Ryanair has pledged to alter its website after the insurance it was selling was deemed to be ‘misleading’.
The current online system makes it hard to find the opt-out option, making it hard for people to refuse the purchase of insurance.
Currently, the “don’t insure me” option appears in an alphabetical list in a drop down menu of countries, placing it between Denmark and Finland.
This makes it obscure, and led Which? the consumer rights group to interview, and bring their concerns to, Michael O’Leary, CEO of the airline.
Taking the criticism onboard, O’Leary promised that it would be changed by the end of the year, to be replaced by clear “insure me” and “don’t insure me” buttons.
Mr. O’Leary apparently disagreed that the option was hidden, and said that 98% of their customers managed to find the way to decline the policies.
But he did agree that changes needed to be made to certain policies to make them less complex. He said “there’s no doubt that we were at a certain point trying to encourage people to take out travel insurance, I think they should. But whether they take it out on a per trip or annualised basis is up to them.”
When asked about the issues with the system, he said that they do make “lots of little mistakes”, but that the company is good at correcting those mistakes. Time will tell if his promise to fix this online system is genuine.