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#ryanair#don#dark#patterns#more#price#pay#flight#insurance#still
Discussion (101 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
From where I stand, it’s not fair to charge the hell out of people who fall for these tricks while giving steep discounts to the ones who don’t. Maybe there’s a “fool me once” aspect to Ryanair’s shenanigans, so at least their impact might be limited somehow.
I think they may actually have gotten in trouble for that one; they've stopped doing it (as noted in the article it was from eight years ago).
Their current pattern is more about playing into the fear of what happens without insurance, without selecting your seat, when you don't pay for early check in and forget to do it online on the day before the flight, or what happens if you show up with more or larger luggage than what you booked. Fears they themselves create with high fees for showing up with too much luggage or for checking in at the airport
There is still a bit of praying on people who are in a hurry or are impatient, don't read the screens and just click the most prominent button. The most obvious is the seat selection. But it's no longer the most prominent way they get you
I remember them being crafty, but I have to admit I was surprised by the level of tactics ... that is to say, what they are still allowed to get away with given European / UK consumer law.
Not to mention that a 20kg bag and hand luggage cost me significantly more than the fare itself. They even had upfront "package deals" that would have actually worked out more expensive - bundles of nonsense benefits.
In Australia most of this kind of borderline deceptive selling has been stepped on, to the point that you hardly see it any more.
I don't really have a problem with offering discounts to members of X program, or if insurance is pre-selected.
But the advertised price should be inclusive of everything (taxes, fees, charges, etc) and the price available to the general product before membership-exclusive pricing.
So if you advertise a product for $100 then any normal person can pay $100 and get it for that.
Want to sell it from cheaper to members of your reward program? Go ahead. But it can't be the most prominent price advertised for it.
You want to sell insurance pre-selected? No problem but again the default advertised price needs to include it. Even if they can opt out for a cheaper price.
There are sure to be edge cases. But the point being is that the price you advertise most prominently needs to be the all-inclusive price any member of the public can get without having to fight to select the correct option.
We don't accept misleading and deceptive practices in other areas, why do we let airlines, hotels and hire car places do it?
I just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.
Ryanair has severely improved my life, especially for my fellow sun-deprived Northern Europeans.
[1] https://investor.ryanair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ryan...
???
Maybe round-trip at a peak time. But if you're talking about one-way flights, you can fly across the entire country (NYC to SFO) for <$150 without hunting for a deal. DC to Miami is $50 (£37) each way, all of next month.
Compared to the high likelihood of delays or cancelled flights with Ryanair, I think it's worth it for peace of mind.
RyanAir is ultra-budget. You need to be ready for the whole thing, but often you can get something much cheaper. As an example, looking for London to Belfast next month, RyanAir is a fifth the price.
I'm unsure about the following. Do you know if flights between London and Belfast be covered under EU airline rules regarding missed and delayed flights?
Those incidentals would not increase your fare 5-8 times. So that some passengers fall into the dark patterns cannot possibly make up for the price difference nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings.
>nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings Yeah I agree it's not perfect — but as someone who used to live in the US it's a base for me
The main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they have the fastest turn around time in the industry. This means the utilisation rate is far higher. Part of the reason they're able to turn around so quickly is that they take less hold luggage (so unloading/loading is not holding them up), un-allocated seating means they get to overbook/bin pack better, worth thinking through the second order effects.
I find that difficult to believe. Ten minutes is a long time.
Ten minutes is a long time. That's the purpose of dark patterns.
[0] https://www.google.com/travel/flights/booking?tfs=CBwQAhpFEg...
40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's only $3 million/yr. If you've been at OpenAI for 10 years, you'll net more than that this year after they IPO.
Clicking "Try now" in fact just signs you up for Uber One. So I suppose you are, technically, trying it. For money.
Dirty. I'm Australian and I'm sure that wouldn't be legal.
You go through what seems the entire check-in process, you get what seems like a summary at the end, with a link to a UK government site where you need to go next to get a travel authorization, I spend an hour doing that, finally finish that, I show up to the airport the next morning to be told I'm not checked in, having to pay a hefty fee to do a late check-in for each of my five passengers. The staff at the airport isn't really Ryanair's, so recourse there. (As if having real Ryanair staff would have made a difference.)
Same trip, coming back, we wait in the central terminal building until our gate is published. We go over to the gate, one of our passengers being in a wheelchair, needing an elevator, which are out of service. Friendly airport staff help us with the long detour to get to our gate. By now the doors are closed, we missed our flight. Again, having to pay a hefty fee to rebook for each of my five passengers. This is Ryanair staff, still no recourse. (But plenty of contempt.)
I admit defeat, but my wife is still motivated to talk to customer support. This is months ago, I don't think that went anywhere either. They're mostly impenetrable.
I don't mind their baggage policies, it's a known thing that there's upsales every step of the way, that's baked in by now (pretty much across the industry). But there's still plenty deep-dark patterns left.
Thank goodness that we can vote with our feet, right, and just don't buy from them anymore. But guess what, we booked another flight for next month :)
This include never taking accountability when shit hits the fan.
