Price Beat Guarantee "Chat"

Status
Not open for further replies.

gizzard

Active Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2006
Posts
764
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.
 
Interesting.

So do they create a special link for you to buy off, or are you just chatting to them your name, cc details etc.
 
The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of finding reward seat availability. Using their expert knowledge and specialised tools, they'll help you book a great trip that maximises the value for your points.

AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements

So QF go from online to phone for mASAs before getting rid of them.
JQ go from phone to online for price-beat before...?
 
I did 2 separate BRG chats yesterday. Each one took less than 10 mins and couldn't have been easier. I thought it was great. It's much easier to type details than spell them out over a bad phone line.
 
So are you giving credit card details etc in plain text, or is it a secure link??
 
So do they create a special link for you to buy off, or are you just chatting to them your name, cc details etc.
So are you giving credit card details etc in plain text, or is it a secure link??

Just chatting, no special links although there's a special chat button on this page Price Beat Guarantee | Jetstar, nothing secure.

smit0847 was very fortunate compared with my experience. I was "on hold" or much of the time so perhaps the CSR was being distracted by the party going on.
 
...before getting rid of them:

I have just read the price beat details and the last line is "Holidays or flights must be booked before or on 31 August 2014"

I think that this date changes once in a while. I used Internet Archive: Wayback Machine to check a few dates and the version on 22 January 2014 stated "This promotion is valid for flight bookings made up to and including 28 February 2014".
 
...before getting rid of them:

I have just read the price beat details and the last line is "Holidays or flights must be booked before or on 31 August 2014"

They are always date limited but always extended. Been that way for years.

Ive done 4 pbg chat bookings. Love it. The operators are getting quite efficient now.
 
It looks like I'm in the minority now. Was I just unlucky? 3 bookings in 70 minutes compared with about 20 on the phone is terrible. Do you have any tips as to how to speed this up?
 
The operators have a lot of pre-defined responses and I didn't see a single spelling mistake so the system must be highly orchestrated. I went from average 15 min wait and 5 min talking to approx 15 mins on chat. With 5 travellers I always provide a prior JQ pnr for them to mirror details and this helps.
 
I've used it twice now (thanks to Tiger's $30 SYD-MEL & $10 SYD-OOL). It's tedious, in that you sometimes spend minutes waiting for the Jetstar agent to respond to you. The first one was for a return flight for 2 pax - it took about 30 minutes in all. The second was for one way for 2 pax that took about 20 minutes. I attempted to speed up the process by providing another PNR with the same pax details, but the agent refused and said I had to give them to him again.

The agents seem to have pre-written questions that are cut & pasted into the chat. The first rep was very oblivious with this, as when she typed anything that wasn't pre-written it came up in a different font!

There was also a spelling error in the pax name, but I was able to use the live chat help to have this updated in about 5 minutes.
 
did 1 of these last week - was incredibly slow and painful, don't know why they don't just get you to fill a form in online and then call you back to confirm before processing the payment

seems like they want to discourage these as much as possible - first time i tried there were 13 people in the queue before me and they seem to shut down the chat at 10pm AEST altogether
 
You can still do it over the phone. I just did 3 of them this week.

Don't ring the price beat guarantee phone number either (the one on their price beat page). Ring the general number and go to new bookings, it's a shorter time on hold.
 
You can still do it over the phone. I just did 3 of them this week.

Don't ring the price beat guarantee phone number either (the one on their price beat page). Ring the general number and go to new bookings, it's a shorter time on hold.
I wasn't aware of the new chat so phoned as usual. I didn't even know there was a PBG number so just phoned the general one. The CSR told me that I had to use the chat and directed me to it. He told me that Jetstar want all PBG bookings made that way now. Perhaps I should have just told him I didn't have online access or simply HUACA.
 
I just had the "pleasure" of using the Jetstar price beat chat for a couple of bookings. It took 62 minutes just to get hold of an operator, then a further 53 minutes to complete two simple bookings. In total, 1 hour and 55 minutes!! That's longer than both flights I was trying to book! I'm not a fan of the system at all, it seems very clunky and every response, although scripted, took forever. It's as if Jetstar doesn't want you to use this.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Enhance your AFF viewing experience!!

From just $6 we'll remove all advertisements so that you can enjoy a cleaner and uninterupted viewing experience.

And you'll be supporting us so that we can continue to provide this valuable resource :)


Sample AFF with no advertisements? More..
Back
Top