Alas, me and my wife booked the flight back from our christmas holidays Auckland to Queenstown on 6th of Jan with Jetstar (all to save $40 over Air NZ). Originally it was scheduled to leave at 11:50 from Auckland, which was good seeing as we have something on first thing that morning in Auckland. A few weeks ago Jetstar decided to change the departure time, now it is 9:05, not allowing us to have time for our plans on that morning. So no worries I thought, it was their choice to change the departure time so surely they'd give us a refund and we'd be able to book on Air NZ for a midday flight.
So I tried their call centre which was a waste of time. The people on the other end have no idea what to do, they just read everything from a script. They offered to change me to the 7am flight (yeah thats going to help) or to fly on Monday (no we have work to be back for), there are no more Jetstar flights to Qtown before the next day. So now our only option is to take the midday Air NZ flight and hope that we can get our money back. After a lengthy discussion with the call centre lady she eventually told me to lodge a claim through their website using the online enquiry form. After submitting that it says it takes 15 business days for them to get back to me.
I put the form through but have no idea on what my chances are at getting our $280 back. Surely the consumer guarantees act applies here? A good/service must be fit for the purpose intended? We originally bought the fare to fly at 11:50, they changed the time so they didn't hold up their end of the bargain and thus I am entitled to a refund. The customer service rep said the terms and conditions say no refund is allowed with this class of fare but surely that is irrelevant, it can't take precedence the CGA?? Unless there is some case law that somehow found in favour of an airline that has done this before??
We've had to book the Air NZ flight (which cost $320) so I really hope that we get the money back from Jetstar. Anyone have some suggestions?
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