Unless a customer mentions, specific wording (I forget what exactly now) - wording that matches the underlying regulation that entitles the customer to some kind of recourse by law, the agents are instructed to deny and weasel out of it. As in, even though they are legally obliged to give you that specific recourse, unless you demonstrate to them that you have proper knowledge of the law, they will simply act like you have no rights.
It was very slimy, and I literally couldn't stomach it. I don't know how they train their customer service agents now, but I would highly recommend doing a few google searches and some prompting to see exactly, literally, what words one must utter to a customer service agent.
Of course, that alone is not enough, the stars also have to align so that the agent you're talking to commands enough of the English language to have comprehended their training, and what you're saying; and not be bogged down with the 7 simultaneous chat tickets they must handle concurrently, in addition to the calls.
Yes, there are instances where travel insurance makes sense or may be practically a requirement. Health and/or evacuation insurance for foreign travel and/or cruising may be practically a necessity. You don’t want to be paying tens of thousands of dollars when you need a helicopter to take you off your cruise ship to a hospital.
But if your primary reason for purchasing insurance is insuring yourself against a trip that has to be skipped or modified last minute, you can probably skip it.
The way I insure against these sort of things:
- Buying hotel rooms that are not prepaid and refundable up until the day before check-in
- Paying attention to airline policies. Sure, my United airlines fare isn’t refundable, but if I cancel the flights I get all the money back in flight credits I can use within 6 months.
- Rental cars, same deal as hotels. They’re easy to book with no payment up front.
- Use a good travel credit card with its own trip insurance perks (usually not as comprehensive)
Do I pay more to book flexible like this? Yeah, but I can also keep my money gaining interest until the day of the trip. And the thing about travel insurance is that you still have to deal with the claims process if you need to use it.
That's a whole new can of worms though. Their scams can be a lot more expensive, and are usually after the fact (although they'll try them at the pickup counter too).
It's one of those things I will specifically always arrange through a third party that covers insurance as well, which is really an insurance against the rental companies scams.
They wouldn't be able to turn a profit even if they squeezed you hard enough.
If regular lines would care to offer similar connections, I would gladly pay a bit more.
In the case of Ryanair, I think not using them often means that a casual weekend away could become a much bigger dent in my family's monthly budget.
Because they're the only option for certain airports I expect to actually fly with them at some point. May that day never come though ;)
No.
I'd gladly pay more and do. However, Ryanair (piss be upon them) have a virtual monopoly on routes I need.
In Europe, it is pretty common to continue onwards to your actual destination by train!
Unfortunately, they're often the only option from Dublin->wherever with reasonable times; unless I want to go at five in the morning or something I am stuck with them.
Unfortunately there are many instances of no competition - which then leads to abuse.
It’s a polarizing idea, but frankly it’s what the world moves too and seem to work on the market. Some people are lazy or don’t have time and pay more money and some people have less time and dig through dark patterns, collect coupons or utilize ramp up subsidizing.
All those people that actually "work" through it will have less of a prime as if these patterns wouldn’t exist.
The question still remains would the world be a better place without these patterns,as it wastes time and acts against user intent.
It’s just a fascinating question to me, because a lot of things are not as simple as they seem of the first glance.
- [1] https://youtu.be/Id-zzOGnN6A (Website part at 1:42 calling out the insurance example).
The website reflects their corporate attitude, which i think is okay.
They are offering a cheap seat which may even be below their cost if you avoid all the add-ons.
The consumer who skips all these add-ons feels smart. They feel like someone else is subsidizing their flight.
Perhaps we can even call this booking process a game where the customer comes out at the end feeling like they beat the level.
If any of you have seen Ryanair’s social media marketing you’ll know exactly what I mean. They make jokes about how cheap they are, like this one:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRWGfNvDryu/
Stories from this thread mean I'd never fly them (admittedly, I'll probably never have the opportunity):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502935
And I’ve saved thousands of pounds in flights around Europe over the years so can’t really complain
So this has nothing to do with where the code is, but that getting access to it at all requires the malware.
I grew accustomed to these choices, so would navigate through them on autopilot. Once I was quick enough to get "We noticed suspicious activity indicating that you're a bot"; had to retry everything from beginning and hesitate when clicking :)
It’s definitely why some stuff is regulated (ie: loan interest)
Personally I wouldn’t do business with someone who is constantly trying to scam me.
I dread to think how much of their revenue is generated from people buying stuff they don't want or need.
I will always pay more to not use Ryanair, given the choice. Unfortunately I don't always have a choice.
I don't think this is a mistake, but something malicous clearly thought through.
https://unhook.app/
If anything, RyanAir's strategy is to overexplain things, in hopes that people are unwilling to read what's on the screen and just click the first thing that advances the process
Wonder if that could be a YouTube Channel
Ahahahahahah.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey
(Things aren't as bad nowadays, but largely because the EU forced consumer protection and anti-corruption law upon us, certainly not because of any innate tendency to fairness.)