JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE A LOW COST AIRLINE, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A CHEAP & NASTY ONE

I added my story below on the Jetstar facebook page over the weekend & finally got a call back from a Jetstar staff member today........their answer I'll need to pay $30 per sector to change tickets that cost $39.....WTF

My suggestion to anyone having troubles with Jetstar in New Zealand is to take them to the Disputes Tribunal. You can do this online at http://www.justice.govt.nz/tribunals/disputes-tribunal/documents/Form1-C.... This will mean they are inconvenienced as much as you are because they actually have to either turn up to the hearing or send in a submission. Either way they have to do something.......

I found out from the staff member who called me back tonight that the New Zealand address is P.O. Box 14081, Christchurch, NZ 8030. You'll need this for the disputes claim form.

I hope this helps.

"To the General Manager Customer Service - Jetstar New Zealand
I am writing to ask what are the Customer Service KPI's for your organisation. I will now detail the reason for my question.

A little bit of background.....I live in Auckland with my second wife & my children live in Wellington with their mother (my ex wife). My second wife & I or my children fly between Auckland & Wellington every 2nd weekend so you will understand that we have used your airline a lot over the past 3 1/2 years.

Two days ago (21.06.2012) my wife booked three fights for my children to fly up to Auckland & back for the first week of the October school holidays. The flight coming up to Auckland booked for 2nd October while she thought she had booked the flights going back to Wellington on 9th October. But as your website doesn't align the dates for the departing and retruning calendars directly underneath each other she in error booked the children's return flights on 16th October. Both dates flights were $39 so no difference in price.

She realised this error as soon as she hit the button to accept payment & of course this was too late to change the booking. Well, we thought this is just a genuine error & we had done this with our National Carrier once before about two years ago & they had been very obliging. However, your customer service department was not!!!!

We immediately called your customer service line and were told emphatically that there was no way a booking could be changed without a $70 fee being charged per ticket. That's a $210 charge for changing what were originally $117 worth of flights. At the time we were not told that we could actually do this for $40 online which wouldn't make sense anyway given the tickets originally only cost $39.

After approx. 10 mins of going absolutely nowhere we asked to speak to a supervisor (this took 5 mins) who gave us the same spiel for a further 10 mins. At which time I took the phone off my wife & asked to speak to the customer service manager. Now given you appear to have outsourced your customer service offshore they weren't able to put me through to a manager. In fact they couldn't even give me a phone number in NZ or Australia to talk to a manager.

Well you can imagine by this stage that we were getting a little Peeeeeeed off. So we politely hung up & called again thinking we might get someone on the line that understood what customer service actually is......but alas this time the person on the line was also towing the party line & in fact wouldn't even put me through to her supervisor. All your customer service staff appear to not have the freedom to make decisions to create customer satisfaction. This second representative suggested I should go through the normal complaints process on your website. And funnily enough, again she didn't have any numbers for Customer Service Management in either NZ or Australia.

So I decided to try & get hold of someone in your head office as by this time I had wasted an hour of my time & you & I both know time is money!!! Well your organisation must be the most well hidden in the history of Aviation. The only number resembling a head office number I could find was one I found on the website www.dontflyjetstar.com which funnily enough is the top hit when you google "Jetstar Complaints".

Well, and I use this term again, "funnily enough" this number which is listed as a reception number & the voicemail that I reached four times when I called confirmed is actually your reception. What organisation has a reception number going straight to voicemail???

I suspect one that doesn't want to deal directly with customer complaints. Now from my story, you can see is one of a simple genuine mistake & could have & should have been able to be rectified by a simply 5 minute phone call with a company with a hint of customer service ability.

Now I have just done a calculation that tells me that I will have to spend a minimum of just under $60,000 in airfares over the next 9 years to see my children every second weekend. You would think that a simple 5 minute customer service phone call and a little compassion might have been worth $60,000 in future revenue. I can tell you now we will from this day forward avoid flying with your airline unless it is absolutely necessary.

This issue has now taken up two hours of my time & will cost your organisation time to deal with in the New Zealand Disputes Tribunal and will suffer significant negative word of mouth from someone who has been a regular traveller on your airline.

Customer complaints are usually an avenue to cause customer delight. It would appear that your organisation did not go to this school of Customer Service.

I look forward to your response.
Aaron Humphrey"