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No fairness regarding M50 tolls!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
No fairness regarding M50 tolls!

Are you a person that usually pays the bills you get? And do you expect that other people do the same so that you don’t fund and support them with your money? Toll payments on the M50 don’t work like that!

The Public Accounts Committee of the Dail was told by Nigel O’Neill of the public sector organisation Transport Infrastructure Ireland that in the last two years a total of EUR 10.1mio was written off in unpaid tolls. :-O It gets your blood boiling when you think that this bridge that is now owned by the state, forces you and me to pay the toll, but one car out of every 22 will get away paying nothing. Over 1 mio journeys remained unpaid as RTE reports.

Dublin, Taxes, Tourism, Traffic, , , , ,

MyTaxi increases charges by EUR 2

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
MyTaxi increases charges by EUR 2

I know, they would argue that they are not doing that, but if you check your wallet after using a MyTaxi Taxi, you will have EUR 2 less in it than last week, so to me that is an increase.

But let’s start that story at the beginning:
On Wednesday MyTaxi informed their customers that from midnight on that same Wednesday (Thanks for the advance warning! :-O ) MyTaxi drivers would (be allowed to) charge a EUR 2 booking fee for all bookings via the app or phone.

According to MyTaxi, they had told their drivers not to charge that fee in the past, but they are not telling them that anymore and consequently the drivers will/might add that EUR 2 now.

The charge is allowed by the National Transport Authority (NTA) which regulates the taxi fares, so MyTaxi think they are fully compliant with all rules and regulations and probably to add insult to injury, they are claiming on their website (ie.mytaxi.com/pricingpolicy) that “We’re confident that by implementing this change, mytaxi drivers will offer an ever-improving, market-leading service when you need it most.”

Ask your customers and you will be told that you aren’t providing an “ever-improving” service.

I am no expert on Taxi fare history, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that “booking fee” is from the olden days when taxis where “controlled” by radio. You rang their head office/dispatcher and the head office told the driver where to pick you up. The EUR 2 were possibly the charge the head office got. But since you can’t request a MyTaxi taxi any other way than through the app (unless you go to a taxi rank) and because that middle man is not there anymore, it might be that that booking fee is well outdated!?

Either way, it is an effective increase of EUR 2, so now before you drive a metre, you will have to pay EUR 5.60 during the day and EUR 6 at night and – as I reported last week in the Dublin News section of the Dublin Event Guide – this charge will increase in February to EUR 5.80 and EUR 6.00.

I hope we will get the proper Uber service soon (not the crippled Uber service that we have currently)! It seems that some taxi competition is urgently needed. I am aware that Uber is not perfect either and the fact that they lost their license for London in the last few days shows this clearly, but I’d think Uber is fixable.

Dublin, Tourism, Traffic, , , ,

Is this a business or a joke? Ryanair will cancel up to 50 flights a day for six weeks!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Is this a business or a joke? Ryanair will cancel up to 50 flights a day for six weeks!

The “This is Odd!” section of the Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events) is a place where I highlight a whole variety of odd things that happen around us. Usually (but not always) there is some connection with Ireland, considering that the 24,000 subscribers, 21,000 web app users and 30,000 website visitors are mainly Irish, living in Ireland or have a close connection with Ireland. I also prefer to vary the topics across all aspects of our lives and it is very rare that the same small areas will be covered two weeks in a row.

This is, however, an exception and for the second week it is Ryanair that wins in the “odd” competition. You seriously have to wonder if they are running a business or if this is a – very profitable – joke when you find out what they now are up to.

We are used to their total disrespect for customers when it comes to seat allocations and baggage charge changes and refund policies and to be honest, we endure a LOT under the excuse-umbrella that without Ryanair we would pay hell of a lot more for air travel and that after all they are a commercial company whose job it is to maximise the revenue.

Until now, though, we thought that they know what they are doing and that they might be – in our eyes – mean spirited and customer friendly, but that we at least can rely on their professionalism when it comes to their core business, which is bringing people from A to B safely and reliably.

But on Friday it emerged that Ryanair will cancel up to 50 (!!) flights per day for the next six weeks!! Maybe you think 50 is not a lot, considering that they undertake 2500 flights per day and a Ryanair spokesman quickly already pointed out that only 2% of flights are affected. But I don’t care how many percent of flights are affected if I am the one beings stranded. On Friday (15 Sept) 82 flights were cancelled and on Saturday (16 Sept) a total of 80 flights will be affected. That is a LOT!

