Jason spotted a glitch on the Ryanair website earlier today and posted about it.
It’s a glitch. Most large complex websites have them at some point or another.
It’s not the end of the world (Aer Lingus still use the browser language setting to “work out” where you’re based)
What is amazing is the tone and total lack of professionalism of the comments from the Ryanair staff members. Check out Jason’s post to see them.
Don’t they realise what a bad reflection on their employer they’re giving?
Seriously – if you want to post rude or offensive comments online don’t do it from a corporate netblock. Anyone with half a clue can trace it back to your employer.
Jeez, I thought folks only got rude through an anonomyzing proxy. What the hell is happening to our kids today?
Stephen
Unfortunately most of the idiotic comments seem to come from “nice” fixed IPs 🙂
Michele
Just bizarre! Fixed IP –> Company –> Firewall Logs –> Employee –> P45. Brilliant.
If something happens to the Ryanair flight down to the blog awards on Saturday I want you to remember my comments and cry foul and conspiracy!
Well, at least you’ll be able to tweet on the flight as you go down with the shame 🙂
Thanks Michele for your post, you’ve got the point and sorry for being rude. We are people too…
That presumes that Ryanair gives a toss about what its customers think. They don’t.
I really don’t see why this is ‘amazing’. It is Ryanair we’re writing about here. In a perpetual dash to the bottom, why would they give a crap about customer service (as long as it doesn’t land them in legal trouble)?
I mean, c’mon, it’s not like Ryanair have ANY redeeming qualities apart from a business model, and this culture would certainly extend to the staff. It’s only positive aspect is having a business model that works even though it’s in tandem with the shittiest service imaginable.
Of course, the large-scale public acceptance of this low cost/low service shite is something that’s replicated with similar trite such as ‘The Sun’ and ‘The News of World’. It’s a sad indictment of the crap that most people will tolerate. But there you go, different strokes I guess.
After finishing up at dotMobi, I did an interview for Ryanair. After a 40 minute wait past the time for the interview in the lobby (I’d point out how grubby it was, but the argument would be that a clean lobby only gave a good impression of the company, it didn’t get planes in the air for less…) during which I got to wondering if having the Girls of Ryanair calendar on the wall was such a good thing (seriously lads, time and place and all that), the interviewer finally showed up. Now, I get that things can get hectic during the day, but I have never heard of it being considered acceptable to leave a candidate just sitting around for nearly an hour like that with no contact past the initial “they know you’re here”.
Then it’s up to the workplace. Imagine a room about forty feet wide by sixty feet or so long, populated by rows of benches with a few PCs to a bench, with one walkway along the side of the room. Benches, not cubicles; partitions in the middle of the bench between you and the person seated opposite. Put a few offices along the wall of the room on the walkway side. Populate it in your mind with people working sales and complaints and everything else. Give it a constant stream of people using the walkway on their way to and from whereever they’re going to or coming from, dressed in varying ways from office workers to mechanics to ground crew to cabin crew. Dot phones around the room. Make it look cheap and grubby. And now add in the sounds. The sound of people working noisly, the noise of phones and conversations and the constant walk-throughs and above all the noise of the airport outside. Get that noise level up good and high, to the point of a constant din, and never let it fade away.
Now ponder whether you’d ever be able to do work in that kind of environment; and then ponder if you’d hold interviews there. By the time we sat down, I didn’t just not want the job, I didn’t want to even be there long enough to interview. The interview itself was quite straightforward, and did leave me with the positive impression that at least the Ryanair staff I met were decent folks, trying to do a job in horrendous conditions with nowhere near enough people. But the technical aspects of the job they described to me were horrendous – no source control, no staging servers, nothing that I’d consider basic proper work practices. By the time the interview was over, I didn’t just want to leave; I wanted to run. I was dialling the agent before I got back to my car, and I’d told him I wouldn’t touch the job with a barge pole before I’d started the engine.
Frankly, given the stressful setup and under-resourcing I saw in there, I wouldn’t be surprised at the reaction Jason got. The main surprise I have is that their website works at all in the first place.
I must say I’m not impresses with Ryanair. I heard of this bizarre story first on Sky news. To think in this day and age, with the impact of credit crunch, Ryanair is willing to mess around with its image. I’ve never flow on a ow cost carrier but if I ever do, its not going to be Ryanair. I’ve never heard more ignorant set of comments from anyone. To think that they could insult Mr Jason Roe this badly. What happens when they give me a feedback form after a flight and I write ” It was rubbish”, will they send THUGS after me? Absolutely disappointing!!!
Michele, can you confirm the apology was in fact from Ryanair?
Those Ryan airs staff sound like dicks instead of just discussing what happen they decided to be assholes and contempt for customers.
I may be the only person in the world who is standing up for Ryanair but here goes… 🙂
Yes, the service is not great, but we live in a pay as you go world. You get what you pay for. The one thing Ryanair has always been clear about is that their main aim is to provide cheap, rock bottom, flights. They can’t quite come out and say “hey, we can provide the cheap seats but the service won’t be as good”. Still if people can’t work that out then they must be quite naive. Ryanair has a clear business model and it works. Their flights are almost always fully booked, and in some cases over booked. This suggests to me that despite the level of service, when it comes down to it, people will choose to save money if they have the choice and tight budgets. It amazes me that people think £25 for an air fare should come with the same levels of service as a fare costing over a £100. Time to be realistic.
What apology??
Mosh
I won’t argue about their business model. However I do take issue with their staff’s rudeness
Michele
@mosh jahan It’s the “News of the world’ syndrome. When you support the lowest common denominator, they become defacto. Ryanair is no exception. Flying has a minimum cost below which you get Ryanair. If you accept it, you make it the norm.
How about this for a mental idea. Don’t fly so often, fly better. Fly with gignity, fly with service.
If you can’t accept that, then you’ve resigned yourself to a perpetual race into the sewer, aka Ryanair.
This isn’t snobbery, this is a realisation that there is a level below which one should never drop. Anything less than this level demeans oneself. Period.
I took this to be an apology, I’m I mistaken?
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Ryanair staff | February 20, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply
Thanks Michele for your post, you’ve got the point and sorry for being rude. We are people too…
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That’s hardly an apology when you blame the outburst on the human condition. There should be a response from a senior figure apologising on behalf of the company. On TV they shifted the blame to staff (apalling) rather than saying we acknowledge the mistake and will address it as a matter of process internally.
When you have scumbag leadership from the top, it very quickly permeates the entire organization. You’re just seeing a reflection of that. Cheap bast*rds.
@Stephen Holmes
Supply and demand. If people are willing to pay for the lowest common denominator – which clearly they are prepared to do – then supply must meet demand. It’s that simple. The option to pay more with another service provider remains for those that require extra comfort.