Don't pay Jetstar by bank transfer!

Is Jetstar going out of business? I have sent emails tonight to all the available Jetstar email addresses but they have all been returned "undeliverable". How do I get my money back from a direct bank transfer to Jetstar since they appear to have ignored my booking and deleted it from their web page?

Hi Jackie,
Yes, I also had this advice from my bank about putting a trace on the transfer. My immediate concern was that my online booking was not showing on the Jetstar website. I made another call on Tuesday night and spoke to a very helpful operator who asked me several security questions and then confirmed that my reservation is still in their system and on hold. Again I was told that the payment can take 7 to 14 days to process and once payment is processed I will receive an emailed itinerary and my booking will be posted on the website.

No. As a matter of fact I have spent most of my morning (on my day off) and used up all my Skype credit, phoning Jetstar and my bank in Brisbane. Since it has now been 15 days since I made my booking, I phoned JS to see what's going on. They told me that my booking had been "auto-cancelled" as it wasn't paid within 14 days. They said they had no record of the $692 I had transferred and that I should contact my bank to send JS a fax with the details and evidence of the transfer they made on the 16th Jan.
It turns out that my bank (QTMB) does not use their transfer system and so this could be the problem. Another call to JS call centre and they said they will email me within 24 hours of receiving my fax. My bank has emailed me to say they have faxed JS. So, I SHOULD expect an email by Monday or Tuesday at latest and HOPEFULLY an intinerary by Wed or Thurs. That is what I would expect of a normal business the size of JETSTAR. My bank .... 1. Answered my phone call immediately without 20 or 30 minutes of recorded advertising. 2. Understood the problem and suggested solutions within a 3 min. phone conversation. and 3. Sent the fax within the hour and advised me by email.
Incidentally my bank is Qld. Teacher's Mutual or QTMB, formerly QTCU. They are great, and very personal service, businesslike and act on your requests.
I told the phone rep. that it was nothing personal, I am angry but not at them, at their management. All the call centre personel have been courteous and helpful. They are only the messengers for a very poorly run business that has contempt for its customers.
I will update next week. Hopefully with good news that I have tickets.
The funny part is when the call centre people say "Thanks for flying with Jetstar" at the end of the call. How can I? Jetstar has taken my money and cancelled my booked tickets!!!!!!

Thanks Jackie. I have just now phoned Stacey in Melbourne. (Using yet more time and money to make the expensive international call from Brunei) She was courteous and I tried to maintain my rage but I did let her know how frustrated and angry I am getting about the time it is taking to get any information about what has happened with my booking and my $692. By the end of the phone call she said that she will "get someone to follow it up". She also used the phrase "but we are a budget airline" to somehow excuse Jetstar's treatment of me as a customer.
I felt sorry for her having to be an apologist for a company that clearly has a policy or business philosophy which obviously is driving away customers. When she asked at the beginning of the call if I was a customer, I could only reply, "Just this once".

I wonder if there are enough customers who have lost their money, flights, patience, sanity, to initiate a clas action against this company? Is it actually legal to take someones money for a service, promise to provide the service/product/tickets within a stated number of hours (48) days (14) and then not provide the service, deny you ever received the money and do nothing to return it?

Just came across this on the web. A travel agent's view on Jetstar. Sure wish I had known more about JS before I booked my domestic tickets for March. Our other tickets are with Air Asia. We have booked dozens of flights with Air Asia and they have been great. Easy and quick bookings, good business practice and professional service. Jetstar could learn a lot from Air Asia.

http://www.customguides.net/0058/005812.html

Yes, bring it on. I have only been troubled by Jetstar for 15 days but it is long enough. I can't afford to wait weeks for my tickets or miss getting them completely and I can't afford to have hundreds of dollars lost and doing nothing except increasing the earnings of this pathetic excuse for a business. Keep me posted Jackie.

Oh really? That would be great. My reservation number is RG31PE

I booked 4 return tickets for my family from Gold Coast to Sydney 17 March return 21 March. JQ409 and JQ412

Total price $(Aus) 692

I booked online on the JS site on 16th Jan. Transfer went through on 17th Jan.

My bank has faxed JS with details of the payment. Stacey said not to expect to hear from JS for a while yet. I suppose she was hinting at another 2 weeks.

Thanks

Dave

I have pasted the email I received last night. It is the response from Jetstar to the fax my bank sent to them the same day.
What concerns me now is the wording of this email which mentions a "refund"

I have not requested a refund of my money. What I want is the 4 tickets I booked and paid for on 16 th January.

Since this is an Automatic email. I am hopeful that I might get my tickets and receive an itinerary sometime this month. It seems though JS can't get anything done properly.

Any word from your lawyer Jackie? Have you now got your tickets and itinerary?

dave

I have deleted the pasted "automated email" (6th Feb 2012) To avoid any possible legal action by Jetstar.

I will explain in my next post.

I have now made several calls to Jetstar since Friday and receiving an email that mentioned a "refund'.

This morning and this afternoon I have spoken to several different people on call centres and finally called Stacey in Melbourne. Surprise she wasn't available 1st call. 2nd call she had a recorded message. 3rd call a helpful switchboard operator named Casey (funny how that rhymes with Stacey isn't it?) She didn't want to give me her surname but gave her JS ID number - smart girl. She took my call and enquiry after a bit of persuasion. I was told that I had now been passed on to the "Escalation Team". After some minutes of explanation and suggestions by me to improve their dealings with customers and their business practice, she offered me a $100 voucher for tickets on JS. I suppose that's good for JS since I have told them I will only be flying this once, if I do ever get my tickets.

