Like many of us, budget travellers, I find it a great advantage to have access to inexpensive flying options low-fare airlines like Ryanair and Wizzair have on offer. Booking tickets with such companies, however, comes with the downside that it requires a high level of alertness for everything to work out smoothly and not to be subsequently robbed of the money you saved (if not more) by any of the many insidious means such companies employ to make their profits. The masterminds behind them indefatigably look for new creative scams to rip off their customers.
Having flown with such airlines innumerous times in the past, I felt confident that I know all that is to be known when I recently booked a combined itinerary with Ryanair and Wizzair. But no! Those folks are never getting tired of inventing new swindles. In this article I will explain how I nearly got conned to pay the cost of a second ticket on a late check-in fine, by what I deem to be the most outrageous scam these companies have ever come up with.
When you fly with Ryanair or Wizzair you are expected to check in for your flight online, or else you will need to pay a costly airport check-in fee… everyone knows that, right?
Every low-fare airlines frequent flyer should also know that those companies OPEN the online check-in 48 hours prior to the flight, right?
That I also knew very well when, on the day preceding my flight, together with packing my stuff and all, I sat at my computer to do my check-in…
I open the mail the ticket agency I booked my flight with had sent me and click on the check-in link… Instead of the check-in form, I get a message like:
We are sorry.
You flight is not anymore available for online check-in. You can still check in at the airport. A fee may apply. Sincerely yours…
And I’m like WHAT THE FUCK!!!
I go back to the email… Above the check-in button, in tiny, grey, thin letters stands:
We’d like to check you in online as a free service. All we need is your passport or ID number and expiry date. Click below to provide us with these details as soon as possible — at least 48 hours before departure. You can also check in at the airport. However, the airlines may charge €85 for this trip.
This means that whereas the airlines OPEN the check-in 48 hours before departure, the travel agency CLOSES it at the same time. What’s the sense in it?
One would think “Why not check in directly with the airlines then?”
And that’s what I did think, too. But, of course, I couldn’t.
So here’s the scam: The travel agency books the tickets on your behalf, but registering their own e-mail address and withholding from you the actual booking number issued from the airlines. This way you are not able to check in directly with the airlines. So they ask you to provide them with your passport credentials in order for them to do so in your place and send you the boarding pass.
The dodgy thing is that, whereas they can only check in for you after the airlines allow it (ie 48 hrs prior to departure), they unreasonably require you to provide them with your credentials up to this exact time at the latest, even though there is nothing they can do with them before the airlines open the check-in. You knowing by habit that you have to check in within the last two days before your flight, chances are great that you’ll not pay any attention to the fine-phrased, tiny-lettered warning and not notice the gimmick. This is clearly an odious and shameless scam designed to force you pay the late check-in fine.
Here one could refute this accusation by asking “and what does the agency care for the airline’s profits?”, since they are the ones cashing the fine anyway. And this is a reasonable thing to point out, unless – and I say UNLESS – they share the money, or, what’s even more probable, they are in fact one and the same entity.
As for me, I’m pretty sure that this is the case. Assuming the role of the airlines, I may think thus: Why not set up a secret subsidiary travel agency, on which I can offer slightly cheaper fares for my flights to lure passengers in, and then make a special rule not allowing them to check in within 48 hrs before departure so to cash in on the airport check-in fines?
In my case, after all I managed to have my boarding passes mailed to me after exerting a lot of public pressure. This is also the reason I decided to not disclose the name of the travel agency in question. Despite the fact that their helping me out was clearly only a result of disparage intimidation, I did eventually receive my boarding passes, and thought that I should rather be fair to them.
Anyhow, they (as well as other similar companies, I assume) are still out there doing their dirty work and all of us should watch out for them.
