Ryanair Protecting Consumers and Brand

Can I get an explanation please? Can someone from La Repubblica or the Italian transportation ministry, or the European Commission, or Adusbef, or Federconsumatori please tell me what Ryanair did wrong? For those of you who don’t know what the hell I am talking about, here is some back story from the BBC:

Spain’s transport ministry has opened an investigation into Ryanair’s move to cancel thousands of bookings made via third party internet travel agents. Ryanair says the sales, which represent about a thousand bookings a day, are illegal. The no-frills airline announced the move not to accept tickets bought anywhere other than on its website or via its telephone booking line last week.

“We’re cancelling these tickets because they are in breach of our terms and conditions. The third party is breaching our copyright,” Daniel De Carvalho told the BBC news website. He said that customers were sometimes being charged a 200% surcharge on top of the value of the flight when not purchasing the ticket directly.

Now, I want to know, how can anyone be upset that this company is trying to protect their customers and their brand? Since when is attempting to make sure your customers get the best possible price wrong? Why is no one protecting Ryanair? I mean, have any of you seen the scab travel sites out there?

Daniel De Carvalho said “We fight for our mission which is to deliver the lowest fares. We believe this measure, in the mid- to long-term, will benefit our passengers.” Now most of you reading this in the US don’t know who Ryanair is. These guys fly you around Europe for a Jackson….go ahead go look. That’s right; $20 bucks get you the following flights from the United Kingdom to:

Alghero (Sardinia)
Angoulême (Cognac)
Balaton (Hungary)
Barcelona (Girona)
Bergerac (Dordogne)
Palermo
Pau (Pyrenees)
Poznañ
Seville
Zadar (Croatia)
Biarritz
Billund
Bydgoszcz
Gdañsk
Pisa (Florence)
Poitiers
Rzeszów
Trieste
Krakow
Nantes (Brittany)
Porto

These are fantastic deals! How can anyone bitch at this company? Am I missing something? They canceled the flights, credited the customers back, and will book most of them with cheaper flights than they would have gotten from booking sites such as V-tours of Germany, Spain-based E-Dreams, and Ireland’s Bravofly.

Where is the injustice?

I have no problem with a company trying to protect their customers and their brand. Unless the BBC left something huge out of this article I can’t see a reason why anyone other than the booking sites has an issue. Am I reading this wrong? Let me know.