Ryanair loses battle with online critic
Hands up who hasn’t flown with Ryanair yet? Any horror stories to tell? Chances are that once you have repeatedly flown with the airline that doesn’t care, you will come to a point where you are standing raging at Ryanair’s complete lack of customer services and swear that you’ll never use them again.
When things go right, Ryanair is quite possibly the best airline you can imagine, sending you to far away places (sometimes so far that you’re not even in the city you’re thinking you’re flying into) for little money. But if things go wrong, they generally go so seriously wrong that you are left with nothing but a serious attack of Tourette Syndrome.
I, too, have my story (don’t ask: some other time) from a few years back and at the time had planned to set up a web site to make sure everyone can share their own nightmare stories. I also planned that I would only use that airline again when hell freezes over. Needless to say I never set up that web site and after ignoring all their offers for a couple of years ended up eating my words, and have on occasion booked them again when there was no alternative choice available.
Nevertheless I am more than pleased to hear that Ryanair’s plan to shut up Michael Coulston’s criticism of the way they run their business has failed. Coulston had set up Ryanaircampaign.org in order to inform travellers what they can expect when booking flights with that company and also to share contact details for the company that is notoriously reluctant to engage in any kind of customer dialogue.
Following today’s ruling Coulston can continue using his domain name.
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Channel 6
Looks like Ireland’s newest TV channel, Channel 6, is something to look forward to with ingenious programming that includes the likes of FRASIER, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, LAW & ORDER, CSI, SEX & CITY and DHARMA & GREG. Humm, just where have I seen all those shows before?
Dave’s Rants has some interesting suggestions as to why it is called Channel 6, seeing that we currently only appear to have four other TV stations: RTE1, RTE2, TV3 and TG4.
Dave’s Rants has some interesting suggestions as to why it is called Channel 6, seeing that we currently only appear to have four other TV stations: RTE1, RTE2, TV3 and TG4.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Bebo.com
According to the Irish edition of the Sunday Times [article not available online] colleges are starting to put an end to the Bebo.com craze. Bebo is a MySpace like networking website that apparently has proven so popular in this country that they have registered 500.000 users, most of them of college age. As a result of its surprising popularity
“NUI Galway, Carlow IT, Waterford IT, Dublin Business School and Queen’s College University, have all blocked access to the site after receiving complaints from students who were unable to access college computers for course-work due to hundreds of other students jamming PC suites to log on to their Bebo profile. (…) There were cases where 35 out of 40 students in a suite were logged into Bebo, which obviously is not defensible as an educational activity.”
OK, personally I don’t care whether or not colleges should ban access to the site. These are after all their computers and they should be allowed to do with them as they please. So no argument here.
What strikes me as odd, however, is the following:
The site has 500.000 registered Irish users????
Let’s see: Last time I checked – well, not personally, but thanks to my friends at the CIA – Ireland had a population of 4,015,676 residents. (Add another 1.5 Million or so for the North.) In 2003 Internet usage was 1.26 Million people, so my guess is that right now it is at 1.5 Million +. One look at Bebo shows that most people are in the 18-22 age brackets. In Ireland there are 342,000 people in the 15-19 age brackets, another 292,000 in the 20-24 age brackets.
And Bebo has 500,000 registered users in this country?!? Wouldn’t that mean pretty much every single person in the targeted age bracket (with or without access to the Internet) is now on Bebo? And yet no-one has ever mentioned it to me and it takes me reading the Sunday Times to first of all even hear about that web site????
Another thing: Bebo is so popular amongst college students, yet the average comment made on it reads like:
“u go gurl haha dat fella dat commented u,u gt ur luks 4rm me haha ye ok woteva treva!!!!!neway ne news avint tlkd 2 in a wee wile i mean properly hehe lvz ya xxxxxxxxxxxxx”
Without going all Lynne Truss, but: WT DE FK? Is that college standard these days?
There I am thinking how very much on top of the game I am as an Irish based blogger with broadband access and interest in RSS feeds and what-have-you, just to learn that Internet usage and development in this country is not driven by the likes of me and that I have instead missed the train altogether. Instead it is sozzled illiterate females that are ahead of the posse. (OK, admittedly there are also guys as members there, but given half a chance I’d rather watch pictures of drunk girls than those of their more awkward, spotty male counterparts.)
Or maybe the numbers reported in this bit of news are rubbish to start with.
Only one way to find out.
Next time I see a bunch of young drunken yobs flashing their, ahem, cameras I’ll simply walk over and say: “Oi, haven’t I seen you on Bebo?” and see what their reaction will be.
