This was in my draft for quite sometime. Its actually written before the previous post but I took sometime to refine it a bit before publishing this. I want to write this down as take it as a record and reminder to never fly this airline again.
To get a better picture of what happened. Do see these links and understand that I was one of the affected traveller in this saga.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1084591/1/.html
http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/90/55056.html
I was much "luckier" as I received an SMS informing my flight was cancelled 12 hrs before my departure time! A joker also called me to inform me that the flight was cancelled. I tried to asked for more details and he just rudely said I called to inform. You have 7 days to amend your flight. I asked to speak to his supervisor or manager and he said there is no supervisor or manager.. (duh.. I work in a call centre too and this is a lame excuse man!!) Asked for this rude joker name and he just cut me off...
Fuming, I tried to call their hotline and guess what?? Kept me on hold for bloody 2 hours until it cut off at 10pm automatically... WTF..
So I booked another flight with Airasia and tried to call their toll free hotline in Thailand for 7 consecutive days before I got through. Refunded my flight but need to wait 4 to 6 weeks to process... Duh...
Anyway, the person on the line who took my call was at least courteous and polite... But the whole situation could be handled much much much better.
For example. The person who called to inform should gave options. Like do you want a refund or maybe a reschedule of the flight. Not just ask the customer to call back the service hotline?? You're already speaking to a frustrated customer and this would only just aggravate him or her furthur.
Provide information and be truthful about it. I strongly suspect 2 grounded planes would affect more than 40 flights being cancelled. There must be more to it and I suspect their pilots or crew were leeched by other carriers. Since there was recently news about Pilot shortages in Asia.
And finally, please! If there is a crisis like this. The hotline should be 24hrs instead. Get proactive and call the customer. Yes, it may cut your profits even furthur and maybe incur more losses but at least you save your bloody IMAGE!! Now you have a bunch of disappointed customer (including me of course) who would be throwing all the negative points of your service to other potential customer!
Yes there will be customers and you will still earn money because you are cheap, but you won't have loyal customers like Airasia (and they are really improving!) You would forever be stuck serving the worst customers (those cheapo ones and complaint the most!) Good luck Tiger... I think you really need the teeth to continue after this fiasco..
1 comment:
It is possible that a single grounded aircraft will screwed up your entired week scheule especiall for these budget airline as they are really maximised their aircraft utilization.
Full fare airline always has spare aircraft and will book you on different airlines if their aircraft happened to be grounded. For budget airlines they don't have this obligatoin so they will just re-fund you the ticket.
But i agreed with you that the hotline guys handled the situation quite badly. These most probaby are sub-con to another company to do these kinda job.
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