Ego Libre

It’s funny how real experiences can ruin your long-held image and how a brand can’t start deteriorating once it starts cutting corners.
I mean it is a no brainer, but let’s see why I will do my best not to fly with Qantas/Jetstar more than I have to.

I always liked Qantas. They have a nice logo, nice image, I always wanted to fly with them since I saw Rainman. Well now I did. Maybe you remember that they made me pay for 4kg overweight on my luggage. I still managed to forgive them after observing an excellent in-flight service. Now they are pushing their luck again.

I do not like when brands try to prevent their competitors from stealing their market share by creating a diluted versions of them. Qantas cannot compete with low-cost airlines, such as Virgin Blue, so they created Jetstar. (For those of you interested, British Airways is trying to do the same with their Open Skies knock-off, erghh) And Jetstar naturally competes on price. But when two companies are so closely connected, it is impossible to prevent spill-over effects.

For example how would you feel if you purchased a ticket on a Qantas website and when you get to the airport you see you are flying a Jetstar plane with Jetstar crew (and a full plane of annoying kids who got their tickets dirt-cheap). Wouldn’t you feel that you are actually subsidizing in a way the flight (in the same way that business passengers do)?

And to get to the point, yesterday Jetstar had a 1 hour sale, where some tickets on SELECTED routes on SPECIFIC dates were sold for 1¢ provided that you have only hand-baggage. I thought it might be a good idea to grab a ticket or two to Sydney and so I actually waited for the sale to start in front of my computer.

And you know what happened? Their server went down.

I wasted 1 hour of my life trying to get those damn tickets. Needless to say that I did not manage to get through once.
At 9pm the sale ended and the server returned to normal.

How many tickets did they sell?

And how many people will get pissed off for their inadequacy and get annoyed with Jetstar as well as with Qantas and try to fly other companies instead?

I am definitely in the last category. I was so annoyed with their handling of the situation that I almost changed my Frequent Flyer scheme over to BA (except that I found out that BA’s Executive club sucks real bad). Maybe I am overreacting, but in the news yesterday was also a piece about Qantas passengers stranded in Perth for 24 hours without getting any accommodation or even being let into the lounge. They simply let them stay at the gate the whole time. And the PR person said that they did all they could because they provided them with refreshments. None the less one passenger collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital.

Or like the Jetstar passengers who have been thrown out of the airport at night couple of weeks ago because the flight was cancelled. No accommodation provided. Bang!

And did I mention that my flight with Jetstar to Gold Coast last week was delayed by 2 hours because of engine problem on the plane! (How can a sensible airline employee go on the intercom and tell all the passengers waiting at the gate that they need to wait a little bit more because an engine check failed and they need to perform another one! Nice handling stoopid)

So all in all I will do my best now to avoid Qantas/Jetstar and fly Virgin instead. But you know what? In my opinion doing a sale such as the Jetstar 1¢ sale is stupid.

Why?

You will manage to piss off more customers than you please. What Jetstar should do is recognize that so many people were unable to get in (they even know which ones as the links in emails had unique id) and offer them a 10$ coupon for their next flight purchase. It might cost them less than the whole 1¢ sale and at the same time they would put a positive spin on the failure. They even have my name, so how hard would it be to say:

“Dear Jakub,
we have seen that you tried to access our booking system during the 1¢ Special Jetstar sale, but due to heavy traffic you did not manage.
We are very sorry for this and would like to offer you a 10$ discount coupon for your next purchase with us.
Please use the following coupon code in our booking system:
XXXXXXX”

Seriously, how hard would it be? And if you are stingy, then at least send me email to say that you are sorry. I would STILL feel better about it. Now I think that they are morons. Great marketing guys!