air asia's ridiculously moronic system
in february, i bought a flight to jb and back for may. then in april, i thought of changing my return flight to one day later. i got as far as the payment page before i decided the flight change was too expensive so i just closed the page thinking that nothing would happen because i did not make any payment.fast forward a month later, just 4 nights before my flight to jb, i decided to check in. to my utmost horror, i found that i could not check in at all because the booking still needed payment for my flight change. what the hell! for a whole month i never received any notification whatsoever from air asia that my booking was incomplete or any sort of reminder to complete my payment. all of a sudden i'm supposed to pay for a flight change that i don't want??? last minute i'm supposed to change all my travel plans coz air asia doesn't know how notify people???!!!! is their system so useless that if a person doesn't complete payment, they're just gonna hold the seat for them until the plane flies with an empty seat?? they're not gonna remind people to pay?? they have no auto-cancel or auto-reminder system??!! so their competitors can just sabotage them by creating a million fake bookings with no payment and air asia is just gonna fly empty planes??!!
i was so scared. i immediately filled in a feedback form on their website. i waited the whole next day for a reply but there was none. so at night i tried their online chat. i finally got this person called michelle who informed me that because i already clicked 'agree' to their terms and conditions, i have to pay the balance. what the %^@*#&;!!!! i told her it's air asia's fault for not reminding me. she still said i have to pay coz i clicked it. i told her fine u can take my return flight coz i'm not gonna pay but let me check in from kuching to jb, i am entitled to it because i already paid for it in full. she asked me to make a report. i told her i already made a report but i didn't get any email of the case number. then she found my report and said she would escalate it to the team and be patient. and she immediately ended the chat. stupid b****. only after that did i get an email acknowleging the report i made the night before. another example of air asia dunno how to email people. and how can i be patient when my flight is in 3 days!
by the next morning i still received no response so my mom offered to go to the air asia office in the afternoon since she had some time. luckily oliver, the guy at the air asia counter, was very helpful and obliging and tried to help get back my original flight with no extra charges. with no mention of the 'agree' button at all. unlike that stupid michelle online whom i don't know if she is even properly trained. she caused me so much stress and cost me my sleep coz she told me i have to pay. grrrrr. luckily i didn't pay. stupid air asia should train them not to simply give rubbish answers. anyway oliver said that by trying to change my flight, i effectively cancelled my original return flight so he had to try and get me back on that flight. he didn't manage to clear my flights yet but he emailed hq and even gave my mom his handphone number so we could call if it wasn't fixed in 2 days.
on the morning of my flight, i still could not check in. i was worried. so i called oliver to ask him to chase them. i finally managed to check in at 3pm and oliver called to inform that it's been fixed for no extra charges. phew. just 4 hours to the flight. bloody useless air asia never made any contact with me throughout the whole thing. luckily oliver could help. can you imagine if i had not remembered to check in early? if i had checked in just the night before my flight, i would have been panicking like crazy and probably wasted rm156 just to be able to check in and with the return flight on the wrong date. how terribly inefficient air asia is!!!!!!!!! please spam them if you are free.
finally, 10 days after making my report, i finally received an auto-generated email from air asia saying that they just checked their system and my flight has passed. wtf!!!!! damn bloody useless or not?!! absolutely no help at all. 'escalate to the team' still take so long to reply. and they expected me to be patient?! piece of shit air asia.