| 2007/03/03 Telling Jetstar that they suck | |
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2007-03-03 23:13
by Merlin
in Public
I sent the following Email to Jetstar (even though they try to hide their Email address), as well as the Australian board of tourism with a shred of hope that they might do something about their ridiculous 7kg per carry on limit within the country.
(ok, I might have just slightly exagerated some of the points below, but that was to drive the point across :) ) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am Emailing you because of my severe dissatisfaction with how I was treated during a flight with your airline, and let you know how disconnected you are with reality of you are hoping to attract tourism. In a nutshell, you charged me more than $150 for what you called extra luggage, and you were really trying to charge me over $300, you humiliated me by having empty all my luggage and carry ons to meet the ridiculous 7kg/carry on luggage limit, and you denied me entrance with a carry on (small laptop backpack size) and my small laptop bag when in 20 years of flying I have never had a single airline deny me a carry on, and my laptop bag as a personal item, which your staff did. Unless you tell me that you are going to make clear changes to improve the situation, I will forever avoid your airline, and warn all others against using it, starting with my 10,000 coworkers at google, and all my peers in the computer conference community. I flew from the US to Sydney for 2 weeks to go to a conference and to go diving after that. I didn't pack my entire house, I just took enough clothes for the trip, some light diving gear (not even a BCD, or full suits), and my laptop and related computer equipment in my laptop bag. My girlfriend and I had 2 checked in pieces of luggage each, between 15 to 25kg each, well under the 32kg/piece limit. We also each had a small backpack as a carry on, and a laptop bag. This was no problem for our flights to and from Australia, and I guess we got lucky because it wasn't a problem for our flight with Jetstar from Sydney to Cairns. However, on the way back, some overzealous employee of yours maybe decided to apply your ludicrous rules on carry-ons. First of all, I don't care that some loser was able to sue after getting a carry-on on his/her head. I didn't fly to Australia to have silly restrictions because of one person who had one problem and was allowed to sue successfully somehow. Australia isn't worse than the US, is it? While my carry-ons were small, they are dense: my computer equipment, batteries, cables, and accessories do weigh a fair amount. My laptop bag is closer to 15kg and has never been below that, nor can it be: I need that equipment, and I cannot check it in as if I ever lose it, I am risking my job. Your staff not only refused to let me take my laptop bag, but also told me that I could not take my carry on and my laptop bag, so I could not even rebalance the weight between the two (and again, I cannot check this in: I value my job and my ability to do work and give my talks at conferences too much to allow any airline to handle that sensitive equipment again) Then, I'll save you the overweight bill we got from our check in luggage plus carry on weight that now had to be checked in too. We had to grossly cheat to avoid paying over $300, had to move lots of already carefully packed luggage around to meet your rules, and had things broken when we got there because of that rebalancing, and empty space in a piece of luggage that was otherwise well packed and padded to prevent damage to the internal items. In the end, we lost 30-40mn, I felt fairly humiliated, and you charged us an extra $150 or so, and that's again only because your representative gave me no choice but to grossly cheat so that I could still keep my laptop with me and not pay several hundred dollars more. So, my problem with you are:
Thanks Marc |