Summary

Jetstar's decision to change our flight times, has cost us over 20% of the cricket match we paid to see and 8 hours of our weekend holiday we took to Adelaide. Their customer relations policy is utterly inflexible about the flight changes, offering only flights on a following day or a refund which will take 5 weeks to process as alternatives.

They try to justify these changes because neither of the individual flight changes were more than 6 hours. Their call center tries to make moving a call up to a supervisor as difficult as possible. When we finally got to speak to a supervisor, they would only give us their first name.

We discovered a wealth of other complaints on the net and thought we should use this opportunity to publicise the unfairness being perpetrated on the unwitting public. Caleb wrote a letter into the Herald Sun, which appeared in the Nov 30th edition, describing our plight.

We managed to arrive with 10 mins to spare before their 30 minute checkin cutoff when we left Avalon and on the way home, so we managed to avoid their ruling that anyone past 30 mins before the flight will have to pay for their ticket again, in order to be allowed onto the plane. They notify you of this rule by email several days before the flight. This notice contains a bunch of other information that someone might skip through. If we had known that our flights could be moved to upto 6 hours, I would not have booked with Jetstar.

If you have any tales of woe from your dealings with Jetstar, please add a comment to this post.

Our letter, published

Published in the Thursday 30th November edition of the Herald Sun pg. 23

Ashes trip ruined
JETSTAR'S campaign promoting the Ashes Test cricket is a bum steer. After booking flights to Adelaide to spend three days at the Test, the airline made some not-so-meagre flight changes that effectively culled our three-day holiday weekend by more than eight hours. This means that we will now miss all of Sunday's play, which we had already paid for. Also, our departing flight from Melbourne was changed from the afternoon to 10pm, ruining plans to catch up with friends that night. To make things worse, our letter of complaint was ignored and a call to have it acknowledged was abruptly ended. Since no compensation has been offered on the ticket price, which he had paid for months in advance, we can only assume the airline's policy is for customers to wear the cost of their flight changes. Such contempt for customers is just not cricket.

Caleb Strong, Oakleigh.

Letter to Jetstar Customer Complaints

This is the letter we had to write and send via snail-mail to Jetstar because, although they have a number for their Customer Complaints Department, they refused to provide me with it.

The second time I called, their Harry, their Team Leader I'd been speaking to previously, refused to speak to me, with the guy I spoke to saying he "didn't want to spea... err... is on another call".

He and Jetstar refused to facilitate getting our complaint dealt with in time to actually affect our flight changes.

The set up is that they can make changes at will, and you can't have your complaint dealt with before the changed flight actually occurs.

Anyway, here's the text of our letter to Jetstar:

Jetstar Customer Relationships
GPO Box 4713
Melbourne
Victoria 3001

December 21, 2006
Re: Booking Confirmation Number T2H5LD
Dear Sir or Madam:
On June 28, 2006, myself, Mark Hollands, and Caleb Strong booked return tickets to Adelaide, flying out on November 30 and returning on December 3. We were to depart Avalon at 17:50 and Adelaide airport at 19:20.
Then, on November 7, 2006, we were notified that Jetstar had rescheduled. Our flight times were changed to 21:40 departing Avalon and 15:30 departing Adelaide.
This change is unacceptable to us. We have made plans, bookings, purchased tickets, taken leave from our jobs.
I have since spoken at length with your reservations department and have been informed that if the changes to our flights were 6 hours or more we could be put onto a Qantas flight. And yet the effect of the change is more than 6 hours: both our flights have been changed.
We also discussed the terms of the ticket-agreement with Jetstar, which cite unforeseen reasons such as technical disruptions and bad weather for change of flight times. Not operational reasons.
I also add that I have found the customer service I have received from Jetstar entirely unsatisfactory so far. At your reservations department I was only able to speak to a ‘team leader’ (whose name will be on our booking file, or I can provide to you via telephone). He would not give me a number to call you, the complaints department, on.
My complaint is clearly urgent, and I regard the hurdles placed in front of me to report it to you as a lack of interesting in solving my complaint or supplying good customer service. Indeed, I asked this team leader if my experiences with Jetstar amounted to good customer service, and he replied “that’s irrelevant.”
I have spoken with Consumer Affairs Victoria and will be filing a complaint with them and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
We will also mount a media campaign to spread the word that Jetstar treat their customers in this manner. I know that we are not the only customers in this situation.
I have also discovered that Jetstar are running an Ashes-linked promotion (see the ‘Sports Mad Seat Sale’ at http://www.jetstar.com/pdf/news/20061122.pdf). Part of our inconvenience includes us missing out on watching some of the Ashes. We will write to the Murdoch and Fairfax Press, call the major talkback stations, speak to the current affairs shows, and explain our story in the context of this promotion.
Therefore I write to you requesting that our flight-times are changed back to what they were originally, and that we are put on Qantas flights to make that happen.
We expect a response, by phone, on Monday November 27.

