Is there possibly a glitch in the Ryanair booking system that can see names of would-be passengers changed to entirely different names as they move through the process?
Readers say there is. Ryanair says absolutely no way and dismisses the very idea as a “spurious” invention of either Pricewatch or our readers – we’re not entirely sure which.
And while video evidence that was shared with Pricewatch by one reader definitely suggests something odd happened during the booking process and did prompt the airline to soften its stance a little, it held firm on a second almost identical story.
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Late in June a reader called John mailed us. He was less than pleased to be charged a €115 name-change fee by Ryanair “despite the issue appearing to have been caused by the booking process itself rather than by any error on my part”.
In his mail John says he “attempted to resolve it through Ryanair’s online customer service chat [but] despite explaining the circumstances, Ryanair declined to acknowledge that there may have been a fault within its system and advised that any correction to the booking would require payment of the standard €115 name-change fee.”
So what are we talking about here?
Well, John insists that while he was in the process of booking a flight to Faro on the Ryanair App, he entered the name of his daughter Mary (we’ve changed her name) as the passenger and “selected the option to save her details to my Ryanair account”. He then “proceeded to complete and pay for the booking”.
But when he got the booking confirmation email from the airline, he noticed that the passenger name had been changed to Eileen, his wife’s name (we have not changed her name for reasons that will become clear).
“I contacted Ryanair’s online chat support. The agent was also unable to explain the issue and suggested that I repeat the booking process (without completing payment) to see whether the problem could be reproduced. When I repeated the process, the same issue occurred. Although Mary was clearly entered as the passenger, the system automatically defaulted to Eileen.”
He says this is not seen on the screen during the booking process and the system “defaults to Eileen only when you proceed beyond the passenger screen”.
We sent details of this story to Ryanair and it completely rejected John’s story.
“The Ryanair system does not ‘input names’,” a spokeswoman said.
She added that “each passenger must select the names from their ‘MyRyanair account’ when making a booking. When a passenger selects a name from their account, they must then confirm the name and these details prior to making payment. The system does not “change” or “make errors” in relation to passenger names. These can only be selected by the person making the booking and payment. In this case [John] booked the wrong name and as this is not a ‘minor’ name change (we allow free of charge changes for up to 3 characters in a name), it is a change of passenger. He was properly quoted the name change fee if he wishes to change this booking from passenger Eileen to passenger Mary. This factual position has already been communicated to [him].”
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Now, that might well have been that. In fact it would have been that but for a strange coincidence.
By chance, just days later and before we had shared John’s story with anyone but the Ryanair press office, we heard from another reader by the name of Seamus Tubridy and he had a story that was uncannily similar to John’s.
“I have an interesting issue with a Ryanair booking over the weekend and needless to say it a total and utter waste of time trying to contact them to get it resolved,” his mail begins.
“Basically I booked a flight to Edinburgh from Shannon for next Saturday. I went through the booking process like I have done several times before. I selected my name that is stored on my app and went through to payment.”
He got his confirmation and – you’ll never guess what?
The name on the booking changed to Eileen.
That, weirdly, is also the name that was on John’s booking for his daughter Mary.
Utterly bamboozled, we went back to Seamus to see if he had any family members called Eileen and indeed he does. Eileen is his mother’s name and while he says that it is possible he might have booked a flight for her years ago, he insists she is not on his system.
So, two people had virtually identical experiences using the Ryanair booking system within a very short space of time and Ryanair was insisting that the first reader must have forgotten his daughter’s name and typed in his wife’s instead, while the second was being told he must have forgotten is own name and typed in his mother’s name instead.
After hearing from Seamus we were getting ready – with a heavy heart – to go back to the Ryanair press office, fully expecting more denials when we realised Semaus had attached a video to his mail.
And what did that video show?
Well, Seamus says that he “went back and did a mock run, recording the process on my wife’s phone [and] the same thing happened again”.
He writes that he “managed to get a Ryanair agent on webtext yesterday and he just kept telling me it is €115 to change the name. I asked him for an email to send the video but he couldn’t provide one.
“I even went to Shannon airport yesterday evening and showed it to the Ryanair staff, I showed them the video but they couldn’t help. They said to show up on Saturday for the flight and show it to the staff then,” he writes.
“It really isn’t good enough and really too risky to try and take a chance for next Saturday. Is there any way you could help and more importantly highlight the problem because this could be a glitch on the app that could affect a lot of people.”
Well, what can we say? We can only try. We sent Seamus’s story to Ryanair and attached the video which – to our eyes – appeared to show him entering the name Seamus and moving through the process only for the name Eileen to appear (as if by magic) as the process concludes.
Before we tell you what the airline had to say about that we will revisit what they told us when we shared John’s experience with the press office. “When a passenger selects a name from their account, they must then confirm the name and these details prior to making payment. The system does not “change” or “make errors” in relation to passenger names. These can only be selected by the person making the booking and payment.”
This is Ryanair’s statement about Seamus’s experience in full.
“Thanks for your email which enclosed a video of a customer booking App sequence which appears to show names on the Ryanair account being changed during the booking flow. We have shared this video with the Mobile App Team within Ryanair Labs. They have been unable to replicate the sequence indicated in the video within the mobile App. The advice of our Labs Team is that there are frequent releases and updates to both Android and IOS and Mr Tubridy should ensure he has downloaded the most up to date version of the Ryanair App and his phone has the most up to date version of IOS. Our Labs Team are confident that this will resolve the issue.
“If Mr Tubridy confirmed and paid for the booking in the name of ‘Eileen’ rather than ‘Seamus’ as demonstrated on the video, then he is required to pay the name change fee. However, we will make this change for him in this case at no cost as we cannot replicate his video sequence.”
We then got back on to them to see if, in light of what we consider to be new video evidence that shows how names can be changed not by the passenger but by the system, the airline would reconsider its statement sent in relation to John.
“No, we wouldn’t,” was the decidedly terse response.
