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.