What is the point of cancelling?

Submitted by Maggs Smith on Fri, 07/12/2012 - 09:14

I booked a trip to Honolulu and due to circumstances I have to cancel the trip.
What is the point of contacting Jetstar and canceling the ticket, receive absolutely no refund of any description so they can re-sell ticket. I have traveled with other LCC and received part refunds.

Surely it would be a better practice of Jetstar to at least offer some % refund and a bit if good will?
Meanwhile, I won't be canceling my ticket, if fact I'll probably even do the on line check , maybe with a bit of luck, who ever has chosen the seat next to be will have a vacant seat.

Also with LCC I find it better to pay for the add ons closer to the fly out date in case you do have to cancel.

International

Australia-Melbourne - Tullamarine

United States-Honolulu

Comments

We are out $1724 on two

Submitted by Lorie Regehr on Tue, 01/01/2013 - 13:07

We are out $1724 on two tickets from Cairns to Honolulu. When we purchased them the rep at the call centre in the Philippines said if we needed to change our flights they could be sold online to another party or we could change our departure date. In either case there would be a $50 fee per ticket. However we learned there is no venue online to sell tickets, and when we tried to change the departure date were told there were no tickets yet in the system to change the same itinerary to Oct. or Nov. of 2013! When we contacted Jetstar we were given a CAS number with an assurance that someone would phone us in 72 hours. No one ever phoned. For 4 weeks we kept calling and hearing we would get a call back in 72 hours. No calls were returned. When we finally went in person to change the tickets, she quoted a fare that was slightly lower than our ticket price and we said "Great", we'll pay the $50 change fee and fly in Nov. of 2013. Then suddenly they asked for an extra $1400! When I asked "Why", customer service looked evenly at me and said "Madam you need to leave right now for the international terminal in Sydney or you will miss your flight".
I wrote and phoned Jetstar about this, but have received a copy/paste reply about it being unfortunate you couldn't fly, but your ticket is non-refundable. At no point have they ever acknowledged their refusal to return calls, or Sydney's refusal to allow us to pay the change fee to change the ticket.
Has anyone taken Jetstar to small claims court with success?