“NUI Galway, Carlow IT, Waterford IT, Dublin Business School and Queen’s College University, have all blocked access to the site after receiving complaints from students who were unable to access college computers for course-work due to hundreds of other students jamming PC suites to log on to their Bebo profile. (…) There were cases where 35 out of 40 students in a suite were logged into Bebo, which obviously is not defensible as an educational activity.”
OK, personally I don’t care whether or not colleges should ban access to the site. These are after all their computers and they should be allowed to do with them as they please. So no argument here.
What strikes me as odd, however, is the following:
The site has 500.000 registered Irish users????
Let’s see: Last time I checked – well, not personally, but thanks to my friends at the CIA – Ireland had a population of 4,015,676 residents. (Add another 1.5 Million or so for the North.) In 2003 Internet usage was 1.26 Million people, so my guess is that right now it is at 1.5 Million +. One look at Bebo shows that most people are in the 18-22 age brackets. In Ireland there are 342,000 people in the 15-19 age brackets, another 292,000 in the 20-24 age brackets.
And Bebo has 500,000 registered users in this country?!? Wouldn’t that mean pretty much every single person in the targeted age bracket (with or without access to the Internet) is now on Bebo? And yet no-one has ever mentioned it to me and it takes me reading the Sunday Times to first of all even hear about that web site????
Another thing: Bebo is so popular amongst college students, yet the average comment made on it reads like:
“u go gurl haha dat fella dat commented u,u gt ur luks 4rm me haha ye ok woteva treva!!!!!neway ne news avint tlkd 2 in a wee wile i mean properly hehe lvz ya xxxxxxxxxxxxx”
Without going all Lynne Truss, but: WT DE FK? Is that college standard these days?
There I am thinking how very much on top of the game I am as an Irish based blogger with broadband access and interest in RSS feeds and what-have-you, just to learn that Internet usage and development in this country is not driven by the likes of me and that I have instead missed the train altogether. Instead it is sozzled illiterate females that are ahead of the posse. (OK, admittedly there are also guys as members there, but given half a chance I’d rather watch pictures of drunk girls than those of their more awkward, spotty male counterparts.)
Or maybe the numbers reported in this bit of news are rubbish to start with.
Only one way to find out.
Next time I see a bunch of young drunken yobs flashing their, ahem, cameras I’ll simply walk over and say: “Oi, haven’t I seen you on Bebo?” and see what their reaction will be.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Aer Lingus Customer Service
So Aer Lingus now concedes that good service has ‘taken flight’?
Hardly any news for anyone who watched what once was a pleasant little airline slowly turn to a slightly better standard Ryan Air clone. Mind you, I still quite like Aer Lingus’ in-flight and airport personnel, but the service received through its offices and call centres ranges from non existent to abysmal.
This reminds me of the time about two years ago when Willie Walsh was still in charge and I had a relatively minor issue with my frequent flyer points that I just couldn’t get sorted. It wasn’t anything huge – certainly not on the level of when I went absolutely ape shit with some Ryan Air staff in Stansted – but it soon turned into a matter of principle for me that I wanted properly addressed.
I noticed that their email addresses followed the traditional firstname.lastname@aerlingus.ie format, so what did I do? Go right to the top and contact Willie Walsh directly who then referred me to his customer service manager who with trembling voice ended up getting everything fixed.
And the lesson: If you can’t get a customer service issue handled to your satisfaction, don’t bother getting state agencies involved, but go straight to the company’s head honcho.
Hardly any news for anyone who watched what once was a pleasant little airline slowly turn to a slightly better standard Ryan Air clone. Mind you, I still quite like Aer Lingus’ in-flight and airport personnel, but the service received through its offices and call centres ranges from non existent to abysmal.
This reminds me of the time about two years ago when Willie Walsh was still in charge and I had a relatively minor issue with my frequent flyer points that I just couldn’t get sorted. It wasn’t anything huge – certainly not on the level of when I went absolutely ape shit with some Ryan Air staff in Stansted – but it soon turned into a matter of principle for me that I wanted properly addressed.
I noticed that their email addresses followed the traditional firstname.lastname@aerlingus.ie format, so what did I do? Go right to the top and contact Willie Walsh directly who then referred me to his customer service manager who with trembling voice ended up getting everything fixed.
And the lesson: If you can’t get a customer service issue handled to your satisfaction, don’t bother getting state agencies involved, but go straight to the company’s head honcho.
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