Ryanair provides email for complaints

Ryanair has finally bowed to pressure from regulators and agreed to provide an email address for customer complaints and queries.

The airline, which has always insisted aggrieved or concerned customers write to it by post or fax, or call on premium rate phone lines, was scheduled to fight an action by the National Consumer Agency at Swords District Court yesterday.

Instead, the company notified the NCA at the last minute that it was withdrawing its appeal.

It later introduced a [e-mail] email address which is now listed under the “contact us” section of its website.

The National Consumer Agency had issued Ryanair with a compliance notice under the Consumer Protection Act directing it to facilitate email contact on foot of warnings by the European Commission more than two years ago that the airline was in breach of EU e-commerce regulations.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Prime Time last night, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary conceded the airline needed to make some improvements to its website.

“If you look at the way our website works it’s very clunky.... It’s the source of most complaints I get from customers. They like our fares, they love our punctuality, they like the service we deliver but they think the website is awful and I agree with them.”

Mr O’Leary said they were going to “roll out a couple of developments in the coming weeks” to simplify engaging with the website, including the number of clicks required just to buy a ticket.

On Ryanair’s attitude to customers, Mr O’leary conceded he had made mistakes and said there was “no doubt” he needed to learn from them.

He said he had to take responsibility for any “rough edges” and change them.

“I think in the past we have responded [to complaints] with far too much of a blank — ‘look that’s the policy, go away’ — now we have to be a little bit more sensitive and responsive to the customers,” he said.

In relation to the recent incident where Ryanair charged neurosurgeon Dr Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar to change a flight on his way home to the scene of a fire which claimed the life of his wife and three children, Mr O’Leary said: “We’re going to put in place a procedure where the staff at the check-in desk can immediately call someone and verify: ‘Look, we have a set of circumstances here can we vary the policy?’”