This is a bit of a Jetstar horror story that I'd thought I'd share with you all. It's probably preaching to the converted and I'm not sure posting here will do much good but, oh well, here goes.
I have always wanted to travel to Japan as my grand mother was Japanese and we were very close. When she passed away late last year I began looking into going but didn't really have the funds. I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be traveling any time soon and began saving my pennies.
Then, I thought I caught a lucky break - Jetstar two for one flights to Japan. Alright! I could just make that work and I put the idea to my girl. She was all for it so we booked. Great, we were going to Japan. It was going to be awesome. A week of sushi, sake and Japanese craziness.
Now, here's where it all goes pear shaped. First, my girl had to go back to NZ for family reasons so we needed to reschedule our flights. Of course this cost money. Quite a bit of money. About $600. It was pushing my budget, but we still wanted to go and I couldn't see anyway around it so we went and paid the price. Our cheap holiday wasn't that cheap anymore but we were still going, so I put on a brave face and made the best of it.
That is until my girl and I break up (to be fair that's probably not Jetstars fault) and no longer want to travel together. So we go about finding someone to buy the tickets from us - it says you can transfer the names on the tickets for a change fee and (here's the catch) "fair difference." This may be common knowledge to some but I'm fairly inexperienced at dealing with airlines, so you can imagine my surprise when the customer service person with the slick, faux-American accent tells me the fair difference is $1700!!!
As it was repeatedly explained to me by the lovely customer services manager, and forgive me if I'm paraphrasing, "you have to pay the fair difference because you are changing the names on the tickets and this means cancelling your flights and re-booking them and because the price has risen on the flight we had booked the difference is $1700."
Of course I tried reasoning with them that the only thing I wanted to change was the names on the tickets - nothing else. Same flights, same times, same destinations. Just two different names on the tickets. I didn't want to re-book anything. Surely there is no flight difference as I have already paid for the seats. What difference does it make who's in them, really?
The answer: "I value your opinion but our policy is.... Nope, fair difference, $1700. Cancel the flight, re-book. Rinse and repeat." The customer service manager wouldn't/couldn't even put me through to his superior office. Apparently he's in charge but has no power to make any decisions or do anything except read the answers off the script. Frustrating, to say the least.
There you have it, my bad Jetstar experience. $1700 to change two names! I was fully prepared to pay a small administration fee. I can accept the $50 per ticket change fee. The customer service actor explained to me how they had to change the names on the flight manifest and.... well that was about all they had to do, and I can see how this would be very, very hard to arrange. But $1700? No matter how often I say it I just can't fathom how this sort of wrought can be legal.
Anyway, I've taken enough of your good time. Like I said, I don't know that posting here will do much but at least it's been a somewhat cathartic experience. Thanks for reading.
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So, I just thought I'd give
So, I just thought I'd give you all an update. I posted my story last night and then today I got a phone call from someone at Jetstar (I won't mention names as per the rules on this site). It seems Jetstar pay people to troll the complaints on this site. A paranoid person might be excused for thinking that receiving unsolicited calls from a company that you had just made a negative comment about on the internet was a crude stand over attempt but I'm not paranoid, so I don't. I think anyway you slice it, it is an interesting way for a company the size of Jetstar to handle customer complaints.
The purpose of the call was to "explain" how very complicated a procedure it is to change two names in Jetstars system. It involves deleting the bookings, then re-adding them and that this is clearly worth $1700. I won't bother telling you what I think of this other than to say that some of the data entry staff at Jetstar must be on a fantastic hourly rate - I actually work with databases for a living so if someone from Jetstar is reading this could you please let me know where to send my CV?
He also "explained" that Jetstar's policy was clearly "explained" at the time I bought the tickets and that made charging $1700 for a name change right (both legally and morally). By "explained" he was referring to the huge long list of terms and conditions that you're supposed to read before hitting the buy button. I must admit that I glanced at them but didn't really pay too much attention. Why would I? Who, other than lawyers, reads the terms and conditions unless they have a problem. At the time of purchasing my tickets I wasn't thinking in terms of what could possibly go wrong. I was going on holiday. It was going to be great.
