KIWI.COM BECOMES THE NO.1 PIRATE IN NOV AS IT OVERCHARGES CUSTOMERS BY 344% FOR €5.50 ALLOCATED SEATS

Ryanair, Europe’s no.1 airline, today (29 Nov) released its November survey of online travel agent (OTA) pirate scams and overcharges, which shows that OTA’s such as Kiwi.com, Lastminute.com, Opodo.com and eDreams.com continue to scam unsuspecting consumers with unjustified fees and charges for their non-existent services, while at the same time grossly overcharging unsuspecting consumers for ancillary services, which are competitively priced on the Ryanair.com website. Ryanair continues to campaign for consumers to be protected from these overcharging and mis-selling OTA pirates.

Ryanair continues to survey and highlight the consumer scams being perpetrated by these OTA pirates, who masquerade as price comparison websites, when in fact they are scamming customers with invented fees for “processing” or “cancellations” or they are overcharging for Ryanair’s ancillary services of up to 344%!! The most egregious examples of an invented fee in the November survey (copy attached) were Opodo.com charging customers €60 for a flight “cancellation fee” when justified cancellations on Ryanair attract zero fee, Lastminute.com duping its customers for a €23 allocated seat which cost just €5.50 on Ryanair.com, eDreams.com levying a flight change fee of up to €60 on top of the Ryanair change fee, but the most egregious overcharge of all is Kiwi.com charging €24.40 for an allocated seat which cost just €5.50 on the Ryanir.com website, an overcharge of 344%!!!

Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, said:

“Our Nov survey continues to expose the scams and overcharging of these OTA pirates. Not alone are they unlawfully scraping Ryanair’s website in an act of digital piracy, but these pirates then use this unlawfully gained info to scam unsuspecting consumers with charges for services that are provided by Ryanair free of cost, or they are massively over charging customers for Ryanair’s ancillary services, frequently charging 3 or 4 times the Ryanair price to these unsuspecting consumers. Ryanair continues to campaign against these OTA pirates and continues to call upon Govts and consumer agencies to take action to prevent this internet piracy and blatant anti-consumer mis-selling.

We find it extraordinary that the UK Govt, its consumer agencies (the CMA & CAA) or the useless consumer magazines such as Which?, continue to ignore this rampant internet piracy and anti-consumer mis-selling. Ryanair continues to expose these duplicitous and unlawful practices and will continue to call for these OTA pirates to be outlawed and their scams ended. It gives us no pleasure to rank Kiwi.com as Europe’s biggest OTA pirate in our Nov survey, charging unsuspecting consumers €24.40 for an allocated seat which cost just €5.50 on Ryanair.com. This is a 344% overcharge on unsuspecting customers and shows the extent to which these OTA pirates not only engage in digital piracy, but then use the results to scam and overcharge unsuspecting consumers.”