My family and I were supposed to travel to Phuket on 31 Mar but did not make the trip when the flooding situation there did not improve. The night before the scheduled flight, the Thai Meteorological Dep had even issued a flood warning for the southern part of Thailand and listed Phuket as one of the high risk areas. As we were traveling with 2 very young children, we did not want to take the risk.
We called Jetstar and the customer rep, Trina, assured us that Jetstar was aware of the flooding situation and would assist affected passengers by offering them some alternatives such as flight refunds in the form of Jetstar vouchers or rescheduling their flights. Trina asked us to call back within 24 hrs to get a confirmation on the options available, as Jetstar had not made a decision yet at that point in time. Trina even helped to document (or so it seemed) our concerns so that we would not have to repeat our story the next time we call.
24 hrs later and after waiting for 15 mins, we were connected to another customer rep, Greg. The first thing Greg asked after noting our flight reference no. and names? "And how may I help you today?" ... We repeated our story and unlike Trina, Greg was less understanding and told us there would not be any options available to us. When we informed him that Trina had assured us that there would be options, he flatly responded that Trina was wrong. His only advise was that we continue calling everyday to find out if there are any options at all.
The third time we called, guess what? We waited 15 to 20 mins and had to retell our story. The customer rep, Cheng, basically told us the same thing i.e. there have not been any decisions made on this and Jetstar is still looking into the matter. He acknowledged that there are other affected passengers like us that had been calling them for 'options'. His advise? Keep calling back.
It is one thing for Jetstar to not refund us the flight or to give us alternatives given the uniqueness of our problem - it is another for them to provide such miserable and unprofessional customer service. We are very disappointed with how they have been managing and dealing with our concerns so far and quite frankly, we are no longer expecting any type of useful assistance from them on this matter.