Unless you are prepared to be bored don't read past this paragraph. It's not quite a rant but.....
This afternoon I decided that I would book my air journeys between Napier and Auckland (Air New Zealand) and Glasgow and Stornoway (Flybe) on my way back to Scotland at the end of April. Simple. It took well over two hours. The UK's Flybe website refused to behave and it took me over an hour to make the booking. I decided to make the Air New Zealand booking using my airpoints dollars. Simple. No. I have two Air New Zealand persona: my UK one and my New Zealand one (it's much easier and cheaper to book internal NZ flights using my NZ persona). My airpoints dollars are registered to my UK persona. If you live in the UK and want to use your airpoints you have to use your UK persona (which is logical) but you can't do it on line (as I discovered and which seems most odd) and you have to use the telephone service (for which there is a fee of $30). So you do all the work only to discover that at the checkout you can't complete the transaction and have to start all over again talking on the phone to a real person - in NZ and using NZ$.
Sometimes I think businesses make life very difficult for their customers who, after all, are not just paying for the service but are doing quite a lot of their work for them too.
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That's really annoying...everything is online these days, so what gives?
ReplyDeleteI have a rant about American Airlines who issued me a voucher which could not be processed online but had to be processed by a live agent thus resulting in a charge to use a voucher...incredulous!
On line can be good Virginia but it's the glitches and thoughtlessness which can make life very difficult for customers. I'm pretty computer savvy but even the poor Air NZ customer service chap had to go and ask his supervisor. And there must be a lot of people like me amongst their customers.
DeleteIt's a fair question in quite a few contexts nowadays. While no doubt some things are made easier through online services, there are others that tend to be awfully complicated and make me wish I could just go into an office with good old-fashioned face-to-face customer service!
ReplyDeleteYou've summarised it perfectly for me Monica.
DeleteAmazon, Harrison Cameras and PCSpecialists are a joy to do business with online.
ReplyDeleteThat is an awful lot of effort to go to.
Amazon are very good I agree Adrian. I've not used the other two but I'll bear them in mind.
DeleteI agree, Graham. The other thing I think about is....in the long run, we aren't saving much. Maybe you still are with the airline mumbo-jumbo and points, but other things seem to be more of a hassle than they are worth (for me). Like coupons. Some are good and easy to go with, but the ones that make us buy $50 or more before we can get a 10% discount - they usually get thrown in the trash (unless, of course, I actually will have the money at the time and happen to need something that makes it all worth while). I don't have time for all of the windy curves of saving a penny - wish I did, because, Lord knows, we need to (and....though....because Lord knows we need to - and I know that He knows - our needs are always provided in some form or another).
ReplyDeleteMost of the loyalty points are fairly meaningless I agree Heather. I only use airline ones and even then I lost over 100,000 Airmiles because I couldn't find flights I wanted and my BA Miles would have saved me £60 on a flight to Canada last time I looked - the taxes and £300 fues surcharge brought the price near enough up to the ordinary economy fare and I didn't have the same choice of flights.
DeleteOh indeed Graham, I can well relate to this! I spent hours trying to book flights to NZ via a stop over in Brisbane for a week, you would think it relatively straightforward? Absolutely not! Air New Zealand didn't have anything sensible (which is a shame as it is them I have my airpoints with and who I usually fly with) I think it was them who wanted to fly me to Auckland from Brisbane VIA HONG KONG! Um REALLY? Various other airlines were just as hopeless, with stupid prices etc... Finally found something flying Quantas/Emmirates
ReplyDeleteSerenata I used to prefer to travel through Hong Kong because of the shower facilities which allowed me to freshen up on the journey. It was also a lot less hassle than LA. However LA improved and for some reason via HK flights were difficult and much more expensive than via LA flights. Two years ago the Air NZ flights went up to £2,000 for my travel time so my loyalty wavered and I looked at Emirates. Their flight was faster and half the price and I avoided Heathrow (I fly from Glasgow). This year My Emirates flight was £870! Air NZ still wanted £2,000. No contest I'm afraid.
DeleteNo contest indeed, and it is good to hear you speak positively of them! It is my first time travelling with them and that route. Slightly more convoluted route on the way back, Auckland - Melbourne - Dubai - London but for the price I decided I would put up with - it doesn't seem to add much more travel time. Such a difference in price isn't it?! I normally fly over every year as well (or at least since 2010) but couldn't go last year as was too unwell and yes they have gone up stupidly in the last two years!
DeleteSerenata with Emirates I've always flown via Dubai and an Australian city. I like the fact that I have these opportunities of an hour or two to stretch my legs. Apart from one occasion in the last 9 years when I struck a lucky £900 Air NZ fare my flight has always cost around £1500 until I started flying Emirates.
DeleteI agree. All done to confuse! xoxox
ReplyDeleteWell it certainly manages to confuse me Carol.
DeleteToo many times we get a runaround like this.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid so Red.
DeleteANZ must go by the motto, 'Why do things simple, if you can do it complicated.' But it is a great airline. When we fly from Brisbane to L.A. we always fly ANZ even though we have to spend a couple of hours at Auckland. But the service, IFE and aircraft are better than Qantas. I guess you have to weigh up all the options.
ReplyDeleteBill I had always used Air NZ from the UK and still would but for the fact that they are more than twice as expensive as Emirates and I travel that route every year so cost matters. I still feel a loyalty to Air NZ but as someone who lives in both countries they do not make my travelling life easy.
DeleteWhat I really like is the way I can book train tickets I will be using in England from here, weeks or months before I travel. I book and pay my tickets, and don't even need to print them out, but when I arrive at Manchester airport, there are several ticket machines (and at least two of them always work) where I can punch in my ticket code and, hey presto, have my ticket in hands and am ready to board the Transpennine "Express". Should the machines fail, there is also a manned ticket office, which so far I have not needed.
ReplyDeleteThe website for booking is very simple and easy to understand. The same is true for the florist service I regularly use online to have flowers sent to my mother-in-law.
But I have, of course, made experiences similar to yours, when things would get so unnecessarily complicated that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I agree the one saving grace of the railways in the UK is the online booking and ticket collection facilities. The trains may be overcrowded and not match the timetables but at least it is easy to buy a ticket.
DeleteI agree Meike and Mark that there are lots of websites where online booking is excellent and I like the freedom to do things in the UK during my daytime in NZ when often ordinary phone lines are closed. It's the frustration of the times when there is no alternative that bugs me. I had that issue with a bank recently where the whole thing was automated and the thing became circuitous because I was complaining a bout a potential breach of security by the bank. They had obviously never anticipated that they could be at fault under that heading. When I tried to complain under any heading I was told my complain was not relevant.
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