Over The Barrel...

You do not realise it until it happens before your very eyes. Insurance companies have you over the barrel in a lot of ways by the very complex and cunning ways they structure their insurance products. I had to get a Compulsory Third Party / Green Slip insurance certificate today. You are encouraged to shop around and find the best deal. There was no best deal in that sense. My green slip pretty much irrespective of where I went to get it was going to set me back AUD 472.42.

I have my comprehensive car insurance with NRMA and I am supposedly entitled to a discount if I have more than one insurance product with them. My Green Slip was discounted from something above AUD 600 to AUD 472.42. To me that is almost fraudulent. A company that I have no associations with will do it for AUD 472.42 and a company that I have insurance products with where I am entitled to a discount will do it for AUD 472.42. Go figure!

In the end, I opted for NRMA. I did this because in a lot of ways I felt I was over the barrel. The reality is that I will soon be needing home content insurance and as such a third insurance product with NRMA is allegedly going to entitle me to even greater discounts. Excuse my skepticism, but my guess is that the NRMA will ratchet-up the basic cost of my insurance and then discount it to a level that I could get it from elsewhere.

Then the decision really becomes one of convenience. If I am going to be paying within a few dollars of premiums that I can get elsewhere then it makes sense, at least to me, to have all my insurance needs at the one place. Simply, what I make up on the merry-go-round I lose on the swing anyways. So, it really is a very much break even proposition. It is sort of like feeling that this is the least painful shafting I will be getting overall in terms of having complete insurance cover across the board for everything that needs to be insured.

I think the realisation that I was over the barrel was a sobering one in a lot of ways. For when I told the NRMA sales person that I had a non-discounted offer of AUD 472.42 from another insurer that I held no policies with at this point in time, her answer was a simple "So, you want the green slip or not? Can't you see we are busy today?" I took the green slip from the NRMA for the reasons I noted earlier. And, I did not feel too bad about getting shafted, I was just kind of glad to have it out of the way for another 12 months.

The NRMA logo should really read "Helping people [to empty their wallets]".

AirAsia Service

Budget Airlines should be interpreted as skimping on just about everything, including customer service. If people are offended that this post paints a negative picture then so be it, but I am unapologetic for it. It is the old marketing adage that a happy customer might tell five people of their positive experience whereas an unhappy customer will tell twenty or more.

I am unhappy with the service.

Anyone that has had any contact with AirAsia knows that it has a no cancellations / no refund policy. It is a little hard not to know this as it is a prominent feature of all their advertising materials, prominent in the fine print! What is less well known is that you can purchase comprehensive travel insurance for about IDR 78,000 that allows cancellations in certain circumstances and entitles you to a full refund on the cost of your ticket.

Now, I was not travelling AirAsia myself, my folks were. The old fella and the old lady (terms of endearment -- not offensive) decided that in the middle of their planned trip to Bali they would fly over to Jakarta to visit with their first born, his wife, and their soon to be grandchild. AirAsia was to be the provider of choice. Unfortunately, for the old lady, a trip to the doctor revealed a medical problem and an immediate operation was ordered and hence no travel for a couple of months. Bang goes the trip to Bali and to Jakarta. The old lady is on the way to a full recovery if anyone is interested.

My folks grew up without a lot, so their mindset is once you have something it is worth a little extra to protect, thus everything is insured. This includes travel insurance when booking flights.

I have spent the last few days trying to cancel the AirAsia ticket and find out what I have to do to lodge the claim and get the refund processed. AirAsia has an automated phone service that ultimately gives you the option to talk to an operator in either Indonesian or English. I had called a number of times already and chose the Indonesian language option (I am pretty good in Indonesian) and did not get what I needed in terms of information.

So, I thought bugger it I am going for the English language option this time. Funnily enough when I finally got through to a talking head the first things I heard were "Selamat Siang!", "nama saya XXXX, bisa bantu dengan apa?" which roughly translates to "Good afternoon, my name is XXXX, what can I help you with?" (Siang is a period between 10.00 and 14.00, I called at 13.30). So much for the English assistance.

What transpired was this:

Me: I want to find out whether I need to cancel a ticket or at least let you know that the passengers willnot be travelling?

AA: We have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

Me: Yeah, I know! I just want to find out if I need to let AirAsia know that the passengers booked on flight xxx will not be travelling?

AA: We have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

Me: Yeah, I think I understand that part! So, I do not need to cancel? I just leave the tickets as they are and then when the passengers don't turn up that is not going to cause any dramas, is it?

AA: I do not know.

Me: Is there someone there that does know? Can I talk to them?

AA: Silence...I will check...silence for about 5 minutes.

AA: No one knows.

Me: Oh, really? Okey dokey. My next question relates to the insurance and the refund claim can I talk to you about that?

AA: We have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

Me: Even where the passengers have an insurance policy?

AA: We do not have insurance policies!

Me: Really? What about this "go insurance" policy that has been purchased.

AA: All of our policies are issued with the provision that the terms and conditions are out our discretion and your mother's illness is not covered.

Me: Have you read the policy or the terms and conditions?

AA: No, but all policies maybe changed at our discretion and your mother's illness is not covered. Besides, we have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

As stupid as this is it highlights the limitations of teaching your service staff a script and not providing them with the tools to address enquiries outside the scope of the script or having the confidence to escalate the matter to a more senior staff manager or supervisor.

In the end and a few calls later I managed to get in touch with the insurer, AIU (under the auspices of AIG), and they were very helpful and I am now onto the filling in of forms and gathering the necessary supporting documentation to make the claim.

Moral of the story is that budget airlines = budget services or no service at all.