Dispute over £165 check-in fee ensues between Ryanair and a family

A family is involved in a dispute with Ryanair after being charged £165 to check in at the airport, despite already having checked in online. Damian Lloyd had checked in his family a month in advance and brought the printed boarding passes to the airport. However, the barcodes on the passes would not scan, so the family had to pay to check in again. Mr. Lloyd tried to get a refund, but Ryanair claimed that they had unchecked themselves before flying, justifying the fee. After weeks of email exchanges, the airline has referred Mr. Lloyd to a dispute resolution service. Mr. Lloyd, a health and safety manager, had booked a 10-day family holiday to Gran Canaria in July. He is a regular flyer and had never had issues with Ryanair's extra fees before. He had happily paid to reserve seats, so he was shocked when his, his wife's, and his daughter's boarding passes did not scan. Even a Ryanair employee at the check-in desk was confused. The employee checked the computer, which displayed the family's names and seat numbers. However, for unknown reasons, the boarding passes couldn't be scanned. As it was an early morning flight, the employee couldn't contact Ryanair's customer service to rectify the problem. Instead, the family had two options - either wait for customer service to open and risk missing their flights or pay for new passes. Since the next available flights were three days later, Mr. Lloyd chose to pay for new passes. Mr. Lloyd claimed that the check-in employee mentioned it was a computer glitch and assured them they could claim the money back. However, when Mr. Lloyd requested a refund, Ryanair rejected the claim, stating that it wasn't their system's fault. Initially, customer service told Mr. Lloyd that he hadn't verified his identity, but they later admitted this was incorrect. They then claimed he had unchecked the day before the flight. Ryanair's spokesperson stated that the family had unchecked themselves on the website and ignored a pop-up warning them that they would need to check in again and generate new boarding passes. As a result, they were charged the airport check-in fee since they didn't have valid passes. However, Mr. Lloyd denies this, saying he can't remember going back on the website after checking in. He argued that Ryanair earns millions of pounds each year and that if he had made a mistake, he would take responsibility and pay. He insists that he had the correct boarding passes. Since their dispute cannot be resolved, Ryanair has referred Mr. Lloyd to AviationADR, an independent airline dispute resolution scheme. This issue of airline fees has gained attention following another incident where an elderly couple was charged £110 by Ryanair for printing their tickets at the airport. The couple mistakenly downloaded their return tickets instead of their outgoing ones.