Saturday, February 28, 2009

Ryanair and Lunatic Bloggers


I'm sure you've already caught this story, and to be honest I've decided to post about it mainly due to the numerous bad experiences I've had with Ryanair and the fact that I now refuse to fly with them under any circumstances whatsoever!

To say that a company has screwed up in a communication with the public would be a complete understatement in this case. Ryanair haven't just screwed up; they've loaded a gun, shot themselves in the foot and then asked one of their aircraft to roll over said foot. Now more then ever the concept of online PR and reputation management should be forfront to all business considerations. The net never forgets and as soon as we bloggers find an interesting story (especially one that involves blogging) we're going to talk about it.

The situation went as follows: Jason Roe, a web developer from Dublin, was booking tickets online with Ryanair when he discovered a glitch that allowed him to book Ryanair tickets for €0.00. The glitch was a session glitch to do with multiple instances being open. Of course, he blogged about it. Jason got a response from Ryanair...

A Ryanair staff member replied, “You’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is! (sic) you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it!”
What followed was a back and forth between Jason and the staff memeber, in which he explained that he didn't think he could get free flights, just that there was a sessions glitch in their system. Ryanair have confirmed that it was their staff that made contact.

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion,” said the airline’s spokesman Stephen McNamara. “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy…”

In relation to my thoughts on Ryanair shooting themselves in the foot; Jason’s site now appears in 4th position on Google for the search term ‘Ryanair’. Idiots!

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