Sorry to use my otherwise more "cultural" blog for this kind of anti-advertisement. But I just need to put this somewhere...
OK, I must admit Ryanair has served me well so far. They serve Karlsruhe-Baden airport, which is really close to me and my parents, Marseilles and Stansted, all very useful. It's usually not too difficult to get decent prices for flights, even if this encourages people to be very un-ecological. So me and many people put up with a lot of stupid Ryanair regulations, which usually include paying for every single step you want to take extra (I'm surprised the toilets don't have a slot for coins, but that's probably international flight regulations). So, OK, I'm quite glad they're around - but if you want my advice: Don't buy Ryanair gift vouchers.
I like buying and booking online. You can do it anytime and it's usually fast and easy. However, I nearly bought a ticket without using the gift voucher I got for Christmas - because there's no place to enter gift voucher details.
This puzzled me, so I had a look on the voucher itself: To use it, you have to ring the Ryanair hotline - not quite an 0800 number. However, I tried - busy. Same the next couple of times. I decided to get the Germany and England hotline numbers too and ring them with my international phone card any time I see a phone box.
About one week later, I finally got through the first time. At the time, I was on a road trip with some friends so the only possibility was to use my mobile phone which uses prepaid credit. I had everything prepared, credit card, voucher code, flight details. The phone call took quite a while, and I wasn't exactly getting the impression the operator was trying to go full speed. When I finally got to where she was dictating me my confirmation code, my phone cut me off - no more credit. I had about 5€ left on my phone before that call. I immediately tried again with a friends phone, but - busy. I managed to check my emails that night and as I didn't have a confirmation e-mail, I assumed my reservation had been cancelled (which it had).
The next couple of days, I tried 3-4 times a day to ring them again, even though it was my holiday trip week. After that, my call frequency went down quite a lot, partly because my life doesn't really revolve around ringing expensive Ryanair hotlines. I once forgot to ring 2 days in row, imagine that.
About 2 weeks after my first call, I got through for the second time. I restarted the booking procedure, but found out my gift voucher had been blocked from the first time round. I explained why and the operator said she'd try and fix it and that I should call back in about 15 minutes, which was when my next class was about to start.
By this time the price for the flight had already increased by 8€, so I decided to come late for class. I called up again, and, surprisingly, got through pretty soon. I had 5€ left on my phone and tried to speed up the booking process by lying when possible. The dreaded warning sound that my credit was running out came up when the process was already quite far and my phone hung up on me exactly after the last letter of my confirmation code. The operator showed some common sense by not cancelling the flight this time - the confirmation code is not really necessary IMHO anyway as you get an email with your flight details. But hey, the flight was mine.
Summary:
Value of gift voucher: 25€
Amount of money I spent on calls: 15€
Increase in price during the procedure: 8€
Amount of money I actually gained: 2€
Time spent on my behalf: 1-2h on ringing tries during 4 weeks (imagine the time it costs to pay an engineer for 2hrs compared to 2€)
Annoyance this caused: priceless
