Budget airline Ryanair Holdings PLC on Monday defended its charging policy for online bookings against claims of "quite peurile" behavior from the head of Britain's business watchdog.
Office of Fair Trading Chief Executive John Fingleton singled out Ryanair for adding charges to payments made online with a popular type of bank card.
Ryanair last month began charging customers a 5 pound ($8) fee per passenger for each ticket bought using a commonly used Electron card, which had previously been free. It instead switched the charge-free option to the more infrequently used MasterCard prepay.
"Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some very low frequency payment mechanism and say: 'Well because you can pay with that, then the charge is called optional'," Fingleton was quoted as saying in The Independent newspaper.
"It's almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: 'Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it's within the narrow letter of the law'," Fingleton added. "On some level it's quite puerile, it's almost childish."
Ryanair maintained that there are no hidden charges on its Web site and that all nondiscretionary fees are included in all its advertised prices.
"Ryanair fails to understand why it was singled out for these inaccurate criticisms by Mr. Fingleton, when its charges policies are copied by high fare U.K. airlines," the company said in an e-mailed statement.
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