Online Verification Requirement? OTA Booking
 

To realize a considerable saving, I booked a FR flight through an OTA.

The next day, I receive an email from FR claiming my booking ABCD12 appears "to have been made via a third-party intermediary or BOT which are not authorized by Ryanair to use the Ryanair website or app or to offer our flights for sale."

For safety and security reasons, FR demands a verification. It can either be done online for a EUR 0.35 fee or via the ticket desk at least 120 min before departure to check-in free of charge.

Is this legit, any experiences?

Does.this really wave the punitive fee for airport check-in provided you show 120 min prior to departure?

There is very little chance that paying 0.35 euros allows you airport check-in for free.

To be honest, I'm surprised FR didn't just cancel your booking or pretend it doesn't exist. What happens if you manage your booking on the Ryanair website?

Your opening sentence sounds alarm bells to me. I cannot see any circumstance where FR would offer its flights for sale at a price below that available on its own platforms. It is the antithesis of the Ryanair model. It reminds me of an article I read a few weeks back:

“[Ryanair] has been notified by customers of a bogus 'discount; scam, where customers purchase discounted Ryanair flights through an intermediary, which has no affiliation to Ryanair.

This 'bogus OTA' then uses the customer's payment details to secure their flight booking and stores the customer's payment details for fraudulent use at a later date. …”

The full article can be found here: https://www.travelmole.com/news_feat...ews_id=2048000

Are you able to log in to your reservation on ryanair.com? Is the price shown in the reservation the same amount you actually (or thought you) paid? Are there any messages or notices in the reservation? I would call Ryanair using the telephone number on their website, do not call any number in the email you received just in case that email is from scammers.

Please report back, this may be helpful for others in the future.

FR does not sell at different prices. It is OTAs which undercut the LCC. Helps them to appear at the top in price search engines. Usually, it only works of you have the one means of payment allowed which can be uncommon (special prepaid cards, Diners Club...)

This has been going on for years and is discussed on several bargain blogs. The OTA books using his own CC directly on ryanair.com through screen scraping.

On non-critical tickets, I have used the practice for years. I would be surprised if the issue of such OTA has not come up on this forum.

In this particular instance, I used an edreams brand. I flew off a few tickets booked through them in the past. This is the first time I got that sort of verification email from Ryanair.

The booking in question can be accessed directly on FR's website.

Thanks for the explanation Drage1998 , I think that rules out the type of fraud FR were talking about in the article I posted above.

Obviously you cannot ignore FR’s email at risk of being denied boarding so certainly contact them (via their publicly published telephone numbers if you have doubts about the authenticity of the email you have received). By talking to FR you can find out what their issue is and then assure them you will call back (or complete the online verification) in good time. Before you call I would draw your attention to the following in the FR General Terms and Conditions of Carriage.

“13.7.1 Payments must be authorised by the cardholder named in the booking. We have the right to request a new form of payment to ensure the payment of your flight is legitimate or cancel your booking without prior notice if we have good reason to suspect that you or the cardholder are involved in fraudulent activities relating to any payments to the Ryanair Group. An activity is deemed to be fraudulent if it is made with the intent to deceive us to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive us of our legal right to payment.Such suspicion will be based on the following reasons:

• You cannot present the card used to make the booking at the airport, if asked to do so by an authorized handling agent in the event that our fraud detection software identified your booking as suspicious.
• You cannot provide the cardholder’s contact information for us to carry out security checks over the phone or at the airport in the event that our fraud detection software identified your booking as suspicious.
• The cardholder claims that the booking is fraudulent because they did not authorise the payment.
• You, or the cardholder, have previously been involved in any fraudulent activities relating to any payment to the Ryanair Group.
• Any information provided while making the booking is incorrect, inadequate, inconsistent and our fraud detection software identified your booking as suspicious.

13.7.2 The above suspicion/ presumptions are rebuttable. …”

I can’t recall any provision in the FR General Terms and Conditions of Carriage that would prevent you from using the ticket you purchased. However the OTA may have committed a breach of FR’s Terms of Use - whether that could cause the ticket to be cancelled is uncertain, but if so that would make the OTA liable for your losses.

I booked (a few months ago) and travelled (this month) on a Ryanair flight booked via Lastminute.com and apart from Lastminute.com opting to use their self-generated email address for me (required for check-in on the Ryanair website) instead of my own email address, it was otherwise as good as having booked directly with Ryanair (which I had done for the return leg). Just to confirm, the Lastminute fare was lower than Ryanair website.

But more recently, I think there is something about Ryanair discouraging / disallowing booking of their flights via online travel agents, I think their flights no longer appeared on Skyscanner searches that I carried out recently.

Apart from spite, why does FR care if somebody is willing to subsidise your flight and they still get their money?

If FR gets everyone to book through their own home page FR gets the full chance to rip the passengers off on refer the passengers to travel insurance, hotel bookings, rental cars, etc. Allowing the passengers to book in other platforms means this potential revenue will never hit FR's pockets.

Fair enough... except having to navigate through all that junk is one of the reasons why people try to avoid FR. So there is definitely revenue loss as well as ripping off customers...

But rather than removing all the junk, FR tries to prevent other channels. The best way to stem the revenue loss....

I made two bookings last week through a corporate travel agent (company policy, same price) I could not get the bookings to appear on RyanAir’s website which also made it impossible to do online check in. The day after I got the same email as OP and after spending EUR 0.35 and 20 mins scanning passports and making funny faces to my laptop’s camera I was approved and the booking now appears on the website. It is automated but it wouldn’t accept my drivers license due to the photo no longer looking like me so it does actually check it.

So it seems very legit.

The software of Ryanair flagged my totally private online direct bookings as an OTA bot. My family do fly quite a bit, but not so much. The problem is, it blocked my payments from the allegedly bot account, so after the "online verification" it would not even allow payment screen to come. I am not out of the situation, and trying customer service has never been a success. While I can register a new account with Ryanair, my trip is under question.

OK, chat person could not override the flagging software, but at least sent a link to payment site where the fee of 35c could be paid so the booking gets unblocked. They also assured that check in is free at the airport for such bookings.