

Ryanair blocks bookings made through screenscraping. - babul
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7549547.stm

======
aofstad
From my experience, Ryanair doesn't seem very concerned about PR. Their only
real focus is to preserve a reputation as the cheapest no frills airline in
Europe, and do everything possible to make their ticket prices appear lower
than competitors. Or maybe they're just one of the sleazier companies out
there.

While their base ticket prices may seem incredibly low, they make their
profits by tagging on extra "service fees" that appear on their website after
you've begun checking out. For example, a few years ago I remember I had to
pay extra for "baggage insurance", which ensures that your bags do eventually
make it to their intended destination and don't get lost, something that is
usually implicitly included in the original ticket price of other airlines.
The UI of the Ryanair website stresses the importance of this baggage
insurance with a popup window. Other airline comparison sites probably have
decent UIs that don't push these options to the extent of Ryanair.

They also go to great lengths to cut any cost. I've heard that employees are
not allowed to charge phones at work in order to save on energy bills. And
from my experiences, their employees really don't seem to have any sort of
customer service training. Or maybe they're just grumpy because Ryanair treats
them so poorly.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair> The Criticisms and Complaints section
is actually pretty interesting.

------
babul
The truth, more likely, is...

    
    
      1. They are jealous and want to gather the customer information for themselves.
      2. Don't want people to know if they are truly competitive on price (apart from a few headline grabbers).
      3. Don't want pricing pressure/war encouraged through open comparison.
      4. They don't actually care about the customer, just their money.

~~~
biohacker42
5\. They will lose customer because of this.

~~~
breck
Only .5% of customers though, according to them.

------
jrockway
I like how they refer to customers giving them money in exchange for services
"unlawful activity". Fine with me, I fly your competitors anyway.

Hilariously, the "related articles" sidebar contains "Ryanair warns of
potential losses". Maybe if you didn't cancel people's reservations you would
make more money.

------
danw
If they had an api comparison site wouldn't have to screen scrape

~~~
babul
Many sites do not have API and hence the need to screenscrape. It is probably
against their interests to have an API, being the type of organisation that
wants to control the type of interaction others (especially customers) have
with it rather than encourage more (even if it will benefit them in the long
term).

Also, if they did, it would reduce much of the value of the price comparison
sites by reducing the barrier to entry (allowing more competitor services to
the market) and hence they may not want it either (rarely see a comparison
site in any sector ask for APIs).

Electronic harvesting is against the rules of many big sites out there
(sadly), so is it wrong comparison sites do not abide the terms and conditions
of others to fix something that is broken and add value to people?

If they paid these sites a fee to compensate, would that be good or bad? (as
basically it boils down to money, and one party not happy another makes money
"off its back", so to speak)

------
jsmcgd
I was trying to get on the ryanair site a few days ago but the site was too
busy. Perhaps this was the reason.

That being said this is an over-reaction.

