Ryanair’s chief executive has reiterated accusations that leading online travel agents are denying customers’ refunds for cancelled flights by withholding booking details and called on regulators to act.
The carrier has accused Love Holidays, On the Beach, Kiwi.com and Lastminute of blocking its attempts to refund customers as it clears a backlog of millions of cancellation claims and has launched an online verification process for OTA customers.
Love Holidays hit back, insisting it “absolutely refutes the allegation that we have provided any fake customer information or deliberately delayed the processing of airline refunds”.
But Eddie Wilson, chief executive of Ryanair DAC, told Travel Weekly: “They screen scrape our website, pass on our fares and add a charge, then passengers are left hanging.
“People might buy a package, they say there is a flight for €49.99, then buy it off us for €19.99 while the customer is booking with them. They take the passenger’s card number but pay us with a virtual card and substitute the email address with an email in real time. They are pretending to be passengers. It’s very clever.
“They go to all that trouble because they want to keep the gap between a €19.99 and a €49.99 fare. Why flip the email address?”
More:Love Holidays hits back at Ryanair’s refunds allegations
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Wilson said: “It was bad enough we had to go through millions of refunds, but our call centres were clogged with people whose details we didn’t have. We’ve had customers on to us when we have given money back to these companies and they have not refunded the customers. It’s a scandal. All our communications [with these customers] go into a black hole. The CAA needs to do something.”
Asked to confirm that all four companies Ryanair has named are doing this, Wilson said: “Absolutely.” He said: “I’m looking at a booking for Love Holidays where they have changed the credit card and the address and charged £50 on top of the Ryanair fare. There are possibly hundreds of thousands of these bookings.
“In some cases, we have refunded Love Holidays. One case we refunded five weeks ago, the customer contacted us and told us Love Holidays said refunds were paid in departure date order.
“What reason would they have for withholding a customer’s details? The flights are cheaper direct.”
Ryanair has pledged to clear 90% of the refunds it owes by the end of July.
Love Holidays said: “We’re aware some OTAs use fake customer details, but we absolutely do not. We use customers’ email addresses and details in 100% of cases. The refund comes to us because we pay the airline and we forward the refund to the customer.”
Ryanair DAC is the chief carrier in Ryanair Holdings which is headed by Michael O’Leary.