We all know a trip to Ibiza can be life changing, but it turns out it can be name changing, too!
See, Adam Armstrong, 19, is called Adam West on Facebook, because, well, Batman. But girlfriend 17-year-old girlfriend India’s step-dad, who was so kindly booking the couple a trip to Ibiza, didn’t know the ‘Adam West’ thing was a lol (adults on Facebook, right?) So he put ‘Adam West’ onto the flight details and that was that.
Upon discovering that the flight was booked under a different name from the one on his passport, Adam got in touch with Ryanair, asking if he could change the passenger name on the tickets. But Ryanair said this would cost a £220 ‘admin fee’.
This was twice the price of the actual flight! To get around the fee, Adam simply rushed through a legal name change by deed poll, for just £103. Now his passport matches with the flight details!
Adam told The Sun: ‘Her stepdad got my name from Facebook but I had put it as Adam West as a joke, because he was the actor who played Batman on TV.’
But now…Adam is Adam West, too! And he’s on his way to Ibiza with India!
Ryanair said that the charge for amending the name was actually only £110 (still £7 more expensive than the legal name change) but it was doubled by Ryanair because two separate bookings were made.
The fee is apparently aimed to put people off re-selling tickets, but we do wonder if it’s also aimed at making Ryanair quite a bit more money.
UPDATE: Ryanair have responded with the following statement: 'Customers are asked to ensure that the details they enter at the time of booking are correct before completing their booking and we offer a 24 hour ‘grace period’ to correct minor booking errors. A name change fee is charged in order to discourage and prevent unauthorised online travel agents from ‘screenscraping’ Ryanair’s cheapest fares and reselling them on to unwitting consumers at hugely inflated costs. Under our “Always Getting Better” improvement programme, we have reduced our baggage, sports equipment, airport check-in and missed departure fees, as we continue to improve the Ryanair travel experience for the 100m customers we’ll carry this year.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.