[Simon73]

I received a tweet saying that posting here forces airlines to respond, but I have no idea if this is true. Has anyone had experience of complaining to the financial Ombudsman with a Ryanair robbery?

Ryanair have stolen from me a number of times over the years, and any complaints have always been brushed off with a lame, emailed copy-and-paste of T&Cs. This latest situation was the proverbial 'last straw'. The mind boggles how they are able to continue operation in the face of so much customer dissatisfaction.

A French colleague of mine missed a Ryanair flight from East Midlands airport to Dinard and needed to buy a new ticket. The next available flight was two days later, costing £35 (which I found on the Ryanair website after a call from said colleague, who was still at the airport).

Ryanair, as is their wont, saw an opportunity to make a quick quid and charged my colleague a £100 "transfer fee" of the missed flight, instead of £35 for a new ticket. They not only failed to point out that a £35 flight was an option (this in itself being poor customer service) but they took advantage of the fact that English was not my colleague's first language.

My initial complaint was through Ryanair's official channels, and I received a baffling reply which was a copy-and-paste of unrelated blurb about aircraft not being able to wait for late passengers. They even had the audacity to say that their standard £100 transfer fee was a "gesture of goodwill". I replied, asking them to read my complaint again (copying it in, lest they 'lose' the original) and received an email saying that it was being forwarded to head office and I would receive a reply in 15-20 days.

That was 34 days ago. No replies to any of my follow-up requests. No replies to my now-daily tweets. Just the theft of £70 and then... silence. The cumulative sum that this company has stolen from me personally goes way beyond this figure, but looking at this one from the outside I have simply had enough.

I should point out that I wasn't even seeking financial compensation to begin with, but rather a sensible explanation as to why charging £70 extra was considered a "gesture of goodwill". Naturally, they haven't been able to explain because there is NO POSSIBLE EXPLANATION. This has incensed me enough to seek the compensation.

Has anyone else come a cropper with these transfer fees?

Simon