Ryanair and social media

Ah, Ryanair... donchya lovem?

First of all last week, there was the story about charging a pound to use their inflight toilets. Next, I came across this posting, from a web developer called Jason Roe. He posted on his blog about a bug he'd found in the Ryanair booking system. He then had the joy and pleasure of someone calling themselves "Ryanair staff" posting comments:

"...You didn’t actually discover a bug on bookryanair.You changed some numbers on your own screen tricking yourself into thinking that you could get a free flight, without actually succeeding.

Well known for years, and many others have tried it, ending up paying the full price for the flights after all.All good income for Ryanair..."

and my personal favorite:

"...If you would work in your pathetic life on a such big project in a such busy environment with so little resources, you would know that the most important is to have usual user behavior scenarios working rather than spending time on improbable and harmless things.

We very well know about these anomalies and unless it is not critical we are not going to sacrifice time to this.If you would be a serious programmer you would know these things and would not post any of this on the web if you would think it can cause us troubles, but you would report to us directly.Even you did not discover anything major you are still trying to benefit from this.

If I would be you I would think of consequences this can have..."

Now, apart from the really obvious things that are wrong (threatening a potential customer, being personal and vindictive etc etc), all of this pails into insignificance when it comes their official response to the issue:

http://www.travolution.co.uk/blog/2009/02/ryanair-doesnt-want-anything-t.php

"Stephen McNamara from Ryanair said:"Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion."It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again."Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel".

I think those prophetic words of wisdom will come back to haunt, both Mr McNamara, and Ryanair's infamous cavalier attitude to the flying public.