Ryanair Cancels Tickets Bought Through Screen Scraping Websites
BBC News and several other sources are reporting that European discount airline Ryanair is cancelling passenger tickets bought through price comparison websites that "illegally" screen scrape Ryanair's own website. Cancellations begin tomorrow.
Ryanair has been aggressively pursuing legal action against several European travel websites that use screen scraping, which enables them to sell airline tickets without going to the airlines' own sites.
Ryanair's terms and conditions of flight state that passengers must book all flights through the airline's website or through a Ryanair telephone reservation center.
According to news reports, approximately 1,000 customers per day book Ryanair flights through screen scrapers' websites. Beginning tomorrow, these customers will not be able to fly, as Ryanair is removing their names from its customer lists. Ryanair is attempting to contact each customer via email, but some passengers' contact information resides with the companies who sold them their tickets, and those companies may not advise their customers of this development.
Ryanair will compensate customers for the cancellations, but doesn't plan to refund any third-party fees or commissions.
Wow, that’s horrible. Those people probably had no idea that the sites weren’t supposed to be booking this way, and now they’re out time and money. If they’ve booked their vacations around those flight times, it could be a huge inconvenience to rebook, especially if they’re not notified right away.
I don’t know why Ryanair would block their fares in any case, but I certainly don’t understand why they would take it out on their own customers.