A rant about Ryanair

Now this is off-topic but you'll have to indulge me as I'm still not doing much food-buying or cooking. But I have been trying to book a trip to France online and need to have a moan about Ryanair.

If you look at their site a flashing sign will tell you they're offering 1 million seats for £1 one way (until Sunday night). "That sounds a good deal" you might think (although you are probably already sceptical if you've endured the pain of booking with Ryanair before). So it's going to cost £4 for the two of us, right?

Er, not quite. The key phrase is 'one way'. That seems to mean whatever flight you chose one leg will cost £1 and the other will include taxes and fees. Which amounts, in the case of our flight from Bristol to Beziers, to a princely £64.06 - £52.08 unspecified taxes and £11.98 insurance, wheelchair levy and aviation insurance. This is new. Normally the total taxes are about £30 to £40 on this flight so how come it's more than this one way? And I would have thought Ryanair would cover its own insurance costs. Most businesses do.

On top of that if you want to check in a suitcase Ryanair will now charge you £30 a person, an additional £8 if you want priority boarding and £11.57 for more insurance (yours rather than Ryanair's this time). Fortunately we can opt out of all these but still need to pay the outrageous £10 per person they charge for using your credit or debit card (we haven't got the one card that exempts you from the charges, a Visa Electron). Total bill £88.04

I don't so much object that Ryanair is charging us £44 each to take us to France which is after all cheaper than going from Bristol to London but their disingenuousness in pretending that it will cost a couple of quid. And for penalising not people like us who are lucky enough to have family over there but families who are spending their hard earned cash on a holiday and having to pay all these extra charges.

The problem is the 'extras' are always changing. Subtly the fares creep up without any fanfare yet still these incredible offers are splashed all over the papers. Does Trading Standards have anything to say about this? Apparently not.