Paying a price for finger trouble

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Published Nov 26, 2013

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Pretoria - Having a spot of finger trouble can be an expensive business when it comes to making online purchases or payments.

It’s become the norm for consumers to make airline bookings – particularly domestic ones – online, but best you have your wits about you, because if you spell a name wrong or click on the wrong date or destination, you may find it’s not quite so simple to fix the problem.

Ah, you may be thinking, doesn’t the Consumer Protection Act allow consumers to cancel advance bookings and be refunded, minus a “reasonable” cancellation fee?

Yes, but airlines have contested this, saying the low-cost fare business model is based on a “no refunds” policy which doesn’t allow for refundable ticket sales or ticket flexibility, as this would make low-cost travel unsustainable.

The pricier ticket categories allow for changes; not so with the “cheap” seats.

Many airlines do allow for booking changes within 12 or 24 hours on all tickets – a welcome “out” for those who had finger trouble – but too often, it seems, the airline staff handling a booking either don’t know about it, or choose not to let a customer benefit from it.

Two weeks ago, Dario Siefe of Pretoria made a late-night online booking with Air France for two tickets to Israel. But instead of clicking on July 4 as the departure date, he clicked on June 4.

“This was due to poor eyesight and the late hour – and the fact that June and July are both four-letter months beginning with J, and happen to be follow-on months – easy to mistake on a small screen.”

Siefe realised his mistake and called Air France the next morning to rectify it.

The agent he spoke to was “unsympathetic”, he says, and said he’d have to pay a penalty to amend his booking.

The fare went up by R1 000 a ticket, which Siefe was happy to pay, along with the “re-issue fee” of R150 a ticket.

But he objected to being made to pay R1 680 a ticket – R3 360 – as a penalty for hitting June instead of July, a mistake he sought to rectify within 12 hours.

“I am fully aware that they have terms and conditions in place, but to be so rigid in the face of a human error, which, if rectified, does not prejudice any party, leaves a most unpleasant taste,” he said.

I took up the case with Air France spokesman Lorna Burke, who said that because Siefe called the airline within 24 hours, “in accordance with our Customer First policy”, he should have been offered a full refund for his booking.

“We contacted Mr Siefe to apologise and he is now satisfied with paying the fare difference,” she said. So he’s been spared that R3 360 penalty.

Let’s hope the agent Siefe spoke to has had some retraining on that “customer first” policy – it’s unacceptable that he, and no doubt others, too, would have been made to pay it if he hadn’t sought external help. - Pretoria News

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