Website Playing Up?
 

Anyone else notice that when trying to make a booking from a PC on the Ryanair.com website, certain pages are not being displayed correctly, thus preventing the booking from being made?

This has been happening for the last few days at least, where the bottom half of a page is blanked out, preventing further progress. Doesn't seem to matter what browser I use (eg Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc)

Of course, it could be just me, but I haven't had this issue before, and nothing has changed at my end (that I'm aware of). I'm using Win11, Win10 and Win7, same result on desktop and laptop.

Further to the above, because I could not book the flight on the Ryanair website, I booked it on a third party site (booking.com). As it turns out, I've discovered that this was a rather silly thing to do, as I'm now locked out of the booking, because my passport shows a middle name and the booking does not (I never use my middle name in bookings).

So Ryanair are now saying that I will have to check in at the airport at a cost of EUR 55. This is bad enough, but I'm concerned that even then they won't fix up the name "problem" either, so denying me boarding.

Any experience with this kind of thing or suggestions as to what I should do to sort this out? Obviously booking.com (and gotogate the ticket issuer) are useless.

To add insult to injury, Ryanair are not prepared to accept the name on the booking as being correct, even though it's exactly the same as the name in my long-standing Ryanair account. Obviously they're just trying to make it as difficult as possible for 3rd party bookings...

Any airline - not just Ryanair - will refer you to the third party as they 'own' the reservation.

Have you tried contacting booking.com:
https://www.booking.com/customer-service.en-gb.html

I think you might be missing the point.

However, yes, I spoke to booking.com a couple of hours ago, and the agent confirmed that they too were locked out of the booking.

It's just Ryanair's way of pissing off all agents and their clients (and pretty well everyone else), while at the same time making some money out of it.

Just out of curiosity, how does Ryanair suddenly know what is in your passport?

It is probably not why they locked the booking more likely as a part of their general war against third party bookings. By booking via a third party passengers are not funnelled myriad of extra booking options for Ryanair to make money on, so they wholeheartedly dislike it.

Who processed the payment for your flights? Was it Ryanair or booking.com or some other entity? What type of card did you use?

Ryanair knows what's in your passport because part of the "verification" process is to get you to photograph your passport for them to analyse. They lock the booking until you are "verified" (this must catch many people).

I made the payment using an Amex card, and it was processed by GoToGate (booking.com's associates in this venture). GoToGate then paid Ryanair via Mastercard (according to Ryanair's email to me).

I have opened a dispute with Amex, which they are pursuing. In any case, I've rebooked with BA. Serves me right for not doing this in the first place, but lesson learnt.