A British holidaymaker has lost £900 after becoming a victim of a social media scam when she complained about wet seats on a Ryanair flight. Sharon Morrell, 48, was travelling with her family to Palma, Majorca, on October 24 when they discovered several seats were soaked due to rainwater entering the cabin.
Morrell recounted that the seats were not just damp but had puddles, and the cabin crew offered only paper towels to dry them. "They can't expect for people to just sit on wet, puddle seats. There was definitely an inch of water," she stated.
Following the flight, Morrell took to social media to express her frustration. Shortly after, she received a call from someone claiming to be from Ryanair's customer service, offering compensation for the inconvenience. The caller instructed her to download two apps to facilitate the transfer of funds.
However, Morrell realized something was amiss when payments began to be debited from her account instead of money being deposited. "Why are there payments leaving my account when it should be the other way around?" she questioned. The scammer reassured her that it was a normal process, but alarm bells rang when she noticed the payments were going to an account in Kenya. She ended the call when the scammer asked about her account balance.
A Ryanair spokesperson confirmed that due to adverse weather conditions on the day of travel, a small number of seats near the aircraft door became damp. "Crew assisted affected passengers by wiping down the seats and this flight operated normally from Bristol to Palma de Mallorca," the airline stated.
Morrell is pursuing the fraud case with her bank and expressed her distress, saying, "It's so easy to be sucked in and I just can't believe how easy it is to get scammed. Anybody can fall for these scams. It's my own fault, I got sucked into this." The experience has put her off travelling with Ryanair and even going abroad again.