I am lodging at QCAT a claim for a cancellation of a flight 2 hours before boarding for lack of crew reasons. No alternative flights were provided and the lady in the Philippines didn't understand that Brisbane airport was close to the Gold Coast so she refused to allow a different airport to return us home even when I offered to pay to get to the alternative airport. Pretty sure she was reading straight off a cue card with staged answers.
I ended up paying Qantas $1400 to fly us home because as much as I love the Gold Coast I didn't want to stay there for the rest of the year waiting for Jetstar to find a pilot/hostess/Jess/ignition keys or whatever it was they needed to achieve a simple scheduled domestic flight.
The Jetstar real human management when you finally get to them said you should claim through insurance but I believe they knew at the time that insurance doesn't cover idiots that can't manage a company of that size to have 5 staff to crew a plane. Anyway I did go and lodge a claim with my insurance company and of course they said they don't pay when its simply caused by Jetstar management or should I say lack of competent management that didn't roster enough people on to fly the plane. I actually agree with the insurance companies, why should they pay when a company the size of Jetstar simply stuffs up and doesn't have enough staff, in my world if I stuff up I fix the stuff up, then pay...and apologize profusely.
I now fly Qantas and love it, don't care how much it costs cause its not worth the penny's saved to deal with the trouble that Jetstar can cause. Alan Joyce needs to take some responsibility for that cluster#%$@# of an offspring that Qantas has created and make some good business decisions to clean it up as clearly I am not the only one experiencing this type of unconscionable treatment. I am sure if enough people make the effort to lodge a consumer court claim eventually the ACCC will investigate the disgraceful consumer guarantee breaches that are occurring every week with no regard to Australian's consumer rights.
PS Jess if you are reading this please call, would love to resolve any concerns you may have.
Comments
Mediation is on 18th Feb, don
Mediation is on 18th Feb, don't believe I should negotiate below my outlays given they seemed to have breached ACCC consumer guarantee as well as their own policies on what they will do when they cancel, keep in mind this was pre COVID days......anyone got any legal suggestions for me.....
Interesting. I didnt realise
Interesting. I didnt realise that QCAT would hear such complaints. Im in Victoria, so I'd use VCAT. If consumer affairs say they cannot help, would that mean I'd get the same response from VCAT? As I cant get any professional advice (at no cost- Im a pensioner) I'd love to know if you or anyone can offer some feedback, albeit not professional. I can provide info- if necessary I will write it out on a post here, if more than one post is permitted. (My post I made this week was about 'what you can or cannot do," to help advise those suffering from Jetstar crap. Not specifically about my refund issue.) I didnt know until reading today that Qantas owns Jetstar! Well! Arent they the ones to point the finger at? Is Jarman the person to focus on? I'd say this is part of the plan- to upset people with Jetstar's bad practices, so that some at least will fly Qantas at higher prices next time! NOTHING surprises me.
"ACCC and ACL Regulators best
"ACCC and ACL Regulators best practice guidance for the Travel Industry for COVID-19 related travel cancellations."
This is the 6 page document I rreceived from ACCC, created July 2020.
If I can get anyones email address, I can forward a copy. Dont know if Im permitted to put my email address here?
I'm not sure how much the content is enforceable, but as I wont give up on principle, I will try to find out, In particular about refunds when under financial hardship (which Jetstar denied me.)
Hi Thanks, have had a read of
Hi Thanks, have had a read of the ACCC and ACL regulators best practice as mentioned above, some good words there that Jetstar is clearly not following, but its not until they get taken to court as I have done that they do anything about the complaints. They have immediately offered to pay my recovery flights now that it is heading to court but I am not happy as I have had to expend money and waste everyone's time including taxpayers money with magistrates courts when clearly they knew they should have paid and they figure only 1 in a thousand will go to court.
They want me to sign a confidentiality clause which I will if they compensate me for my lost time and stress by not settling a genuine claim caused by their mismanagement.
From reading this and other sites this appears to be a bigger issue with most swept under the rug by a confidentiality clause. This appears to be a systemic process of their management in denying consumer rights until they are forced by a court or ACCC to correct the issue. I suspect thousands of people are regularly like me being defrauded of their consumer rights by a systemic flaw in Jetstar corporate culture, this culture must be coming from the top.
VCAT should be same as QCAT,
VCAT should be same as QCAT, its the only way you can get a result, consumer affairs and airline regulators seem to be just message boards and waste more of your time....post your details of your claim and I will try and help, you can easily lodge the claim for $125 in Qld hopefully same in Vic but its a time consuming process....
In court mediation Jetstar
In court mediation Jetstar apologized for what they admitted was a mistake of the agent in the cancellation process, thank you Jetstar for apologizing but it should not have taken court action to force that apology, below is my letter to ACCC which I intend to keep providing evidence to them until action is taken;
Attached is a summary letter from myself to Jetstar, the email of advice from the ACA, and my call transcript demonstrating the false information provided to the ACA.
In summary I believe my personal matter to be serious in that it is evident that the treatment of myself by Jetstar was a prolonged abuse of position by Jetstar, and possibly was unconscionable conduct and at the very least demonstrates a corporate culture of management that is systemically flawed and biased to the point of deception.
Jetstar as you can see from the transcript advised the ACA in the complaint review process that I was offered recovery flights (incorrect) and then stated that by the time I called the airline these flights were no longer available (also incorrect evident from the transcript).
If Jetstar can provide false information to the ACA in the investigation of complaints then clearly Jetstar has no regard for the ACCC court action in which it undertook to not deceive or mislead customers.
Jetstar has now in court mediation stated the advice of their agent in not offering a recovery flight was a mistake and have now paid my expenses, however my concern is that this issue was only resolved through a court process that most customers cannot afford or have the skills and energy to engage in.
For a period of 6 months all levels of Jetstar management engaged in deceitful and misleading advices to avoid payment of what was clearly a genuine claim and where only prepared to acknowledge when forced through court action. This I am sure you are aware cannot be an isolated case of deceptive and misleading conduct given the length of time and the number of staff and management involved, this has to be a widespread market mistreatment of customers by Jetstar.
I would appreciate this evidence being used to assist ACCC in rectifying the corporate culture in practice here to avoid other customers experiencing what we have been through.