On Tuesday I finally booked our tickets for our holidays this year. We’re going to Chennai this year as opposed to Mumbai since my sister is there and my parents will come there from Mumbai. Also since we’re going on a very short trip, we just don’t have the time to do two cities. We are going on a very truncated holiday this year for a couple of reasons – one, since I just joined this new position, I do not have many days of leave and two, GG has her ballet concert in the third week of December and she wanted to be a part of it so we leave the day after the concert.

The concert is on a Sunday and so we wanted to leave on the first available flight on Monday morning. That happened to be Jet Airways. I have flown this airline before and have liked the service they provide although both I was not too crazy to fly this particular airline to Chennai as it is a single aisle aircraft. Both S and BB didn’t want to fly this airline, but because it was the only one with a flight in the morning, we decided to go for it. Now the fun starts in my story. I checked the prices around 2 pm and it should me around S$ 2200 for 4 tickets. When I got home and tried buying the tickets around 6 pm, it had increased to S$ 2700. I was angry but still went through the online reservations system as I didn’t want to waste one day of the 13 we were going to have. Then there was some issue with my credit card and the transaction didn’t go through. When I redid the booking, the cost was now more than S$ 3000! I got angry and checked the fares for Singapore Airlines. The fares there were only S$ 2400, but the flight was at night. That was it, I decided to go with SIA and booked my tickets. I then wrote to Jet Airways about my experiences and so far, they’ve still not given me a reasonable explanation (one that I can understand) for this whole fiasco. Initially I thought of not blogging about this, but given what happened, I think I should do it so if there is anyone out there reading this blog (the one or two people maybe, hopefully?), it’s a lesson to them.

Image courtesy airlines.net

Image courtesy of airliners.net

Below are my two emails to Jet and their responses:

My initial note to them using the feedback form on their website

Hi,

I tried reserving tickets to Chennai yesterday. When I checked the fares around 2 pm, I found a figure which was acceptable to me. Then when I tried booking the tickets around 6 pm, the rate had increased by around $500 compared to 2 pm. During the transaction, I had a query for which I tried calling your office here in Singapore, but was on hold for 15 minutes during which my transaction time had exceeded and I could not make the booking. Then when I tried again, this time the rate increased by another S$200. This means that between 2 pm and 6 pm, the rate for 4 tickets increased by S$700! This inspite of not having icon near the rates to show that they are increasing or even letting me know before I book the tickets that the rates will be increasing! When I tried your office at that point (it was around 6:10 pm), I got a recorded message saying that the office is closed for the day. I got fed up and booked my tickets using another carrier. I then see an email which came to me at 8:15 pm saying that my tickets are on hold. I had already booked my tickets with another airline by then so this was of no use to me. I do not think this is the right thing to do. I would appreciate if someone called me or wrote to me with an explanation on why this happened. I have flown Jet many times and have always had a good time with the airline, but when something like this happens even before you fly, it makes you want to rethink using the airline.

The first response from Jet

Thank you for your mail and contacting Jet Airways.

We would like to mention that fares are dynamic and can change based on flight loads, seasonality and promotions. 

With regard to the contents of your communication, kindly allow us to mention that we have various classes / levels of fares loaded in our system taking into account different factors such as demand, season, traffic on any given route, cancellations etc. 

May we assure you that we are not in any way trying to discourage our passengers as a matter of fact these fares are designed to benefit our passengers. 

We look forward to your support and apologize for all the inconvenience caused. 

Huh? Maybe I am thick, but I don’t think they actually answered what I asked them

My response to this email:

Thank you for your email. I don’t think that there were so many people trying to book the exact same date combination as I was within that 4  hour period that the prices increased by S$ 700. I don’t see how the prices can be adjusted so much in such a short period of time. If what you say is correct, then the prices should have stayed at that increased rate of about S$ 3000+ for 4 tickets to Chennai on the same dates that I booked. I just checked your website for the same dates and the prices are in the range of S$ 2600, which is about S$ 400 lower than what was quoted to me when I tried to book the ticket. Does this mean that the time we book the ticket has a bearing on the prices? I would like a response from you since if this is true, the next time I fly the airline, I will know the best time to book my tickets.

Their reply

The probability of the reprice page to show up is less than 1% as we have automated mechanisms to pick up the fares dynamically from the system based on an internal logic flow. Note, there can be times where the guest cancels the reprice page request and tries again from the start. The probability of the old fare being shown is very high as the system takes time to then update the new fare into the database. 

I am not going to reply to this email, but will think multiple times the next time I fly this airline. I used to be such a fan, but now, they’ve lost a paying passenger! C’est la vie…