Scott Dylan

Personally I have had problems with Ryanair and find as a company they are best avoided. Their lack of interest in customer care and propensity to put their own profits above helping their customers is disgraceful. Ryanair may believe that there will be an endless list of customers waiting for their product but the snowball of bad publicity around them is growing considerably.

Michael O’Leary should take note that at some stage in the future, his company is going to need to lose it’s arrogant and callous attitude and start to regain the trust of the general public. With so many issues, this should be an expensive manoeuvre.

The Ryanair employees who wrote on the blog and the company’s response to the situation in general are stereotypical Ryanair behaviour. Anything they feel is a threat, they hit out to with aggression. Bloggers although somewhat fickle can be representative of national opinion and certainly are in this case.

They know they sell tickets by being dirt cheap, not because they behave in a caring sharing Web 2.0-style way.

They don’t care if they look like jerks or not, they just want to get publicity. See their CEO’s recent claim that he would charge travellers who want to use the toilet on the plane for instance.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the whole reason they were so rude about the bloggers, and handled them so badly.

Online reputations come into question all the time, and when there is truly a problem a company that large should get all their (supposedly smart) heads together and address it appropriately.

Instead of addressing the problem, these geniouses made themselves look foolish and made their airline look way less credible in an already tough market for air travel. Good job morons!

Nothing viralizes faster than the corporate world making an ass out of themselves on the Internet. I offer Reputation Management Services to my clients as well and always try and persuade them that if such an issue comes up, the high road is the only road. Short, polite and try to take the conversation off line…never chum the water when skinny dipping!