I realize by admitting to not reading the terms and conditions thoroughly Jetstar are probably pointing at the screen and shouting "Aha! See, he admits it. He didn't read the fine print. We slipped it in there and he fell for it. We've got him. Break out the Bollinger." Or maybe not. I really don't care. I've done my money. I know that. Jetstar can take it and redistribute to there shareholders - or maybe give some of it to the nice gentleman who called today as a bonus? Another complaint successfully handled.
Maybe I'm being overly romantic but wouldn't it be nice to deal with a company that was interested in genuinely helping their customers resolve their problems in a fair and equitable manner rather than trying to gouging cash out of them by tripping them up with nonsense policies? Here's a free tip, if you have to refer to the policy to know if it's right or wrong, chances are it's wrong and you're just looking for an excuse. Of well, it's just business isn't it?
Love the way you write. As
Love the way you write. As for me as I leave a Jetstar flight I give a big ingratiateing smile and say "JETSTAR STINKS"to whoever catches my eye.
Thanks for the compliment,
Thanks for the compliment, Alana. Spread the word. Cheers.
JET STAR DONT BOTHER WITH
JET STAR DONT BOTHER WITH THEM WHEN THINKING OFF TRAVEILING .THEY CHANGE THERE FLIGHTS DESTINATIONS ECT WE BOOKED AND FULLY PAIED FOR A TRIP FROM BRISBANE VIA DARWIN AND SAME COMEING BACK.IN AUGUST 2012 WE HAVE JUST BEEN SENT A EMAILL SAYING WE NOW HAVE TO GO BRISBANE VIA SYDNEY WITH A 7 HR WAIT TO GO ON TO BALI AND THE SAME ON THE WAY BACK .. HELL NO THATS APP 15 HR FLIGHT TO GO TO BALI EACH WAY ....ASKED FOR A REFUND THEY SAID OK BUT IT WILL TAKE 10 TO 15 WORKING DAYS TO GET IT BACK WHAT A RIP OFF THEY HAVE BEEN PAIED BY US IN FULL IN MARCH AND MONEY TAKEN OUT OF OUR ACCOUNT THAT DAY BUT THEY WANT TO TAKE 10 T0 15 WORKING DAYS TO PAY US BACK I WOUNDER HOW MANY OTHER PASSANGERS EACH DAY GET RIPED OFF BY THEM THEY ARE MAKING A FORTUNE IN INTREST OFF US THE A.C.C SHOULD DO A FULL INVESTIGATION IN TO THIS SORT OFF SCAM .YOU CANT EVEN TALK TO ANY ONE HERE IN AUSTRALIA YOUR CALLS ARE DIVERTED TO THE PHILLAPINES HALFE THE TIME THEY CANT EVEN SPEAKE CLEAR INGLISH WHY NOT PAY GOOD ENGLISH SPEAKING STAFF THE PROPPER MONEY OR SOME OFF THE INTREST THAT YOU ARE MAKING OFF PASSANGERS FOR HOLDING THERE REFUNDS MONIES ISAY SHAME ON YOU JET STAR YOU DO NOT DESERVE BUISNES AND I FOR ONE WILL NEVER FLY WITH YOU AGAIN AND HOPE OTHERS DO THE SAME YOUR COMPANY IS VEREY DISHONEST ..
Andrew, my partner and I know
Andrew, my partner and I know all too well what you have experienced with Jetstar!
We booked the same deal - 2 for 1 flights to Tokyo in October. Long story short, my partner now has to have surgery on his knee and we have had an opportunity come up in the last 4 weeks that has seen us pack our bags and move to France for 9 months and we leave in September. This obviously means we are no longer able to use our tickets to Japan in October. So, about 2 weeks ago we phoned Jetstar up to see what it would cost us to change our tickets over in to someone else's name - same date, flight, time etc. just a name change (exactly like you). We too were told there was a name change fee (she told us $40) + fair difference cost we would incur. They too told us this cost would be around the $2,000 mark to have this action of changing the names only, performed as we had to cancel one ticket as we got it for "free" (buy 1 get 1 free) and purchase another one. No matter how many times we tried explaining that we have still paid and reserved 2 seats on a plane and by cancelling one and purchasing another one it means we have paid for 3 - the agent wouldn't budge. We of course questioned it numerous times and got so fed up with them that we eventually ended the call. 10 minutes later we decided to call up again to see if we could get a different agent in the hope of more positive news. And we did. The next agent again told us it would be a $40 per person per flight fee to change the names + any fair difference. When we asked him what the fair difference was, he told us $12 per flight was the fair difference! Awesome! Or so we thought...