I received an email from Katie (Also similar to Stacey and Tracey ..... is there a pattern here?) Apologizing for the experience I have had with Jetstar and confirming the launching of a "thorough investigation". Also details on how to get my $100 voucher.

Still no tickets, no itinerary, no receipt, no confirmation that my money is in their account (It was bank transferred and went into JS account on 16th January remember.)

Pleased to hear that you finally got your tickets Jackie. I hope you have no further problems with Jetstar.

I am afraid it takes more than a voucher (that I probably can't use because I am sure it will have conditions attached - I live in Borneo and we always use Air Asia - a great budget airline - rarely fly domestic in Australia as we don't often come home) to win my loyalty.

I will update as soon as I hear anything. Hopefully this sorry saga will end one day and we will have our tickets and the family can fly to Sydney to visit my elderly Mum and the kid's Grannie, we have not seen for a few years.

The funniest quote from today's phone calls is "You are becoming a problem for us...... you have called a number of times"

(Don't call us, we'll call you? ...... If only they did..... or emailed..... but they don't, so I have no alternative but to call JS every day until they know my name, my case... and process my tickets.)

I received a phone call yesterday afternoon from Katie (?) to tell me that my payment had been processed and that my itinerary would be emailed later in the afternoon. She gave an apology on behalf of Jetstar and I received my tickets/itinerary later in the day. I have also received a $100 voucher for Jetstar airfares that I must book within three months for travel within 12 months.

I felt a great sense of relief yesterday when I finally got my tickets. my booking is also showing on the Jetstar website, curiously though the cost of the tickets shown in the booking is much more than I actually paid. On the itinerary, this difference is shown as "agency ...." something..... A difference of around $200. I wondered whether there has been a fare increase or something. Anyway, I finally have the tickets I booked. It took three weeks and numerous calls to call centers and several calls to Melbourne. Although most of the JS operators were courteous and even on occasions sympathetic, it was not until my enquiry was referred to their "Escalation Team" that things actually got done. This took persistence and patience and long distance calls on Skype.

My advice to anyone having problems with JS is to keep calling them. Stay calm, polite and patient but be assertive and make sure they are reminded that you want something done, not in 14 days or 28 days, BT the way that an efficient and ,businesslike airline can do it. I have been flying since 1984 and an expatriate in four countries in Asia Pacific region and I have NEVER had an experience as bad as this when simply trying to book airline tickets.

The only conclusion that I can reach is that Jetstar management are deliberately trying to run the business into the ground so they can trash it and sell it off, perhaps to a bigger carrier. I hope that I am right and it is takenk over by Air Asia, an airline that knows how to treat its customers and gets things done in a businesslike way.
good luck to other JS customers.
Next month my family will fly JS for the first, and probably last time. from reading some of the reports on this forum, I can't imagine it will be an enjoyable experience.

Amr Kehila. I will take the time to respond to your rude message. I can't understand what would motivate you to post this response months after I posted about the very real problems I had in booking my tickets through Jetstar.
I can only guess that you are an employee of Jetstar who is setting out to discredit customers who have genuine problems with their poor service.

1. Firstly, I always use internet banking and normally pay for airline tickets online using a VISA card. Using a phone is problematic because when you phone Jetstar, you will speak to a call centre, not to someone who can deal with your problem.

2. I tried to do a direct transfer because that was what Jetstar advised on their website and I normally do direct transfers. I am an expat. but have an account in Australia and so bank transfer is normally convenient and efficient. I do bank transfers monthly and never have any problems. I noticed the 48 hours to transfer and accepted that. I waited patiently and after that time elapsed, I made enquiries to find out what had happened. Every enquiry I made after that time yielded no information. If I had not done anything I would never have got my tickets.

3. Actually I did sign up for an account but the booking disappeared from the JS web site. If you read my posts instead of just posting insulting responses, you would know that.

4. I was spending every day on the phone and emailing JS trying to sort out my booking at the same time as posting and updating the information on this site, to inform others about the problems I was having and try to solve them. If you read the posts you will see that others had similar problems, including Jackie, who was very supportive and helpful.

5. How is the world dumber when people try to solve problems and share them with others so they will not be repeated? the problem was not my fault. I communicated politely and patiently with every person that I spoke to at JS to try and sort out the problem.

6. It is people like you who spoil an otherwise good business. You are prepared to take orders from your idiot line manager to go on this site and try and counter some of the negative publicity your company is getting.

7. Jetstar admitted their mistakes and apologized for their poor service in processing my booking. I probably would have avoided these problems by booking and paying by VISA card. Bank transfer should also be as convenient but for some reason, Jetstar's system could not process or locate my booking. They took a long time to track the money that my bank had transferred and their customer service was poor. I didn't receive any responses to my emails until finally I got to speak to one of your bosses in Melbourne and had to threaten legal action.

8. The $ 100 voucher that I received went some way to compensating for the many international phone calls I had to make and the stress I underwent in trying to track down what had happened to several hundred dollars of my money. I had international airline bookings from Air Asia that took about 10 minutes to pay for and print out tickets etc. for that holiday. Jetstar can improve its service. It would be well advised to sack trolls like you and concentrate on looking after their customers so they are satisfied and don't need to post on sites like this.

9. My family eventually got our tickets and had a pleasant and trouble free flight on Jetstar. The cabin crew and other staff were polite and friendly. I will fly Jetstar again but hope that I never have a repeat of this booking experience.

Dave