Bad Experience With AirAsia

This is the first time I have a very bad experience with AirAsia and my conclusion is their customer services and web interface is really bad!


Useless Live Chat

• It always error out multiple times when we try to add-on meal. We need to attempt couple of times. Not sure about you guys but this has been happening to me in the past too.

• Internet banking payment is so buggy. It worked for us for increasing luggage weight but not on add-on meal. It worked in the past but not this round unfortunately. There were no confirmation message but it had been charged. So this ended up we paid twice for nothing. So we needed them to address this ASAP.

• Live chat is completely useless. We waited for one hour since it was out of working office hour and the response was just fill up the e-form. We told them that we need immediate attention and the response was they can't do anything other that filling up the e-form and wait for the reply. So why you need live chat at all if you can not address the problem live? 

• We filled up the form with the proof of internet banking transaction. The automated e-form reply says it can take up to 14 days to response. What? So I had no choice but waited until tomorrow to call their call center during working hours.

Useless Call Center

• The representative person that we talked to had no common sense at all. He said he didn't see payment from his side and ask me to pay again. I told him, I've already paid twice and there were no record, what makes you think the third payment works? I insisted I"m not going to try that again because I knew the result is going to be same and I wanted the refund. He responded for the refund, I have to wait for the response from the e-form which takes up of 14 days. Oh my god... 

• I kept proposing options (looks like I need to solve the problem myself) - cancelling the add-on meal is not an option too because is not allowed (such a stupid system) and not paying is not an option too because we can't board the flight if there is still a pending payment. It ended up the solution was I paid using another method (i.e. credit cards) and they will deal with my refund later.

Refund Process Is Screwed

• After 1 week+, I'm still in the refund process but I can't stop blogging about it. During this process, my booking balance has negative value (due to the refund amount value) and this causes me can't make any modification on my booking. Speechless...

Conclusion

Now I finally understand why some people complain so badly about AirAsia and don't want to take it anymore. It is their customer services especially when thing goes wrong. Also, what is the use of twitter and live chat if you can't provide instant support? Please remove it completely. 

Having said so I have to remind myself, it is a low-cost airline. You pay for what you get. So I can't complain much. I very likely still take AirAsia flights because of $ :( but I do hope AirAsia customer services can be improved one day.

Understand Excess Reduction in Car Rental

You may or may not know about this excess reduction in car rental every time when you are travelling. In fact, a lot of people misunderstand that this in an insurance and I'm confused myself too when first I started renting car here in Australia.

In fact, this is NOT an insurance at all but maybe it can be related to insurance. For example, if you don't pay for this excess reduction, you're still insured. In case of anything happens, the maximum amount that you need to pay is $4K. No matter what happen, you won't pay more than $4K. Isn't this already covered?

You pay this excess reduction fee to reduce the $4K to $500 for example. So, in case of anything happens, you won't pay more than $500. You can also pay this access reduction fee higher to reduce the $4K to $0 so that you won't pay a single cents.

There is a catch here, you still won't be covered although you have reduce to excess to $0. For example, you break the rental contract by driving in the unsealed road.  This depends on whether there is such limitation on the contract and also depends on place that you rent a car. We have such limitation while renting a car in Tasmania. They usually will explain that to you clearly.

Another common thing is you don't drive the car but let other to drive. It depends on you contract whether you have added another person to drive the car or only you're the only one can drive the the car. Also, violating traffic laws is another common one which causes you break the contract.

Should you pay for this excess reduction? It is really up to you. What you should ask yourself is if there is any major accidental happens, are you afford to pay $4k? If yes, you don't need to pay any excess reduction fee. I personally have never paid for it. Most importantly, don't "assume" this excess reduction is an insurance fee, it is NOT. You have already been covered although you don't pay it!