That afternoon we decided to put our flights up for sale on ebay as we were happy enough with the new costs associated with changing the names on our booking. The very next day we had one hit on ebay from a guy who asked us if we were sure it doesn't cost more to change the names. We said that no we were definitely told $40 per person per flight + a fare difference of only $12 (This call was 10 minutes after the previous call where the other agent at that time told us $2000!!). Feeling a little uneasy seeing as we had already been told a few different answers we decided to ring them up again to TRIPLE check!
We phoned Jetstar again and got another agent who proceeded to tell us the fare difference was now around $1700! Furious, I requested to speak to a supervisor as it was only 1 day before I had an agent tell me $12!! Pretty big jump in not even 24 hours! Finally, after being on hold forever we got to speak to a SUPERVISOR. And WOW!!! It gets better. The supervisor began to tell me the name change fee was actually $50 per person per flight. This is now the fourth person and a supervisor I was now speaking to and STILL being told DIFFERENT and NEW information about the dam cost to change a name on our booking!! I explained to the "supervisor" that we were trying to get new people to take over our tickets and that they were making it extremely difficult to do so when each person is telling me a different price. So, the "SUPERVISOR" then told me that it would cost me a total of $200 ($50 per person per flight) to change this booking. I asked him if there would be any other costs involved (fair difference) and he said NO! That it would be $200 ONLY! I made him repeat it to me as I know all of their calls are recorded. He repeated to me in plain english "It will cost you $200 only to change the names only on this booking and there will be no other expenses incurred. Would you like to change the names now?" Now at this stage we were still enquiring and didn't have set names yet so told him we would call back with names. He told me he would put a note on our file so that we didn't keep having this problem.
SO... (no it doesn't end here!) We finally found a couple that were ready to come down yesterday afternoon to pay us cash for the flights (we gave it to them very cheap, losing a lot of money on them but recouping some would be better than getting nothing). We rang Jetstar yesterday to arrange for the names to be changed. I was at work so my partner rang them and they proceeded to tell us it was now $1,200 to change the names. We had call reference numbers and the name and Agent ID number of the "supervisor" we spoke to who wrote the note for $200 and gave them this and they said that no the note on the file says $50 per person per flight + fare difference. After my partner spent an hour and half on the phone to them and being put onto a supervisor they told him that no, the supervisor never said. Basically telling us we were lying and the only was to prove it is to request for the recording. For us to get a recording we must request in writing and then it will take 15 BUSINESS DAYS to pull up the recording! We don't have 15 BUSINESS DAYS! we are out of the country in 2 weeks!
I then called them up and also spent over an hour on the phone to them and a manager (so by this time we have spoken to a total of around 8 Jetstar agents about the same f****ng thing!) and I ended the call with a supervisor asking him if there was anyone else I could call or write to about this because he was not doing his job properly and all he said (said it about 20 times) was that we had to fill out the feedback form online and wait for the outcome. What outcome!? "To prove this we will need to bring up the recording which will take 15 business days!?" Haha I don't think so. So he was the "highest person in the company of Jetstar that I could speak to over the phone" and he couldn't do anything to help me at all. I told him I was unsatisfied and unhappy and that I would go and tell all of my friends and family and everyone I work with to never fly with Jetstar again and he said he was happy to finish the call on this note.
I then came on here and found a head office number in Melbourne that someone posted but all that does is let me leave a message which surprise surprise no one has answered or returned my call. I'm not quitting though.
Sorry this was so long. Thanks for reading!
Hey Alysha, Good luck with
Hey Alysha,
Good luck with your fight. I got absolutely no where with my complaint. I did get someone from Jetstar call me after reading my post on here so maybe you're post will stir up some action for you as well. Still, like I said, no joy for me but hopefully things work out better for you. Jetstar - What a bunch of pricks.