Dearest Jetstar
I have no idea why I am even bothering writing this letter. Rumour has it in 2 months I will get an automated response from Jetstar stating I should of called today as per my friends experience, but I'm willing to give a try. Someone once said its good to write your feelings down even if no one reads it. Lessens the anger apparently, and good for your vocabulary,
So as it were, I did call today. 4 times.This resulted in a missed appointment , hearing different versions of every possible way to solve my issue... oh yes and we paid twice, for the same flight without the requested changes.
Let me break it down for you fellas.
10 of us are flying to Melbourne to celebrate a 40th birthday. 6 people got on the 8.45pm flight from Melbourne, 4 on the 7.15am due to availability. Half of the foursome had to call to resolve an issue regarding being double booked and at the time mentioned they had wanted to be on the 8.45 flight. Hey presto, seats available, request met. I might add with no extra cost.
Upon hearing this I call back on behalf of the only two now flying back 12 hours earlier than the rest of the party.
Call Centre Rep Number 1, knowing what deal we have booked on confirms that seats are available on later flight, but because we have paid via direct debit the money has to clear before any changes can be made.Very helpful lady polite lady.
I think on it and call back.
Call Centre Rep Number 2. Extremely good at customer service. I ask if there is anyway we can hold seats or anything at all. He speaks to his supervisor, runs through the situation again, but unfortunately cannot help due to the status of the booking being on hold due to a payment of direct debit. For the record I liked this guy. Huge fan.
We decide that if we can be assured that the direct debit will be refunded I will pay by credit card to get the booking out of on hold and then we can change the booking for the tickets Call Centre Rep Number 1 told us were available.
Call Centre Rep Number 3. Yes we can do all of that. The direct deposit will be placed back into your friends bank account, you will need to pay $17 extra for credit card and we will get you on your other friends flight. After he takes my money (that's the paying twice part, just to keep you up to date), he says that it will cost extra for those seats. Much, much extra. The seats Call Centre Number Rep 1 said were available... to me.... on the original deal. Obviously I complain. I am put on hold for about 30 minutes... and then hung up on.
I used to work in a call centre. That's code for "oh man my supervisor is going to be mad about this one, lets pretend it never happened"
That's about my limit.
I call back. I do have to say at this point your IVR system is probably one of the best I have come across and your waiting times aren't terribly long. I make it a point to compliment businesses when they are getting it right and I can only imagine with the amount of complaints Jetstar gets you probably aren't aware you are doing something right. IVR is good. You remember that.
Call Centre Rep Number 4. Here is where I may have lost it a little. At this point the flight is confirmed, no longer on hold. That's because I paid for it with my credit card.... before I got hung up on remember? So I re explain the entire situation again... and I hear the same responses again. I will say Customer Rep Number 4 was very consistent with explaining Jetstar policy in the politest of manners. Over and over. I offered a few of my policies in return. You know, standard lines that you do when complaining " I should charge you for MY time". I like that one.
So in conclusion. We have paid twice for flights, without the changes we requested. Obviously the extra charges I incurred by paying via credit card will be refunded. In case you need it pointed out, that would be the right thing to do, and I have been assured the original payment will be refunded upon receipt.
In the meantime there are still empty seats on the flight that we wanted to be moved to. At no time did anyone of your staff mention extra cost, they were also aware of what promotion we had booked with and that my friends who successfully changed their booking did so withing the same deal.
Now I know what you are going to say.
"We only have a certain amount of seats for specials." I know this because I heard it many times today, and I get it, I really do. Not to give too much away, but I could seriously justify fees and charges on any bill and have you believe that it's not just revenue raising. I'm pretty good at it if I do say so myself. BUT if someone had told me that the seats I wanted were not available earlier in my discussions with Jetstar, we wouldn't having this very one sided conversation.
However, you are in the industry of customer service. Today you misled me, took money from me, charged me extra unnecessarily, did not listen to me and wasted my time. On a personal level you actually kind of ruined my day.
When you do this to a paying customer there is normally reasonable ground on behalf of the provider to make things up a little, play nice, admit the errors and try and keep that customer.
There comes a point where you have to stop repeating your policies verbatim, admit you did the wrong thing and try and make it up to the customer.
I know its scary, but you can do it.
Gives you warm fuzzies too.
Oooh wait, before I go, I called back just to make sure my booking did still exist. It does... phew, but i just wanted to say Call Centre Rep 5 was also very nice. He offered me a special on a rental car.
Your staff in all are pretty groovy. You should give them the opportunity to excel at service rather than repeating your one liners.
Thanks for reading. Get back to me if it's helpful.. to me.
PS I already prepaid for lots of luggage. You cheeky monkeys got me on that last time.
PPS I might share this letter with my friends in social media land. I'm thinking about calling it jetStar Wars. Did you see what I did there? Like Star Wars.. because you are Jetstar and we are in a bit of a conflict? You have to laugh some days....