So Clarke had to call a premium rate number which costs €1.75 per minute. This number was answered immediately. “Although I had established the relevant flight numbers for my three short holiday flights, the operator persisted in dragging out the call for approximately 30 minutes at a cost to me of €50 plus.” He explains that because the expiry date on the vouchers was the end of this month he was in a “catch- 22 position in that to terminate the call would result in even more expense on a necessary repeat call”.

Part of the delay was due to the operator requesting a reference number from the gift voucher which unhelpfully was not the printed reference number on the actual voucher. To further complicate matters, “Ryanair chose to convert my two €200 vouchers into eight €50 vouchers, with a consequential phone-time delay in relaying eight alpha/numeric numbers to an already bewildered customer. I presume that this attitude is generated by company policy.” He still has some vouchers left and is dismayed that there appears to be no alternative to using the premium number again. “Ryanair will not accept complaints via e-mail yet will reply in this way, if they choose.”

Her impatience is easy to understand. Every day, she and the agency she runs confront misleading pricing, dreadful customer service, anti-competitive behaviour, fraudulent practices, antiquated public services and the bully-boy approach of some companies that seem to believe the customer is always wrong.

At least the NCA is making some progress. Calls to its helpline have doubled to 70,000 a year and Fitzgerald says it is increasingly recognised as the agency which will defend consumers’ rights. (more…)

Anyways, I ended up sitting beside Nuala and her buddy Marian Finucane at dinner on the first night. She was hilarious, instantly engaging, interested in other people’s stories and wonderfully indiscrete, (direct might be a better word ) particularly when it came to winding up the editor of ireland.com, Seamus Martin, about the low rates which the people working on the website (including myself) were then being paid. She was one of very few journalists working on the big paper to show solidarity with the web journalists at the time and for that I’ll always think of her fondly. Like many people, I found her recent interview on the Marian Finucane show compelling and moving, if very difficult, radio, and I am glad, for her sake, that she did not suffer the slow lingering death that had filled her with completely understandable dread.

Surprise, surprise, flight FR506 is now departing again at 6.50am with a seat price of €229.99. I would be very interested to hear Mr Peter Sherard’s explanation for this. - Yours, etc,
TERRI KIERNAN MERLIN, Sarah Curran Avenue, Dublin 16.