Thursday, February 24, 2011

AirAsia improves booking service

AirAsia improves booking service

A TECHNICAL glitch in budget carrier AirAsia's online booking system resulted in some customers being overcharged, or charged wrongly, for tickets bought.

It was brought about by high traffic volume to the website and irked many, who aired their woes on blogs and forum websites.

Network manager Esther Chen told my paper that she was wrongly charged $3,000 for nine plane tickets about three years ago. She tried to book a getaway to Bangkok with her family over the Chinese New Year period that year. But, when the 29-year-old tried to confirm her ticket purchases online, the AirAsia website displayed an error message. She did not receive any order confirmation or receipt from the airline.

Thinking that her order was not processed, she went on to buy the tickets from another budget airline. About a month later, Ms Chen was shocked when her credit-card statement reflected charges for the AirAsia tickets.

She rang the airline's call centre immediately to ask for a refund. She said: "The call-centre personnel were unable to direct me to the manager or provide a solution. There also wasn't a procedure in place for me to file my refund request formally."

An AirAsia spokesman told my paper: "The problems that these customers encountered were due to a technical glitch in the booking system, as a result of high traffic volume on the website.

"We take these issues seriously and we have mechanisms in place to address them."

For instance, the airline implemented a new booking system last year to improve its capacity to handle online traffic volume. This was done to "serve more customers simultaneously".

-News courtesy of Omy-

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