"9 hour Delay" followed by Reschedule followed by CANCELLED nightmare

Just because you can buy cheap air tickets going to Tokyo, does not mean you should by any means. After all the stuff around I would of been more then happy to pay the 3x more with a decent airline like Cathay Pacific or Singapore.

We were informed via email the night before a 7am bus to the airport for a midday flight, that the flight had been delayed. The email did not share any type of how long the delay would be or when the delay would happen. You would assume a delay would be afew hours. However, after a phone call to Jetstar and the stuff around that they did not want to tell us the new time we were advised the delay was 9 hours. Instead of a 12pm flight, we now had a 9pm flight.

We re-changed our bus for a later flight and get advised at around 2pm that the flight had now been cancelled.

The only options we were given were stop over flights (defeats the purpose of having a "direct" flight doesnt it?) followed by 6+ hours stop overs at airports with nothing to do, or wait 3 days for another direct flight.

We had no option but to choose a flight with a stop over, after agreeing to this, we asked if they could do anything to make the journey alittle smoother (say an upgrade - I know how dare I ask for such a thing, after a delay, then a cancel, then an 6 hour stop over at a dodgy small terminal) they told me they couldnt upgrade us because we already accepted the offer of the rescheduled flight. (How nice of them)

We took the flight with the 6 hour stop over, and we were told by Jetstar this was the only way to get home was to wait the 6 hours. When we arrived at the airport, we noticed Jetstar had two other flights from our location to home before our late flight - I dont know why we were not offered these flights instead.

We went to the counter, and they told us the only way we could get on the flight is - if we wait last minute and they have no shows. We did eventually get tickets, but were the last in line to board the plane, the staff were rude at us, yelled at us about our bags, and carried on - I found myself apologising for being last however, this was their own fault we were last because they decide to cancel their planes due to "operational requests".

For future travelers, I called the travel insurance and they only way they would of helped was if they delayed for more then 12 hours. No help for cancelled flights, and were completley useless. What is the point of having travel insurance to prevent you from these issues??

Note to self : Never fly yetstar. Ever. Like Ever Ever.

Oh and we got a $80 voucher to use with them, you know where they can shove that.

P.S Don't keep advertising your stupid "promotional fares" if you intend on cancelling them anyway because you dont have the numbers.

P.P.S Melbourne Baggage counters - you have to check your own bags in and on top of that the stupid machines DONT WORK.