Posts Tagged ‘Jetstar’

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. Media training lessons from Jetstar

   Published on Friday, June 26th, 2009
   While the saga of Jetstars’ stranded All Black fans became a communications quagmire, with
   claim and counter-claim, there is one particular element we would like to reflect upon. It is the way Jetstar’s spokesperson responded to questions about the incident during an interview with Radio NZ’s Morning Report last Monday.

   Jetstar’s spokeman Simon Westaway was not prepared to give any ground, let alone apologise.  The key messages were:  These people were late; we will debate this any time anywhere; we carry 12 million people a year.

   To paraphrase: No ifs or buts, we were right; these people were wrong.

   This approach even seemed to ruffle Morning Report’s nice guy Geoff Robinson, and was almost certainly the reason for on-going criticisms of the airline, some of which became quite toxic in the online space.

   Jetstar seems to have seriously misread the New Zealand culture as, in all likelihood, a local company and a local spokesperson would have been more conciliatory with messages like:
   We take all complaints seriously; we will review the matter thoroughly and examine our processes; and If we are wrong, we’ll take it on the chin and talk to these customers about making it right. (Apparently there was CCTV footage that could be reviewed).

   Such an approach would have de-escalated the situation which quickly went from simmering to boiling.

   If you are going to adopt this staunch, brash approach – no nonsense, no vacillation, let’s move on – just be sure you’re bulletproof… Today (Friday), Jetstar’s own reported actions suggest the airline did make some errors.  They are apologising to some customers, offering discount vouchers and reviewing their check-in performance.

   Public 1, Jetstar 0