Well another day, another advertising complaint has been upheld against Ryanair by the UK Advertising Standards Authority.
This time, Ryanair has again been reprimanded for misleading customers with low fare offers, in particular two newspaper adverts for the airline offered £10 one-way fares to Gothenburg and Dusseldorf. The small print said that the offer was subject to availability and excluded fees and charge, with the challenge that the availability of the fares and queried if they included taxes, charges and check-in fees or were misleading because the advert did not state the relevant travel dates.
Ryanair informed the Advertising Standards Authority that more than 10,000 seats were available to Gothenburg and more than 22,000 seats were on offer to Dusseldorf, with no requirements to specify dates. However, in the report, it indicated that readers were likely to believe the £10 deal was a fixed price, rather than for specific dates, leading to the following quote:
“Because we considered that consumers would understand ‘£10 one way’ to mean that all flights to Gothenburg and Dusseldorf-Weeze were available at £10, and because we had not seen evidence to support that claim, we concluded that the ads were likely to mislead.”
And who created this complaint? EasyJet.
Ryanair has not commented about this case, but when doing a rear guard action like this, it spits out a moan about EasyJet telling on it, and then a moan about EasyJet not publishing punctuality statistics.
This turns into a typical playground “he said – she said” palaver. Like two children moaning when a teacher stops a playground fight.
It’s a simple reminder however to the consumer – never just read the headline fare. Cost your fare carefully. You could find that your £10 trip may cost a hell of a lot more….
