The Young family’s annual summer holiday could not have got off to a poorer start, thanks to Ryanair. As veteran customers of the budget airline will know, you have to jump through an endless number of hoops beforehand to avoid having to pay punitive fees at the airport. In fact, the cost of failing to navigate the advance check-in website correctly is so high, ‘fees’ is the wrong word. Fines, more like. Fees are what you have to pony up in order to avoid paying the fines, since checking in is far from free.
Anyway, Caroline got one thing wrong in spite of peering at Ryanair’s website for at least two hours the night before, debit card in hand. So we got hit with a hefty fine at Stansted airport for not having already checked in our second piece of baggage. The check-in clerk agreed that the system was so absurdly overcomplicated that it had clearly been designed to trip people up — and then merrily transferred the remainder of our life savings to her employer.
But that was the least of it. Caroline had also rented a car via Ryanair’s car-hire ‘concierge’ service — a seven-seater at a cost of almost £700. I thought that was a tad excessive, but Caroline had been assured it was cheaper than doing it at our destination, as well as more convenient. Not unreasonably, therefore, we arrived at the Budget desk at Milan airport expecting to be handed the keys to our Ford Galaxy without too much fuss.
Turned out, we couldn’t drive away until we’d put down a €5,000 deposit. Weirdly, Ryanair hadn’t mentioned that. Caroline forked over her debit card, but that was no good. Had to be a credit card.
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