Insurance pre-selection criticised
Although outlawed by the South African Consumer Protection Act, a travel website in the country has allegedly fallen foul of the rule that sites cannot pre-select buying options for customers. The legislation states: “A supplier must not … induce a person to accept any goods or services or to modify such an agreement on the basis that the modification will automatically come into existence unless the consumer declines such offer.” However, a consumer in South Africa has reported Mango Airlines to Consumer Watch, after the site added travel insurance to his flight booking.
While in the booking process, Osman Mollagee noticed that the option to buy travel insurance was already pre-selected, so he ‘unchecked’ the box and continued through the payment process. Just as he was about to enter his payment details, though, he realised he had made a mistake in the spelling of one of the passenger’s names. “So all I did was correct that ‘name’ field on the website, which is a completely different field from the ‘extras’ field,” he explained. “I did not click ‘back’ or anything like that, on the web page, but unbeknown to me, the website actually just automatically went back to the default ‘yes’ option on the travel insurance, and I only picked this up after I had already paid.”
Mango Airlines spokesperson Hein Kaiser commented: “We have tested the system and during the normal booking process, the insurance option is not ticked, it is completely opt-in and thus guests are not automatically charged for insurance. However, when traveller details are edited later by the user, it seems that the system defaulted to acceptance of insurance. We have addressed this immediately and it has been resolved.”
ITIJ went through the Mango Airlines booking site on 5 September and found that the travel insurance policy, at a cost of R25, was in fact added automatically, with the words: “This option is PRE-SELECTED for all guests who travel with Mango Airlines. If you DON’T want to purchase Mango travel insurance you can remove it by selecting ‘No’.”
Elsewhere, Michael O’Leary, boss of Irish low-cost airline Ryanair, has said that the airline will replace its current travel insurance menu on its website ‘by the end of the year’, according to a report from a UK consumer organisation. Which? Travel visited the firm’s headquarters in order to put members’ complaints directly to the airline’s boss, one of which was the fact that they are required to use a drop-down menu of countries on Ryanair’s website to avoid buying travel insurance when booking a flight. Some people said they felt ‘tricked’ into buying insurance using the current online booking system, and that the option not to take out any insurance was ‘hidden’. The booking process as it stands shows the user an alphabetised list of countries of residence that pops up under the heading ‘travel insurance’, and if a customer doesn’t want insurance, they must select ‘don’t insure me’, which is found in the list between Denmark and Finland.
According to an interview with O’Leary, there are plans to replace the current system with clearer ‘don’t insure me’ or ‘insure me’ buttons. He disagreed, though, that the ‘don’t insure me’ option in place at the moment was ‘hidden’, adding that 98 per cent of Ryanair passengers manage to find a way to not insure their trip. However, he did later say: “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.”