Zuji Screwed Up My Ticket

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BadgerBoi

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Last week I booked a ticket on Zuji, Finnair SYD-CDG and return via BKK. The fare wasn't available for my dates on the Finnair site, and I'd booked with Zuji before so I was happy to do so with them again.

I was a bit annoyed at first, after I'd given my credit card number and pressed the "book now" button, I got a message saying that they couldn't confirm that seats were available on the required flighst, one of the Zuji agents will work on my booking and get back to me. We have charged your credit card for this booking.

24 hours later the itinerary comes through from Zuji as confirmed, so all is good.

To cut a short story long, I want to select my seats, and as the Finnair site is broken for seat selection, and the Qantas site (part of the trip is on QF metal) will only let me select the QF legs, I go to Qatar's site which will let me do everything. The Qatar site has me returning on different dates from the Zuji itinerary. Back I go to the AY and QF sites, and sure enough, the Zuji itinerary has me flying on the dates that I requested, while the airlines have me flying several days later.

I hop onto Zuji and dial the 1300 number that is listed on my itinerary. A helpful telephone company recording informs me that the number I am dialling is not connected. So I try the standard number, which is in Melbourne and I am in Sydney. After five minutes of pressing various options I decide that I've donated enough money to the phone company will zero result and search an alternative way to contact them.

They have a chat system to contact one of their agents. I decide to give that a try, and after a very short wait an agent called Eagle Aguilliera (I think they use randomly assigned names) came on the line. Eagle, a very pleasant looking young Eurasian-looking man (I think that they use randomly assigned avatars as well, but what the hey) spent about 30 minutes with me, could finally see that there was a problem and promised to "escalate" it to "Ticketing". "Is there anything else that I can help you with?". Um, yes, will my problem ever be fixed? "Oh yes, 'Ticketing' will contact you either by phone or by email within 24 hours" says Eagle. The itinerary spells my name incorrectly, which I mention to him - I am not Mr Johnsmithmr Smith, I am actually Mr John Smith (not my real name, neither John nor Smith). This is normal, reports Eagle, and I figure that I won't be denied boarding because of this so I let it pass.

I obsessively check my booking on the various airline sites for the next 36 hours, until finally the airlines show me as flying on the dates that I originally requested. As I write this, 96 hours have passed and there has been no contact from Zuji telling me that my complaint has been resolved. I didn't ask them for an apology (Eagle did apologise for the inconvenience, I must add), but I would have thought that there would be some communication from them saying that the error had been fixed.

I would normally book a ticket like this via the airline's own site even if it cost a bit more in order to avoid this sort of thing, but the ticket I was looking for cost $1500 more on the Finnair site than it did on Zuji.

Now, if I wasn't an AFF or FT obsessive who needs to ensure several months ahead that I can obtain my particular preferred seat, I may well have turned up at CDG four days early for my flight because I trusted the itinerary that my travel agent gave me. Even as it was, I'd looked at my booking on both Qantas and Finnair without noticing the error, as the departure dates were correct, just the return date was wrong and it slipped my attention.

Anyone else had a similar experience? I'll be very cautious about booking with a third-party site in future.
 
The itinerary spells my name incorrectly, which I mention to him - I am not Mr Johnsmithmr Smith, I am actually Mr John Smith (not my real name, neither John nor Smith). This is normal, reports Eagle, and I figure that I won't be denied boarding because of this so I let it pass.

I've seen this on some of my bookings made through online travel agents recently. Had no issues with it when flying from AUS to USA.
 
Zuji is now owned by Webjet after all, a company I have no respect for. I think Expedia companies are ok though.
 
The eagle has landed....

I don't think I'd book Zuji myself.

I've used them in the past with no issues, and their prices have been competitive. I think this was a human error thing, but my real problem is that the itinerary that they sent me was wrong, and you can imagine the sympathy that I'd receive from a contractor at Terminal 2D at CDG if I turned up for the flight on my itinerary...But I don't think I'll use Zuji again.
 
The information that appears on a lot of TA itineraries (one particular large chain in Australia springs to mind) is only as accurate as the person typing it in because the flight information doesn't come from the airlines GDS.

