After having our 7.25am Monday flight cancelled due to the volcanic ash and then staying in Sydney for 2 days before we even managed to get through to Jetstar's call centre we were told there were no flights available to reschedule 3 of us onto. We took the option of going to Melbourne and getting on the spirit only to find that there were heaps of tickets available online for sale for $389 from Sydney or $309 from Melbourne yet they were unable to reschedule us onto these flights for fear they may not scam enough paying customers to make up for their stupid decision not to fly on the previous days. Go Virgin! I will never ever fly Qantas or Jetstar again.
Domestic
Australia-Sydney
Australia-Hobart
Comments
How would this have
How would this have been?
Identify that you actually need to cancel flights - lets stay you do
Identify - using your own database, who will be affected
Contact, using the ease of technology, those affected
Predict, the first opportunity that you will be able to guarantee flights and keep people posted.
Take the initiative, as the service provider, to help those people to know what is going on rather than fend for themselves. Smart idea: ask if they need to travel immediately??????
Put on extra flights at the earliest possible opportunity and offer them, in order, to those who have been held up and/or who are in desperate circumstances. e.g. the student for whom 500 dollars is a massive amount of money.
Protect your brand by putting on extra staff to TALK to your customers. Update your website with messages of what is being done and what the alternatives are.
Instruct your sales people not to SELL any more tickets to people, who have already paid for a flight.
Apologise and seek to rebuild faith in your brand.
This sequence of actions was designed by my 11 year old when I asked him what he would do if he had been jetstar. The only consolation in this is that, children are now being educated to solve problems in ethical ways. This last point only makes me feel more sorry for the young phone staff who were having to defend the indefensible at the front line.
The world is in need of ethical corporate behaviour and jetstar is a perfect case study in how not proceed. It should also make fantastic fodder for all marketing and business students in Australia.
It is just a pity that so many of us were forced to 'burn' money in order to make this very obvious PROBLEM apparent and sadder still that it will not be addressed by the industry.