Ryanair, today launched a High Court case against Budget Travel, for breach of Ryanair.com’s Terms of Use and intellectual property rights. Ryanair asked the Court to prohibit Budget Travel from unauthorised screenscraping and reselling of Ryanair seats at inflated prices to consumers. Budget Travel has rejected Ryanair’s request to stop this unauthorised reselling of Ryanair flights, which continues to inconvenience and overcharge unsuspecting consumers by:
• Mis-selling Ryanair flights with mark-ups of €18 or more, as part of Budget’s packages;
• Failing to provide consumer’s with proper breakdown of the fight price;
• Failing to provide Ryanair with passenger contact details which prevents Ryanair from communicating directly with passengers in the event of schedule changes or flight disruptions (similar actions by other travel agents resulted in thousands of passengers being left without any information during the 2010 volcanic ash airspace closures, as travel agents and screenscrapers failed to forward Ryanair information to passengers);
• Failing to provide Ryanair with passenger credit card details, which prevents passengers from receiving refunds directly from Ryanair;
• Charging €75 and more for returning refunds issued by Ryanair to passengers;
• Failing to notify passengers of Ryanair’s Terms and Conditions of Travel at the time of booking;
• Failing to offer Ryanair’s low cost ancillary services including special assistance reservation, seat reservation, priority boarding, text message service, etc.
Ryanair allows and encourages “price comparison only” websites to access its timetable and pricing information, for an annual charitable donation of €100. This allows them to compare Ryanair’s guaranteed lowest fares with those of high fare airlines like Aer Lingus. Ryanair’s licence agreement is open to all genuine “price comparison only” websites and already many (such as Skyscanner.net) have signed up whereas Budget Travel has refused.
Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:
“Budget Travel has no permission or agreement with Ryanair and we have been forced to take legal action to insist that they immediately desist from unlawfully scraping and selling Ryanair’s low fare flights often at inflated prices to unsuspecting consumers.
Ryanair allows third party websites to display our lowest fares, for price comparison purposes only, if they sign a licence agreement and make an annual charitable donation of €100. Budget Travel has no such licence and is scrapping and reselling Ryanair seats in contravention of our policies, with mark-up charges and without providing passengers with our terms and conditions or Ryanair with passenger contact details.”
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