Ryanair misses flaw in journo 'repossession' stunt

This from the Ryanair website today:

Ryanair ...today confirmed it is seeking possession of The Telegraph journalist Bryony Gordon’s "flat and contents" after she wagered them, against anyone who could show Ryanair passengers enjoyed their flights. In her article Bryony said, "you never hear anybody casually mention that they have just flown with Ryanair, and that they really enjoyed it. I am willing to bet my flat and its contents that nobody has ever said the words "Ryanair", "marvellous" and "service" in the same sentence." Ryanair receives thousands of letters each year from satisfied customers and publishes a small selection of these satisfaction letters on its website. Ryanair has provided Bryony with the details of these web-pages and is now seeking the keys to her flat.

Now, I've just checked the examples it provides of customer feedback and I can't actually find a single sentence which includes the words "Ryanair", "marvellous" and "service", which rather supports Bryony's point - on which she was really quite specific.

My money is on Bryony still being safely tucked up in her own bed for the foreseeable future, though Ryanair will doubtless try to milk this flawed publicity stunt a while longer.

And if not, well TheMediaBlog.co.uk will be the first to stump up £50 for the 'Find Bryony A New Home' appeal.

Comments

[The Restless Quill]

There's also the small matter of syntax. I could be wrong, but she was only "willing" to bet. Willingness doesn't count as actually betting these days, does it? My money, too, is on Bryony keeping her flat and things :)

[Bob]

Ryanair really is the epitome of dismal.

The service, the scratchcards, the ability to make something so pricelessly cheap and poxy still so relatively overpriced (even the 1p seats), the horrible conditions you are forced to endure: it is all the absolute distillation of sheer awfulness.

The last time - in every sense - that I flew with Ryanair, I had made the mistake of letting somebody else book my flight for a stag do. Upon arriving at the airport (a little village outside Norwich, called Stansted) I then couldn't bring myself to talk to that person for an hour after I heard who they'd booked with.

Yet I can honestly say, hand-on-heart, the service was actually indescribably worse than I had imagined prior to boarding.

I would rather try and get anywhere I need to go clinging onto the dorsal fin of a hungry Great White shark, or being dragged behind a dustbin lorry on a hot summer's day than step on one of their flights into the unknown, yet always surprising, inadequacies of humanity and customer service.

It is as though the whole thing has actually been designed in the nightmarish labs of some inhumane regime to shake your faith and belief in humanity and, more fundamentally, civilisation.

From the very first moment the lurid, acidic yellow of their fixtures and fittings (the same colour, I can only imagine, as the last squeak of piss from a man who died of dehydration and a Berrocca overdose ...some weeks ago) hits you, the sensory violation is too much to take. Who could ever sleep *again* after seeing such a colour, let alone within minutes on the very same flight!

So, denied the easy release of sleep, you then are forced to sit, hopelessly stuck in a balancing act of universal impossibility and discomfort, stripped of basic necessities such as leg room or a seat back pocket to hold objects of unimagined controversy among the travelling fraternity - such as a book.

You could put your possessions in a bag of course and put the bag in the spacious overhead luggage rack, but if you're clinging to such a foolish notion you're clearly a first- and last-timer on Ryanair.

So, packed in but balancing some not-unreasonable possessions uncomfortably upon your lap for the seemingly interminable duration of your flight, you are then kept busy by the irresolvable questions your flight conjures in your fevered mind:

- Who buys a ringtone from a budget airline?

- What could Ryanair possibly have that I would ever want; let alone want enough to buy one of their lottery tickets?

- What the hell did the man in front just buy... it kind of looks like a sandwich?

- How depressed must first-time visitors to the UK be upon receiving the answer to the question 'How far is it from London Stansted to London?'

- Why did I ever think I'd be able to take luggage on an flight?

- If even one of my fellow passengers think this is acceptable, then what half-breed of degenerate are we inflicting upon foreign cities with these flights... and should we declare this grotesque export to the UN or Nato?

- Why take us through the safety procedure...? I actually WANT to die right now, as long as it happens early in the flight

- Wasn't that passenger limping on a different foot on his way to the toilet?

- Did I miss the bit in the terms and conditions about wearing a tracksuit?

- Is it possible to walk home from Barcelona Girona airport?

- If I wrote a letter of complaint about all this to Ryanair, would customer service burn it, then piss on it, or piss on it and then try lucklessly to burn it?

The only possible use I personally can see for Ryanair is in the occasional transport of convicted war criminals. Give them a choice: You can either spend your remaining days locked up in a military prison outside The Hague; or we'll simply fly you there and back in a day on Ryanair and call it quits.

Frankly I'd not only ask for the life sentence in the military prison, but I'd even say they could rough me up a bit, by way of a tip for letting me duck the flight option.

I should stress, that's just my opinion though and my experience of their service. I'm sure Ryanair is right and it has many happy customers. And I wish them all the very best of luck.

[shaun sayers]

Ryanair misses the small print

If anyone can find a more emphatic irony than that, I will give them my flat and etc etc

[ExPat]

I enjoy every Ryan Air flight, found the company marvellous and the service minimum. Been on it many times to France.

[Rachael]

I’ve got to say this post made me laugh out loud. However, I’ve flown with ryanair a few times and don’t really find them that bad. It cost me £2 for return to Italy last year…the flight arrived in one piece (although I do love the fanfare when you land - reassuring), it was comfy enough for 2 hours, I only wanted hand luggage and I just ignored the selling - which ALL airlines indulge in now a days.
You get what you pay for and if it means I get to escape our lovely little Island and little more often I don’t mind hopping on a RyanAir flight to do it.

[Mosh]

Frankly, I almost choked on my Frosties when I read LyingAir's claim to have "industry leading customer service" on the page linked. I also note that it mentions twice that it carries 73m (or more) passengers... then goes on in a later paragraph to state that it "will grow" to 73m. So which is it? There yet, or not? Typically vague and inaccurate.

It is interesting to note, though, that we now have two methods of contacting LyingAir to voice our complaints: via a stupidly expensive premium rate number or by publishing it in our national newspaper columns.

[LondonTiger]

Ryanair is playing this al wrong, the need to hire a "third party" trained in PR to act like a satisfied customer to take on the wager.

Then at least people will see this more as the little man beating a irresponsible journalist, and people could empathise with the "customer", at the moment Ryanair is on a lose-lose strategy, by taking up the wager they a drawing attention to this article that may have gone unnoticed otherwise, secondly they're a huge multinational corporation taking on a journalist, and the publicc an only sympathise with the journa at this moment.