What happens if this one little flight is the feeder flight that brings you to an airport from which you plan to take a flight to South America? You miss that and your whole holiday is gone! – Or what if that little flight was the ONE flight that will bring you to your weekend away in Spain? It’s not good enough that you can fly a day later if you only had planned a weekend away.

And even worse! Ryanair didn’t even have the decency to explain why 82 flights were cancelled until Friday evening!

And the reason? Holidays!! They don’t care in the slightest about your plans because they have to accommodate Ryanair staff holidays. And why was that not anticipated? Because Ryanair changed – without any need or emergency – the holiday year from April to March to a new January to December system. Knowing how inflexible they are with all their rules when it comes to check-in and luggage, you can bet that they are the worst when it comes to holiday flexibility with their own staff.

So in the end Ryanair created this mess themselves and we as customers have to suffer for it.

You really wonder if they are running a business or if this is all a joke to them?

Society, Tourism,

Ryanair is upsetting customers again: Now hand luggage will cost money

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Ryanair is upsetting customers again: Now hand luggage will cost money

We all know that we need Ryanair because without them, Aer Lingus and others would immediately increase their prices. (Mind you, Ryanair prices are not low anymore either, but still lower than Aer Lingus or BA ever would have liked to go.) But at the same time Ryanair ALWAYS ensures that we HATE their guts as well by constantly pushing and moving was once usual practices.

Ryanair started with the intent to get checked in luggage reduced as much as possible. Checked in luggage was charged separately where before it was included. Then they increased the prices for it. Then they lowered the weight from 20kg to 15kg and now all will change again! We were told that we should ONLY bring hand luggage and that we won’t pay for that. We did what we were told! BUT as human beings do, we tried to push the limits.

New much smaller dimensions were specified, but only sometimes enforced. The weight limit of 10kg was introduced but usually not checked and so passengers started bringing bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier bags on board. So much that there was no room in the overhead bins anymore and Ryanair was forced to take the rolly cases that were within the limits but still used a LOT of room from people at the plane.

Now ALL will change again!

For all flights from 01 November, you are only allowed to bring a handbag or Laptop bag on board (up to 5kg; 35cm x 20cm x 20cm). What was formerly the cabin bag now will have to dropped at the bag drop at the check-in counter (NOT at the boarding gate or at the plane anymore). So this achieves EXACTLY the opposite of what Ryanair tried in the past. Now more or less EVERY passenger will have check in luggage again! As long as it is not more than 10kg you will not have to pay for it. Not YET!!! I guarantee that in a few months there will be a new charge introduced. I will eat my (virtual) hat if that won’t happen!

The advantage for them of having less check in luggage is gone, but the advantage for passengers to get out of the airport faster if they only have hand luggage is also gone. BUT you are still allowed to bring your former hand luggage of 10kg IF you pay for Priority Boarding! The Irish Independent claims that this will cost EUR 5 per flight, but we have seen in recent months that that price can easily go to a high multiple of EUR 5 if seat selection is included and the selectable seats went into the higher priced category.

The checked baggage charge will drop from EUR 35 to EUR 25 and the checked luggage max weight is increased from 15kg to 20kg but again I am convinced that this is only a temporary measure and the price will very soon go up again and the weight down. Ryanair uses these tricks to tell us that we allegedly will pay less just to take it back again soon after.

How will they do all this? Wait for it! They will issue colour coded boarding passes! WHAT? Yes, that would possibly require that you don’t print your own boarding pass anymore because not everyone has a colour printer at home. OR your self-printed boarding pass will be replaced by the colour coded one at the baggage drop?

In the end it is just a way to force people to buy Priority Boarding. It seems that the cruel procedure of forcing people that have booked together on seats that are intentionally not next to each other didn’t achieve the increased buying of Priority Boarding that was expected.

Ohh and another thing changed underhand it seems: In the past you could print your return boarding pass up to a week before your return trip. Now this is not possible anymore. But it can only be printed 3 days or so before the return. That means that you can’t print both before leaving if your trip is more than 3 days long. Because while on holidays you don’t have access to a printer, this meant that people HAD to buy Priority Boarding for the return trip because THEN you are allowed to print the boarding pass already days earlier. Devious! But wait, you say, I use the Ryanair app and then I don’t need to print anything at all. You are smart! But wait for it: My predication is that VERY soon that will change and you will either have to pay to use the app or the boarding pass/check in option will be removed from the app or limited.

