Ryanair has handed a list of over 300 websites and companies it believes are ‘scraping’ fares from its site to the European Commission. The letter from Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary was sent to the director-general for energy and transport (DG TREN) at the EC on the 22 August and outlines three cases where it…
Ryanair outs hundreds of ‘scraping’ websites
Ryanair has handed a list of over 300 websites and companies it believes are ‘scraping’ fares from its site to the European Commission.
The letter from Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary was sent to the director-general for energy and transport (DG TREN) at the EC on the 22 August and outlines three cases where it believes consumers were overcharged by third party sites.
An appendix reveals the names of hundreds of sites Ryanair claims will be punished for selling its tickets.
Amongst the list are four of the five leading online travel agencies in the UK – Ebookers, Opodo, lastminute.com and Travelrepublic.
O’Leary has also reacted angrily to recent comments by the EC about Ryanair’s cancellation policy, instigated on the 11 August, which has allegedly seen around 5,000 tickets refunded through the third party sites.
“Sadly it appears that DG TREN’s desire to make inaccurate and false claims about Ryanair has yet again taken priority over the scandalous mis-selling to, and overcharging of, consumers which is being perpetrated by these ticket-tout websites,” O’Leary said.
One of the sites named on the list, OTBeach.com, told Travolution it had not seen any cases of Ryanair tickets being cancelled so far.
The list also includes travel technology companies such as Dolphin Dynamics and ClickWithTechnology.
