When budget airlines first came into existence, everybody was praising the fact that the traveller is now able to cross Europe for next to nothing by air. Nowadays, many are cursing them for inventing ways to take more money off passengers for things people have trouble avoiding. In other words, what non-budget airlines have in their flight tickets, budget airlines have to make elsewhere. Recent studies and surveys have revealed that this way of doing business is far from fair and is beginning to annoy a number of people.
Sometimes, the credit card fee when using the internet can cost more than the ticket. How ridiculous is this?! Of course, nobody pays in cash electronically so this ludicrous charge is unavoidable. Staying with the booking process, the number of tick boxes is also worthy of criticism. They most frequently involve customers having to accept, or in most cases refuse, certain items such as extra insurance, extra luggage, booklets etc. What is most confusing and often leads to people paying more are the sites whereby customers have to tick boxes to avoid paying for some things, yet untick other boxes to avoid paying for others. The confusion leads to people paying for things they do not need or want.
However, the biggest scandal, recently unearthed by the Trading Standards Institute, is the fact that the scales do not work at airports to measure the weight of luggage. It was discovered that 10 out of 18 scales of a certain airline had some value before the bags were placed on the scales. Furthermore, one fifth of the scales at London Gatwick were proven to be faulty. This adds to the purposely confusing weight limits set by the airlines in the first place. The airline staff can easily nullify the scales before the weighing procedure. However, the question remains as to whether they want to or not?
