Posts Tagged ‘customer service’

1. Communications shouldn’t mean altercation

   Published on Thursday, October 14th, 2010
   Hopefully an altercation is not the only way to get Jetstar’s attention, but it may be.

   Our experience is as follows – after booking a flight to Christchurch to see the Ron Mueck exhibition with members of an art group, a later visit to an orthopaedic surgeon resulted in a fixture at Ascot hospital for a total knee replacement for the same dates. Yes, the knee had been dodgy for some time, but had not stopped other outings in previous weeks and months, like trips to the Sydney Biennale, to Melbourne and Hawke’s Bay.

   On recognising the clash of the dates for the Jetstar trip to Christchurch and the knee op, the appropriate action was to contact both the airline and the insurer of the flight insurance.

   While a call to the insurer was, if not satisfactory, at least a sense of “communicating”, Jetstar proved impossible. Eventually, after a 50-minute wait on their 0800 line to explain the flight could not be taken, the advice was to explain by fax the reason for a fare refund.  This was done a full month before the scheduled flight, and followed up with a second fax. 

   Has there been any response from Jetstar?  No, that’s if you don’t register the countless “no-reply” emails and text message reminders of the flight it was no longer possible to take.

   Person-to-person contact with Jetstar is nigh impossible it seems, unless you’re a shock jock at the airport.

   It is appreciated that Jetstar is a no-frills business model, but that does not excuse it being such a black hole when it comes to trying to talk about legitimate refunds.

   Perhaps the only way to address this is to take the matter/issue directly to the checkout desk, with boxing gloves in hand!

2. Grumpy customers show the vulnerablity of businesses

   Published on Friday, July 24th, 2009
   It is probable that there are very few of us who haven’t gotten grumpy with our bank at some time or other.

   But you have to be pretty darned grumpy to withdraw $190,000 in cash, stipulated in $20 bills.  Mapua artist Roger Griffiths quit his bank of 25 years and carried his cash down the road to the Nelson Building Society.

   We’re told Roger’s parting with his local Westpac branch was over its refusal to give him a mortgage.  In defense of its position, the bank says that it just needed to be confident that regular repayments could be made on the requested mortgage.

   After 25 years you’d expect that the bank would have some knowledge of its previously loyal customer, and would have realized that as an artist remuneration comes in dollop-form rather than a dribbling salary.

   It’s conceivable that this very public customer grievance has done more than $100,000 of damage to the bank’s reputation as, aside from the bad press, Roger’s action may surely embolden others to reflect on their own grievances and ponder action.

   When incidents as dramatic as this arise we are left to wonder how an individual within a major corporation can, in spite of all the policies, training and supervision, act in a way that fires customers up to the point where they terminate the relationship.

   It was another bank this week, BNZ, which reportedly left it to individual customers to sort out an error, and private information was disclosed. The aggrieved customer again went public because she just wants people to know about the “terrible” service she had received.

   How vulnerable we are to front line people, all businesses, but particularly banks.