Bringing my loving parents down for the Easter weekend and just tried to amble my way through the ridiculously lengthy Jetstar online booking process - something which is deliberately designed so that even Gen X and Y have probs doing, let alone the BB's.
Without watching what you are doing, so easy to get shafted a good half dozen times.
And this was before they stung me with a 28 dollar fee for using my Visa card! Not a problem (apparently) if I had had a Jetstar Mastercard, where the "booking fee" can somehow be magically waived.
So, I called them to ask for justification (please don't laugh, I'm being serious) for taking 28 bucks - I wanna know who gets this money.
The mushroom (ie kept in the dark and fed shit) that I spoke to said that it was all Visa's fault, definitely not Jetstar, and that as I had "unfortunately brought the tickets" (his words, not mine) that there was nothing that he could do.
I argued for quite a while that Visa don't charge me $28 per transaction fee for buying bread and milk, or for booking through, say Virgin Blue, or for anything else that I can remember. But no, I was told, it's all Visa's fault.
Realising that my breath wasn't worth wasting on a bottom-feeder, I asked to speak to his manager (OK, really stop laughing).
His response: "I wouldn't think it would be worthwhile - he'll just tell you what I am - it'll waste your time". Thanks, Einstein.
The upsides:
1) A renewed interest in any airline other than DeathStar.
2) A more precise definition of the word "inept" and phrase "reverse incentive"
3) Discovering www.dontflyjetstar.com
My only regret:
Spending the first 6 minutes of the call trying to get the mushroom to turn off the automatic recording "for quality assurance and training purposes" (which I requested just to see if they took that seriously). Would love to have gotten my hands on a recording and somehow posted it on here. Comedy Gold.
Comments
Justin you are one of those
Justin you are one of those anally retentive nuisances aren't you... You should totally have booked with Tiger. They only charge $7.50 per person per sector which means you would have been charged $15 per person (or $30 total if you can multiply that by 2).
Virgin would charge you $4.50 per person per flight, which (you guessed it) totals $9 per person or (you're onto it now I can tell) $18 total. See a trend? The cheaper the airline, the higher the fees. You will often pay more for Virgin flights, less in credit card fees.
What do you honestly expect some call centre employee to tell you?
Lima you are one of those
Lima you are one of those annoying gnats known as Jetsar employees, come on you cant hide it !! we can all tell cause your inability to understand his point is typical of their staff.
Specially the idiot ones who come on here and then try and defend them. Read it again... Can you justify the Visa charge?
Banks are now no longer allowed to do this, they had to be regulated harshly (as pushed by the fed- up public) to make them stop stealing from their consumers.- er...... see a trend here ?
It costs a fraction of this price and Jetstar should not be allowed to steal under the guise of fees .Put your proper price up front !!!
They should have honest pricing and not highjack people with hidden fees, this is issue being debated about at the moment. Oh that and the fact that your call centre staff are well um.....
The fees are clearly stated
The fees are clearly stated at payment screen when you select the form of payment. I understand, and also agree, that the fees are a bit extreme... but it should be directed to the entire airline industry, and not limited to Jetstar as it is clear there are other airlines (Tiger for example) who charge even more.