Ryanair want you to pay more and more and more. And because they are a commercial organisation I get that even if I definitely dislike it. But the temporary customer friendliness that Ryanair adopted about 2 or 3 years ago is DEFINITELY gone for good. They are UNFORTUNATELY now too successful to care.

The Irish Independent outlined the rules in an FAQ here.

 

Tourism, , ,

Dangerous Brazilian Au-Pair???

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dangerous Brazilian Au-Pair???

An unbelievable story emerged on Thursday about a 24 year old Brazilian ex-Au pair that wanted to visit her former host family and instead was put into prison.

Paloma Aparezida Silva-Carvalho from Sao Paulo was in Switzerland to visit her boy friend and then had planned to come to Ireland to visit her former host family in Galway. She had worked here before as an au pair for 18 months in 2015/2016 and now intended to come back to stay with the family for 2 months. Immigration officers at Dublin airport, however, were convinced that she wanted to enter the country to work illegally and therefore arrested her and out her in prison where she was strip searched and locked in a cell overnight. :-O

The host family was contacted and confirmed that she was expected to come for holidays, but the immigration officers still decided to send her to prison and told her that she would be sent back to Switzerland the next day.

Now the information in the newspapers doesn’t seem to be fully congruent and the Independent and the Irish Times have told the the story in slightly different ways and have changed the story during the day, but here are some details that were reported:
1) Brazilian citizens do not need a visa to visit Ireland as long as they will stay less than 90 days
2) Paloma had a booked return flight and had EUR 1000 cash with her, so there was plenty of money and clear intention to leave

The EUR 1000 was not mentioned anymore in a later version of the Irish Times story. Also in an earlier version the Irish Times reported that the former Au Pair had decided to leave Ireland immediately once she got released from prison with a permission to stay for just 10 days. But a later version explained that the family actually did collect her and the 10 days reference wasn’t there anymore.

Sooo, we don’t know all the details by the looks of it and even the newspapers don’t really seem to know, but what must have happened there?

A young woman arrives from a foreign country. She worked here before and now came without a work permit. But she planned to stay for a relatively long period of time (2 months) and school holidays are also that long, so there is a possibility that she will look after the kids of the host family during that time. And there is a possibility that the host family will give her some pocket money or even pay her some proper salary. Yes, all this is possible, but it is also possible that food and bed would have been the only pay OR that she was not expected to WORK.

Let’s assume for a moment that the arrangement was that the girl will look after the kids and will get a bit of money for it. Yes, strictly speaking this is work and she needs a work visa. But come-on, are we THAT petty about it now? That girl would not have damaged the Irish economy nor would she have taken another person’s job, not would she have to pay any taxes because over the year the bit of money would have been to low to get her in the claws of the revenue commissioner. So I really think the immigration officers totally overreacted because there is the definite possibility that no employment or formal work was planned.

Sure rules are rules and an immigration officer doesn’t have the power to interpret the rules, he/she just has to apply them. But let’s be honest, they INTERPRET rules every single day and in this case they interpreted the rules unnecessarily strict.

I hope Paloma Aparezida Silva-Carvalho will have a good time in Ireland and I hope she will get a nice bit of pocket money from the family when she leaves and if she looks after the kids. But I think we should apologise to her for a totally unreasonable treatment and the responsible immigration officer should be sent on a humanity training course!

P.S: And here is another story that was reported on the SAME day: A 24 year old guy met an 18 year old Spanish girl in town. They spent some time together, but later he allegedly held her against her will and repeatedly raped her on the former Irish Glass Bottle site near Irishtown over two days. The guy is already on bail for some serious public order crime awaiting a trial, but after he was interviewed by the police, they released him with no criminal charges brought against him, but inquiries will continue.

So a totally harmless and innocent Brazilian girl who wants to visit an upstanding family will be thrown into jail because she MIGHT work here, but a guy that might have raped a girl and who is awaiting trial for a serious public order offence is free to roam the streets. WTF!?!?!?!

 

Dublin, Justice, Odd, Tourism, , , , , ,
 
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