Guilty until Proven Innocent: The customer is always wrong when Jetstar cancel flights!

June 5th, 2012

Dear Sir/ Madam:

Guilty until Proven Innocent:

The customer is always wrong when Jetstar cancel flights!

My business trip for a day started out well. Morning flight on Virgin Australia from Sydney to Brisbane was efficient. Meetings went well. However, 2 hours prior to my Jetstar (JQ819) 8:30pm flight taking off back to Sydney, I received a text. My return flight had been cancelled. This is where the fun and games began.

The text message simply said, “Please call reservations for recovery options”. Recovery options? Did the plane need medical attention? Or would I need recovery after this!

I called the number. I was welcomed by the wonderful invention of the 20th century; the Voice Message Prompt System. Yes, that wonderful computerized/ human voice that asks you the same question numerous times, only to come back with a ‘sorry, I didn’t get that answer, can you please repeat?’ or words to that effect. The bottom line, the system is designed to waste your precious time and is a digital attempt to make you more infuriated whilst you wait for a ‘real person’.

After a 15 minute wait listening to music and Jetstar hyperbole, I thought my ‘Eureka’ moment had arrived: when a live operator finally answers…only to be disappointed when the line went dead a few seconds later!

By this stage I was in my friend’s car and on the way to the airport. By the time I jumped through the hoops of more voice prompts and put on hold to the same music and repeated Jetstar advertisements, another 20 minutes had disappeared faster than an Arctic glazier. Finally, I was met with a live operator. Who sounded very ‘un-Aussie’ and quite possibly a Filipino.

I was welcomed by the Jetstar call center agent heralding “It seems that you would like to make some changes to your flight, how can I help you?” A scripted response no doubt! A little taken back, I responded with a quick retort: ‘Actually, it is not I that wishes to make the changes, unfortunately your airline has cancelled the flight and hence I am calling to find out my recovery options’.

A quick apology by the agent, and she explained to me that I had two options: amend the flight or request a refund. I asked if there were other flights available tonight? Her response was; unfortunately I cannot offer you a flight tonight as we don’t have any other flights to Sydney. I asked, ‘How about another airline’?

She responded: ‘Unfortunately we can’t allow you to fly on another airline. However, I can get you on a flight in the morning. Alternatively, I can give you a refund.

I explained to her that I was almost at the airport and I would see if an alternative airline had an available flight tonight and if so, I would call back to request a refund from Jetstar. She agreed and re-confirmed that I would need to call back to obtain the refund.

Upon arriving at the airport – just after 7pm -, I approached a very friendly customer service gentleman at Virgin Australia and was told that they had a flight available at 8pm. I went ahead and paid for the flight, walked through customs and then called back Jetstar to request my refund.

I called back the 131xxx number and after another 15 minutes of voice prompting, hold music and Jetstar advertisements until I was finally welcomed by ‘Al’(agent ref: XIDE07) – a live operator – who went through his SOP, almost15 minutes later (after having to recount the facts), I found myself continually put on hold and told that he had to get approval for the refund. My patience was beginning to wear thinner than the Ozone layer. I asked, “Why is this so difficult?” I have called back and just wish to accept the offer of refund.

The reply was, “I need to verify the information”.

The cat and mouse games had begun, and after 25 minutes, Al stated that‘You have changed your flight to a Qantas flight with a ground staff member and therefore was no longer eligible for a refund!’Struggling to comprehend this comment, I thought, ‘I must have a previously unknown twin using my name and making bookings…’I was also wondering how Jetstar’s balance sheet must look? Are things so bad that they have to invent stories to save them from making AUD100+ refund? Maybe I should be more patriotic and sympathetic to their plight and forget my right to claim a refund?

Jokes aside, I was bemused and perplexed. I asked to be transferred to the supervisor. It was obvious to me that poor old “Al” must have somehow managed to get his facts wrong. I know it must sound weird that a call center staff would get anything wrong but what other explanation was there to it?

Unfortunately, “Al” was demonstrating more defiance than an Aussie digger in the trenches and was determined not to transfer me to a supervisor because he was there to ‘solve’ my problem. He once again stated to me why I changed my flight to Qantas via the ground staff? By this time I felt like I was in a witness box. I was being cross-examined by a want-to-be attorney. This was ‘War of the Roses’ and we were not even married.