Of course pax blame the airline saying "well how come I've got an itinerary that shows I'm confirmed". Truth is because the muppet agent booked them for June instead of July so they're a noshow for the previous month or May instead of March so they're about two months too early when they turn up at the airport.

Other times the agent stuffs up & books pax on different flights eg BNE/AKL same airlines prefix however one is a codeshare flight operated by another carrier. What does the TA do? Tells the pax there's plenty of seats (on the flight they wanted) and to just go out to the airport & the airline 'should' change it rather than the TA take action & fix their own stuff up ahead of time.
 
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Update

As a result of my post here on AFF, a manager from Zuji's Customer Care team called me to follow up. She acknowledged that Zuji had made an error with my booking which had now been fixed, but also said that an email had been sent to me when the booking had been corrected. As I had received no email, she then checked and it became apparent that they had also made an error with my email address, adding an illegal character to the address, which made the email undeliverable.

I was impressed with the professional way that Zuji followed this up for me, it's clear that this is down to human error and I can live with this. For whatever reason, my booking couldn't be completed automatically so and the error occurred when the ticketing was done manually. I'm also impressed that Zuji monitor posts such as mine and pro-actively tracked me down from the details I gave here - obviously I gave enough detail that they could identify me, but not enough that someone from outside their organisation could do the same.

As an aside, I'm also glad that I just gave the facts, didn't embellish, or use snark in my post!

Given my dealings with them, I will certainly consider using Zuji again as long as the price for the ticket that I want is competitive - but I'll be particularly diligent about checking any bookings that I make with any organisation.
 
Re: Update

That is really good of zuji to follow up this thread! And more importantly, sort out your problem. Nice.
 
Re: Update

That is really good of zuji to follow up this thread! And more importantly, sort out your problem. Nice.

I was impressed, and I've been guilty of human error myself of course. What really troubled me was the lack of follow-up but it's now clear why that happened (again human error). Zuji certainly recovered well, I'm always impressed when someone (company or person) admits to an error rather than trying to talk their way out of it.

This is a leisure trip, J class, so it's several thousand dollars of my own money that I'm forking out - it's important to me that things are right!

Well done Zuji.
 
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Re: Update

And now I am keeping an eye on zuji for when my desired flights open up in September. :p Thats a win for zuji too.
 
That's great. Mistakes happen, but it's really nice knowing it's a human at the other end who's happy to take responsibility, explain the problem and fix it.
 
I too have had an unpleasant experience with Zuji. It was also a Finnair flight, which was the same price as Finnair.com, but gave me an option to fly to Sydney the night before flying out to BKK and onto HEL. I attempted to change the dates (Finnair $100 change fee, no Zuji fee), and could see availability on my desired new dates. Anyway, came back from Zuji with $1800 fare difference. I questioned this, but they said fare is no longer available, even though it was still available on their site and on Finnair.com.
I ended up staying with the original dates, but when it came to purchasing my next flights, I went straight to the airline, and used their price match guarantee to match the $195 cheaper zuji fare.
 
I too have had an unpleasant experience with Zuji. It was also a Finnair flight, which was the same price as Finnair.com, but gave me an option to fly to Sydney the night before flying out to BKK and onto HEL. I attempted to change the dates (Finnair $100 change fee, no Zuji fee), and could see availability on my desired new dates. Anyway, came back from Zuji with $1800 fare difference. I questioned this, but they said fare is no longer available, even though it was still available on their site and on Finnair.com.
I ended up staying with the original dates, but when it came to purchasing my next flights, I went straight to the airline, and used their price match guarantee to match the $195 cheaper zuji fare.

That's what you get with cheap fares unfortunately. Often there is a significant slug because your actually care class is sold out, even if the other flights may cost the same. If you pay more for flexible then the changes often cost less.

But- booking through a wholesaler also may tack on extra fees when trying to change so I will book direct where possible anyway.
 
Actually, the exact same fare class and fare basis were available, and for sale on the Zuji website. Having access to Expert Flyer, I class was available on all sectors, and the fare for sale on Zuji was all I class as well.

That's what you get with cheap fares unfortunately. Often there is a significant slug because your actually care class is sold out, even if the other flights may cost the same. If you pay more for flexible then the changes often cost less.

But- booking through a wholesaler also may tack on extra fees when trying to change so I will book direct where possible anyway.
 
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