I will never fly with this miserable airline again! (Ryanair)

Member Name: JStripey

Product:	Ryanair
Date:	05/09/08 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: supposedly cheap

Disadvantages: LOTS of hidden costs and general lack of customer care.

I used to fly ryanair as a student and always remember it being genuinely cheap and not so unpleasant. However almost everyone I speak to now agrees that the philosophy and customer care of the airline has fallen by the wayside in recent years.
Perhaps for students who are prepared to bring no baggage and endure a spartan experience it is not so bad, however for anyone else there is a minefield of hidden costs to trap you. So much for "flights from 1 euro". We recently decided to fly ryanair to visit family with our baby son (his first flight) as BA still had baggage problems. However once you include the added cost of hold luggage (which is included in the price by standard airlines) it was not really that much cheaper. By the end of the payment process you have been asked to pay the tax, pay for each item of hold luggage, priority boarding (which saves you from having to join the scramble for a seat) and even a hefty booking fee for paying by credit card even though it is the only option!
Perhaps it is not unusual that our baby was treated more like a piece of awkward hold baggage and not allowed any luggage allowance of his own even though we had to pay for him (dont forget how much paraphenalia a travelling baby needs) but it did mean that we felt that the 15kg allowance that both me and my husband paid for was not enough. However as with most airlines the website allowed us to buy extra bags so we got an extra one to allow for our sons belongings and to bring anything home that we may buy. However at the airport we discovered (and doubtless it was written in the small print somewhere) that no matter how many bags a person buys it only allows you to spread your 15kg allowance! This seems totally absurd to me. Anyway, we were well over with 38kg and had to pay a total of 102 euro excess baggage fee (15 euro per kg!!!!). On the way home we bought new in-cabin suitcases at the maximum size and put all our heavy things in there rather than the things our baby needed for the flight, we still ended up being slightly over the limit despite our efforts though.
Leaving Roma we were miraculously given a chance to board first after the paid for priority que (probably because somebody was being nice) however official ryanair policy does not give those with babies priority and at stansted as I had our son asleep on my lap we were almost last in the que and almost could not sit together until somebody thought better of sitting next to a mother and small baby.
Everybody in the que at the gate seemed to be grumbling about ryanair and saying they would not fly with them again unless they could help it. I will certainly be encouraging anyone who comes to visit us to fly with a decent airline as it will probably end up cheaper anyway.

Summary: you will end up paying much more than you thought