25 February 2009

Ryanair accuses Thomas Cook of scamming customers

Ryanair has accused Thomas Cook and its affiliates of overcharging customers.

The airline claims TC overcharged two consumers by 22% (£82), billing them a total of £457.82 for a £376 return fare.

According to Ryanair, TC charged the customers with an additional £160 in "totally fictitious" fuel surcharges, and refused to explain or justify them when queried.

Ryanair has written to Office of Fair Trading, the Air Transport Users Council, the UK Department of Transport and the European Commission to highlight "the continuing abuses and mis-selling being engaged in by high street and online travel agents and unauthorised screenscrapers".

Chief executive Michael O’Leary said: "This is a perfect example of the type of mis-selling scams being perpetrated by travel agents and screenscrapers (through unauthorised access to Ryanair’s website) on unsuspecting consumers across the UK.

"Ordinary passengers are being booked on Ryanair flights, but are being massively overcharged anything up to five times the underlying airfare, and in this case of blatant mis-selling, consumers were also charged a totally non-existent £80 'airline fuel surcharge' each, when no such fuel surcharges exist.

"This is a clear case of Thomas Cook engaging in deception, mis-selling and fraud upon these consumers. Everybody knows that Ryanair guarantees not just the lowest air fares, but also no fuel surcharges today, tomorrow or ever.

"Ryanair wants to know how many trusting consumers were ripped off by Thomas Cook this year for fuel surcharges when booking Ryanair flights - when everyone, including Thomas Cook, knows Ryanair don’t levy fuel surcharges."

Thomas Cook issued a statement admitting that the customer had been incorrectly charged a fuel supplement due to a system error.

It said it has relationships with all major charter and schedule airlines and at different times fuel surcharges and airline costs can vary due to, for example, fluctuating fuel prices.

Customers are made aware of fuel supplements and this would have been the case with regards to this booking.

"This is a regrettable situation, and we apologise to the customer concerned," said a spokesperson.

"We believe that this is an isolated case due to a system error, but we will be fully investigating this matter. Thomas Cook will be contacting the customer to offer a full refund."

Thomas Cook confirmed that the booking was made in April 2008 for travel in September 2008.
It went on to stress that since autumn last year the company no longer sells Ryanair flights.

By Bev Fearis