A Very Fine Player

Micheal Hussey.

What a star.

Richie said it perfectly again when describing Warnie as the best ever.

Makes me wish that we had stayed for the entire match. Astonishing that a game that looked to be a surefire draw, has turned into such a classic. Ricky Ponting and curator, Les Burdett both look like sages.

Jetstar dodged a bullet

One of the things on my list of stuff to do whilst in Adelaide was see Mike "Mr Cricket" Hussey, bat in the flesh. With Jetstar's flight changes limiting us to being able to see only 1 session of the cricket we had already paid for it was reliant upon the Poms taking atleast 2 wickets in the first session of play so the Huss would get his turn before we had to leave.

Hoggard blitzed the Australian top order in pretty quick succession bringing Hussey to the wicket with a good amount of time left in the session.

We managed to sneak in another couple of Coopers before heading off to the airport, where we plonked ourselves down in the Airport Coopers bar for our last beverage in Adelaide. We got the hurry up when our names were announced over the intercom, forcing us to polish off our beers and make a hasty procession down to the last gate in the airport to get our flight home.

I'm going to tidy these posts up abit and add in some photos when I get the chance. We will properly document the lengths we have gone to get the word out that flying with Jetstar is fraught with hidden catches.

Finally some action

Thought i might contirbute something today. Eh linds :P

Poms have finally lost some wickets and the Aussie crowd as come back to life. Dunno not what Flintoff was after in terms of a total, they have been batting for aaaages.

I remembered the joy of Fruchocs today, a South Australian delicacy. MMMmmmm Fruchocs

This post is just rambling along. Not sure if i have anything of importance to say.

Nope, this typing position is getting abit sore, so i might pack it in now.

kthxbai
-m

tea time

Maybe Jetstar should change England's flight times...

2/144 at TEA!

- L

Show us your tits!

Other than copious quantities of XXXX Gold Beer, the statement in the title of this post was the only thing that the Barmy Army and the Australian fans could agree upon.

One girl got up on her boyfriends shoulders and recieved a loud chant of 'Show us your tits!' from the Barmy Army causing her to swiftly get down. When the girl pictured above, repeated the feat in the midst of the Barmy Army and took off her t-shirt revealing an Aussie flag bikini, the chants returned but from both the Barmy Army and the Australian fans whom she egged on.

Eventually her support, decides the he has had enough of the situation and walks off, carrying the crowds encouragement with it.

But mostly, the Barmy Army would recite their numerous songs over and over with occasionally annoying/abusive comments were exchanged by the Aussie fans.

The Poms like the sound of their own voice

Pretty dull stretch of play in the 2nd session. As the Barmy army chant 'We are the Barmy Army for the 10000th time of the day, the thought i used as the topic for this post has become a certainty in my mind. Some of their chants have been pretty entertaining though. The convict colony one was good.

No pictures for the moment, since I cant manage to connect up the camera. Maybe later tonite when i can use a desktop.

I've pulled ahead of the Poms, 4 down thus far. Someone get out, we want KP!

-m

england: outplayed on the field

australia: out witted off the field

and thus the on-the-pitch / off-the-pitch dichotomy has never been more evident.

as i type this on the hill of the adelaide oval to the sounds of dickhead aussie supporters yelling "dot com hahahh", "W-W-W - ooh" good one. i'm then noticed by the surrounding barmy army who tell them to leave me alone ... "he's doing his homework"

and it's not like i'm contributing to the solution, surrounded by the problem, typing away at my friend's PDA... the wittiest thing we' the aussie supporters have come up with so far is hurling a beach ball across the crowd and then booing when a security guard inevitably confiscated it.

i'm beginning to wonder if that's the reason jetstar can do this in australia. have we lost our collective imagination? are we no longer (where we ever?) capable of voicing... oh fuck it... the barmy army just started chanting "4-1, 4-1, we're gonna win 4-1" and what was our response? "1-0, 1-0, 1-0"

best we can hope now is warney takes a bag...

-L

Howdy from Adelaide Oval!

This blog is to publicise the manner in which Jetstar has messed our Ashes holiday around and to record for posterity the shenanigans we got up to on the way.

Many thanks to Internode for the free wifi bringing this post to you from the ground. More posts and some pics coming once we get setup properly.

At lunch Poms 2 down and i've put 2 beers down also.

Go Aussies!