Review | BestJet is the worst third party provider!
Today morning 12 December 2017
“Raksha, there is a problem!” said my friend Vijay in a stressed tone.
Background 29 August 2017
Vijay had booked a flight with BestJet on bestjet.com website for 16 December 2017 from Sydney to Santiago in the month of August 2017. The one way ticket had costed him AUD 1820.75. He had received the below ticket from BestJet.
Point to note: The ticket above does not have any status field that indicates whether it is confirmed. Generally, the tickets have Booking Reference (Note: I am not talking about the BestJet Reference here) only after the tickets are confirmed.
Like all other travelers, he unfortunately trusted the third party provider, BestJet and assumed he was all set for the travel. He made all the other plans, booked the accommodation and tours and all the bookings around for his holidays in South America.
Today 12 December 2017
This morning, as the departure date was close, Vijay decided to do a web check-in. He logged on to the Latam Airlines website and tried to access his booking. To his shock, he was not able to access and he decided to call the customer care at BestJet.
His call was received by a customer care representative, who informed him that his tickets were not confirmed and he does not have a booking for Sydney to Santiago. The representative also blamed Vijay that it was his responsibility to have ensured that the tickets were confirmed and he had to contact them if he had not received the e-ticket.
Yes, I do agree that Vijay should have called BestJet, but shouldn’t the provider also bear the responsibility for providing an information if the ticket was confirmed or not?
Point to note: BestJet have been holding onto approx. AUD 1800 for nearly 3.5 months – 29 August 2017 to 12 December 2017 without sending any emails or notifications to my friend.
As the ticket for 16 December 2017 is unaffordable, he had to unfortunately buy a new ticket for 15 December 2017 from Sydney to Santiago by spending an extra AUD 900 as this was the last moment ticket. This also meant that he has to take an additional day off work and he lost one day of pay. This does not end here, this also meant that he had to stay at Santiago for an additional night which cost him about AUD 85. A total unnecessary expenditure of AUD 985 + one day pay when he is about to leave for his big holiday for 3.5 weeks in South America. All these for absolutely no fault of his. Also note that he still has not received the refund of approx. AUD 1800 that he had spent for his ticket from Sydney to Santiago.
He called BestJet again for a refund, for which the customer care representative “Marbeth” casually informed that she can initiate the refund only after 5 minutes or so. When Vijay insisted on the immediate refund while he was on the call, the representative put the call on hold for more than 15 minutes stating she was processing the refund. Since it was more than 15 minutes and Vijay did not want to waste any more time, he decided to hang up the call.
Closing Notes
This is not acceptable! They do not care for anyone or any customer absolutely. BestJet is absolutely the worst service provider I have ever come across. They not only play with people’s finances but also with people’s emotions. I would definitely not recommend them to anyone.
Note: This post is completely based on my friend and my experience and is not biased based on anything.