Convinced this whole Jetstar experience was an illusion, I pleaded with “Al” to retrieve the recording of my conversation with his colleague and assured him that if he or his supervisor listens; all will make sense. He would also clearly hear his colleague state, that I needed to call back to request the refund and also the fact that Jetstar could not offer me a flight tonight. “Al” wasn’t interested! He just kept banging on like a drum machine. Why did you change your flight with our ground staff?

After repeatedly stating the fact that within 1 minute of arriving at the Virgin check in area I purchased a ticket and at no time did I approach any other airline staff, “Al” was still not convinced. He was assured of ‘his’ facts, as Jetstar would never allow a transfer booking without having proof of identity.

Well it seemed that Al was moving as fast as Uluru. Nor could not be convinced to listen to the voice recording of his colleague and myself, and he was not interested in passing me over to a supervisor. The whole experience was turning into a joke. I was sure it was a prank and at any given moment, someone would say, “You’ve been Punk’d!” Unfortunately for me, Ashton Kutcher was nowhere to be seen.

After a good 30 minutes on the phone with Al, we were disconnected…I was beginning to dread dealing yet again with the ‘human teleprompt’, but by this time had managed to memorize the numbers and not have to listen to her whole spiel. This time around I was focused on getting past the frontline staff. No offence, but they were programmed by there script and anything that fell left or right of that was clearly a case of the client is always wrong. Besides, I had to now deal with the fact that I have a clone that was going around rebooking my flight on a night that I was told that there were no flights.

The next cab off the rank was Claudia (agent ref: XJON03); she was a budding Muhammad Ali from the beginning. She was doing everything within her power not to allow my polite request to speak to a supervisor. After a good (or bad) 25 minutes on the phone of waiting for supervisors to attend to me (at one point she told me that one had become available – only to wait another 10 minutes and for her to come back and say, ‘sorry, she was available but the customer asked another question!) However, during our conversation, she once again threw down the book and stated, that I had changed my flight with a ground staff.

Unfortunately, after 25 minutes waiting for the supervisor, another connection with Jetstar’s help number was once again mysteriously terminated. Prior to us being terminated, Claudia did tell me that if I wish to challenge the position of Jetstar, I would need to file a complaint in writing. And if the agent was found to be wrong, I may receive a refund. This was annexed with the on-going issue of me allegedly changing the booking (supposedly after I purchased another ticket…).

I conveyed to Claudia, ‘given the amount of time and frustration that I have dealt with, that the only complaint I would put in writing would be to every media outlet I can source and whoever I can think of that would like to hear this story.’ At that point, I was sure that logic would prevail and someone would say, ‘sorry Mr. Rennie but we profusely apologize for the inconvenience, there has been a major miscommunication and we take complete responsibility and apologize for accusing you of re-booking your ticket after you purchased another ticket from our competitor!No such luck.

It is now the wee hours of the morning. I made it back to Sydney thanks to Virgin Australia. The issue with Jetstar is now no longer limited to the refund of the ticket, it is about principals. It is bad enough having a 180 degree U turn pulled on you (call back for your refund if you don’t require us to rebook) but to state point blank that I had made a change of booking with their ground staff at the airport, when the only ground staff I spoke to was their competition to purchase a new ticket is hotter than the Kimberley desert at noon. I maybe a fool to fly Jetstar in the first place but to accuse me making a booking transfer (when they had told me there were no flights) was ludicrous and insulting.

One would imagine some bright spark with the Jetstar management requesting their call center to provide them with a recording so that can hear the situation between their agent and myself. The moment that they do, they will realize that I purchased a ticket within minutes of hanging up from their first operator. From that point, logic should prevail and one would imagine them being very embarrassed about the actions of their staff.

No matter which way Jetstar wishes to leverage PR to water down this debacle, the facts will always remain with me and every person I share this story with that the company has some real internal problems on its hands.

I wish Jetstar luck in trying to be consistent and establish some real customer service with their ‘in-bound’ call centers practices. I emphasize ‘inbound’ due to my numerous pleas for a call back, which I was emphatically told by their call center agents that they do not make calls out to customers, I needed to call them back! That meant another dealing with my favorite computerized human!!!

Unfortunately, I can’t help but wonder how many other ‘customers’ have shared similar frustrations dealing with Jetstar’s flight cancellation and recovery options?

Dale Rennie