Neal sent a message to Michael O’Leary – CEO, Ryanair – Email Address that said:
Dear Mr. O'Leary:
I am writing to express my frustration in trying to resolve a situation which arose during our vacation this past June and early July. I hope that you’ll be able to help us resolve this issue in a satisfactory manner. The reservations concerned are: BVJIPV, SKSFJV, PRNKPQ, and YL5BJ.
Unfortunately, during our trip my wife was hospitalized due to an emergency. As a consequence of her hospitalization, we were unable to make two legs of our journey. As soon as it became clear that we would not be able to travel on the planned dates I called on 2 separate occasions to speak with your customer service representatives to advise that we would miss the flights and to enquire about a refund or to reschedule. On both calls I was told that for medical emergencies Ryan Air grants would grant a refund for missed flights. When I explained that we needed to reschedule the flights to be able to continue our itinerary I was told that we needed to make new reservations to get us back on track for our trip and wait to be refunded for the missed flights. To be honest, we were so surprised at how easy the first agent made the refund process seem, that is why we called a second time to ensure that the information we were given was consistent.
When we filed the requests for refund, my wife was first told that the hospital admission letter was not sufficient documentation and that a doctor’s note stating that she was un-fit for travel was required. After re-submitting, we then received notifications stating that Ryan Air could not honor the refund because the flights are non refundable. This is completely contradictory to the information we received from the customer service representatives with whom we spoke in June. That notwithstanding, your policy states that RyanAir has discretionary power to issue a refund. Therefore we are asking that you use that power to issue refunds for our flights missed due to medical emergency. The trip was difficult enough with the severe medical scare, but we are very disappointed at how the Ryan Air refund department has not honored the promises made by its customer service agents.
Please issue a refund so that we can move forward with our recovery from this traumatic trip.
Sincerely,
Neal
