?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
Middle Gimp then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well,…… Middle Gimp then insisted we go to customer the Customer Shouting Desk, as he was definitely not going to do anything else. This was handy as the queue was very long so that by the time we would reach the front the plane would be half way to Bratislava and the problem would be solved.
We waited patiently in line as customer after customer stood at the desk to hear the same song;
‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’
We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that Middle Gimp had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage, and there were no other Middle Gimps around. We would have to book in to the flight for the next day and we would have to pay £110 each to change the ticket. When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the airport and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate. We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk.
We waited patiently in the very long queue yet again for about 40 minutes to discover the nice lady had also gone home now so we had to explain the whole thing again to a new lady that looked like all the joy had been removed from her life at birth. She recited the Ryan Air customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breathe and stay alive.
‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’
She recited it with perfection, Middle Gimps across the world would have been in awe and the effectiveness of the techniques taught in Middle Gimp School. Seeing no other option but to hand over all our cash and come back the next morning we happily paid and got new flights.
As the new flight was at 6.25am in the morning we decided to get a hotel, we paid £79 for a room and got a taxi.
So, our customer experience was insightful and liberating. From the incompetent Child with a brain so full of girls and Vauxhall Corsa modifications he couldn’t actually listen or speak, through Vacant and Not That Bright who decided on reflection that anything they did wrong was our fault for not pointing it out to them, right through Middle Gimp who made a Tasmanian Devil look calm and Zen like, and the sad one, oh so sad, having every last drop of life sucked out of her by her chosen career at the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk. I very nearly jumped over the desk just to give her a cuddle and tell her everything would be alright if she could just muster the will to leave the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk and find a more fulfilling job, like starting the very first Israeli pork pie factory, or being a parking attendant in Tower Hamlets, or in fact just resigning herself to a slow and uncomfortable death would have been indistinguishable from the current position and would require much less effort.
The net result of this ‘experience’ was;
New Flights – £220 Hotel £79 Taxi x 2 £50 Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35
1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this.
1 x very angry and upset wife, in particular with Middle Gimp for being so unbelievably rude.
1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss, because Child and Vacant are clueless at best and Middle Gimp has anger management issues.
So, thank you Ryan Air for a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I have watched a program called the news so I fully expect this to land on the desk of the customer services team underneath the empty bottles and sandwich wrappers that you also file there. You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book.
I sincerely doubt you will do anything about this, compensate us, apologise, or even respond according to the news, so I have sent this recorded and sign for delivery to absolutely confirm my opinion of Ryan Air and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’
Regards
You bunch of…………….
DJ Lockley
P.S. Maybe Middle Gimp in particular, but Child, Not That Bright, and Vacant should purchase one of your reasonably priced tickets and go to Slovakia (assuming they were actually allowed on the plane). The Ryan Air employees there are smart, clever, bilingual, helpful, and polite and they should in my opinion experience an example of how they should do their jobs. The Slovak staff could explain it to them, but they wouldn’t be able to understand it for them, so it may be a waste of time after all.
Picture : Rob Wilson / Shutterstock.com
Posted in Marketing.