How RyanAir facilitates the theft of 17 days car hire by GoldCar

We all know the bad stories about RyanAir when it comes to customer service and the absence of compensation in the event of delays, and yet it is a company that is used quite often, and that includes us ….
You think, it won’t be so bad with those complaints, until …. it happens to you !!

Last year we arranged and booked our summer vacation to Scotland through RyanAir.com, and this has happened to us in recent weeks.

We had booked both the flight and the car rental in one session via the RyanAir.com website, and after booking we received one collective invoice with one final amount that we had to pay in advance.

Ryanair would take care of the flights, and the car hire was arranged by RyanAir at GoldCar Edinburgh.
In the run-up to our vacation we received several reports that the flight we had booked had shifted from morning to mid-day.

Since our bookings were made in one session with RyanAir, you could expect that a flight shift will also be automatically included in the subsequent car rental booking, but nothing proved less true.

We decided to check in a few days before our departure, and to avoid any problems we also reported our later arrival via the chat function of the RyanAir website, so that the car rental company would be aware of this.

We noted that our message had been sent, but we did not receive a response from the RyanAir staff who provide the chat.
Because we didn’t like it, we also sent the same message to RyanAir via a contact form on the RyanAir website, the good reception of which was confirmed via a notification on the web page.
However, the website is designed in such a way that we as the sender do not receive further confirmation of receipt via email or otherwise.

The flight to Edinburgh went smoothly, but when we arrived at Goldcar Edinburgh we were told (with a grin on his face!) that our car could not be provided due to a “No-Show”, because we were late in collecting the car (which was in the parking lot!) and that the entire car rental was canceled!

Whatever arguments we put forward, we were always referred back to the Broker RyanAir, which we had to call.
That turned out to be a number in Germany, and an employee told us after more than 40 minutes of conversation that she could see that we had sent our chat message, but …. because none of her colleagues had responded to it, RyanAir also needed not to honor the contracted rental obligation!

Long story short: the already paid 17-day car rental including full insurance was canceled, and we were not entitled to a refund because of the so-called No-Show !!

So we have paid 17 days car rental for literally 0 minutes and 0 km driving!

Not responding to our Chat message that was confirmed to be received by RyanAir, is an error by RyanAir, the so-called not being able to find our message via the message form also fits in perfectly with how RyanAir wishes to treat its customers.

RyanAir will simply leave you bursting at the start of your holiday while they do receive your money !!

There you are in Edinburgh, with 17 days B & Bs and Hotels booked, and no way to get there.

So we had to rent another car including insurance on the spot at the top last-minute price (and obviously NOT with GoldCar !!) which of course cost a considerable sum of money extra.

We want to achieve through this message that future RyanAir and GoldCar customers know what they are starting to do if they expect to use the “services” of these companies, a warned person counts for two.

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