I have used Jetstar's price beat guarantee many times in the past and have saved hundreds of dollars by doing so. Sometimes it was an easy process to phone up and make the booking and sometimes patience was required. It depended on the customer service rep that you spoke to.
With Tiger offering sale prices at the moment, I prepared myself for the normal procedure. However, this time I was in for a surprise. When I called, and could hear what was being said over what appeared to be a party going on in the office in the background of the call centre, I was told that all Price Beat Guarantees were now handled via online "chat" rather than over the phone.
I was directed to the link which, with my Firefox set up and some of the security features that I have, simply did not work. I had more luck with Google Chrome but still had trouble working out exactly what I needed to do.
As you might imagine, typing everything in from flight details through to payment information took much longer than by phone. I had 3 bookings to make, 2 of which were returns and the process took 70 minutes of "chat". This included my preparing the details for the next booking in Notepad while waiting for the first booking to be confirmed and then copying them over to the chat session. My estimate would be that with a good operator this would have taken about 20 minutes over the phone rather than the 70 minutes of chat.
Finally, I asked if I could get a copy of the "chat" and after selecting the print button indicated the chat session simply froze and I could no longer use it.
Apparently these changes have been in place for about a month. Be warned, price guarantee bookings are now much harder than they were before.
I assume that the time wasted by Jetstar's staff to be tied up taking the bookings is compensated by fewer being booked incorrectly.
With Tiger offering sale prices at the moment, I prepared myself for the normal procedure. However, this time I was in for a surprise. When I called, and could hear what was being said over what appeared to be a party going on in the office in the background of the call centre, I was told that all Price Beat Guarantees were now handled via online "chat" rather than over the phone.
I was directed to the link which, with my Firefox set up and some of the security features that I have, simply did not work. I had more luck with Google Chrome but still had trouble working out exactly what I needed to do.
As you might imagine, typing everything in from flight details through to payment information took much longer than by phone. I had 3 bookings to make, 2 of which were returns and the process took 70 minutes of "chat". This included my preparing the details for the next booking in Notepad while waiting for the first booking to be confirmed and then copying them over to the chat session. My estimate would be that with a good operator this would have taken about 20 minutes over the phone rather than the 70 minutes of chat.
Finally, I asked if I could get a copy of the "chat" and after selecting the print button indicated the chat session simply froze and I could no longer use it.
Apparently these changes have been in place for about a month. Be warned, price guarantee bookings are now much harder than they were before.
I assume that the time wasted by Jetstar's staff to be tied up taking the bookings is compensated by fewer being booked incorrectly.