An Air New Zealand customer says she’s unimpressed after being charged $30 by the airline for booking tickets over the phone, and Consumer NZ is warning contact centre fees shouldn’t be charged if consumers have no option but to call.
The customer, who Interest.co.nz has agreed not to name, says she wanted to use her Airpoints to book flights for another traveller and was unable to do so on the Air New Zealand website.
After calling the airline’s contact centre and booking the flights she noticed the flights were $30 cheaper on its website.
She was surprised to learn she had been charged $30 for booking through the contact centre, and says the fee wasn’t disclosed up front by Air New Zealand.
“There’s a recorded message saying there’s a charge if one calls the contact centre, which I think is cheeky but thought, ‘how much could it possibly be?’, but that’s it. No details or anything.”
The customer says after she noticed the difference she asked the airline representative why the flights were more expensive, and then the call centre fee was disclosed.
“If I had not asked, I don’t think I would have been told. A short message up-front is one thing, but they should be being very transparent about that."
Air New Zealand spokesperson said in an emailed response that customers are not charged for the call itself, but there is a service fee for requests such as booking a new ticket through the contact centre and these service fees vary depending on the request.
They said the recorded messages mention how to self service on the website to save time waiting on the phone, and also mention potential service fees.
The spokesperson said the customer could have listed the person on their Airpoints profile and then booked them online using their Airpoints, but the customer says she attempted to book online and the website told her it wasn’t possible and to call.
The airline’s website does outline a range of “optional charges” that may be levied by the airline, including for booking flights through the call centre.
It says new bookings and changes made via an Air New Zealand contact centre, Travelcentre or airport ticketing desk will have fees applied which can be charged per booking, per journey or per person depending on the change requested. The fee is based on the customer’s location at the time of the transaction.
For New Zealand callers, they can expect to pay between $30 and $150 to book online, and to change a booking through the call centre could also incur a service fee of between $30 and $150.
Another page on the website outlines fees for long haul bookings, and says there is a $60 booking service fee per seated passenger, per one-way journey to book through the call centre. The airline also charges a $22.60 credit card fee to book using a credit card.
It charges “miscellaneous fees” ranging from US$15 to $100 for document searches, reproducing electronic-ticket receipts, ticket endorsement, and refunds on visa required tickets.
Consumer NZ said in a statement it thinks it’s unfair to charge a fee for booking through the contact centre when a customer has no choice but to book through one.
“At the very least the customer should be made aware of the extra costs they are facing. We believe such a fee shouldn’t exist if the customer genuinely has no choice but to use the contact centre.”
In 2017 Consumer ran a campaign targeting “sneaky fees”, service or booking fees added to the cost of advertised goods and services.
It estimated retailers could be earning $68 million each year from fees charged on top of the headline price.
Air NZ has also been a more recent target of the consumer watchdog after it launched a campaign highlighting the public’s rights when airlines cancel or reschedule flights.
It says under the Civil Aviation Act, if an airline cancels or delays a domestic flight for reasons within its control, travellers are entitled to reimbursement of up to 10 times the cost of the ticket or the actual cost of delay – whichever is lower.
On Thursday, Consumer lodged a complaint with the Commerce Commission about Jetstar, alleging the budget airline was misleading consumers about their rights when flights are cancelled or delayed.
32 Comments
I fly a decent amount with Air NZ (mainly because I have to go to various regional destinations and there is no other option) and I would agree that their overall service/quality is declining.
Service standards seem to have dropped, food quality on flights with catering and in the lounges has gone downhill, and the nickel and diming with various charges and fees is getting absurd.
I've come to realise that loyalty to an airline is a total mug's game.
I think if AirNZ had a choice, they'd want to pick market conditions from 3 years ago.
They are fairly buggered at the moment, something about a pandemic and closed borders, I forget now, was a while ago.
No problem doing things myself online, what I do expect though, is when things go wrong, to be able to deal with a person, at the company, and have them fix the issue in a timely manner.
... we never deal with Air NZ , unless the only other option is Aeroflot ... a lesson learnt years ago , Air NZ sucks at service & communications ...
During the Covid19 lockdown , Singapore Air refunded our tickets , easy peasy ...
... Air NZ put travellers through hell at that time : I was not surprised ...
Air NZ sucks !
Ditto. AirNZ lost me about 2003 and I have subsequently used Emirates exclusively. With European Bus Class travel x1/yr and a similar number of economy flights the revenue lost is staggering ($250k?).
Obliged to use NZ281 departing from Singapore in an hour. Obliged due to limited options.
It's not just their call centre that is the problem. The whole corporation is a rotten steaming pile of ...
Just flew with them and the service sits somewhere between Ryanair and Easyjet, with pricing in excess of most of the top carriers.
You just have to look at the issues with the NY flights to see their complete lack of ability at running an airline.
Yes the pricing is outrageous.
Part of the model appears to be using Airpoints to bring pricing into line with other airlines. Customers making the call that they may as well use a year of accrued points to bring down the price of an international flight.
What erks me about Air New Zealand is they charge a premium but the actual service and behaviour is more like a budget airline. There's so much nickel-and-diming with credit card fees, deceptive booking processes (for example at first glance it looks like the $5 to select a seat is unavoidable), the in-your-face car rental and insurance adverts (like Jetstar)... call centre booking fees... Argh, I hate them.
I only ever use them when there's no choice.
I don't see the issue. It's clearly more labourious to use a person to book than to do it online. I suppose it's a bit rich of AirNZ if a particular corner case isn't actually possible to do self-service and online, but it's still probably better than everyone else having to pay rather than the specific person it affects. If you want a local call centre with "living wages" then someone has to pay.
Perhaps a bit harsh. SOP is to register other person in air points/dollar group, which may not be possible if other person is not a family member/lives at same address (SQ has similar arrangements). In which case, the complainant was seeking waiver of rules which Air NZ didn't have to agree to. But they did and so the fee is reasonable. As for Air New Zealand's service, well they're no l9nger comparable to CX or SQ and they pulled some sh*t during COVID (exhibit A: all those ghost flights where people's bookings were "adjusted" a few days before their flight, throwing arrangements into chaos)... but they're a long way from Aeroflot or Ryan Air. And finally, we're currently in the JFK departure lounge for our return flight to AKL. No dramas either way (so far), indeed the outbound flight was excellent. Fingers crossed!
Flying these days has become so dehumanized by automated processes, security and hard to access and use airports, I'm surprised no-one has gone to the commerce commission to have the term "customer" replaced with the more accurate "carbon based self-loading cargo."
$30 is pretty fair. It probably takes anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour the book a flight on average over the phone, between employing the agent and overheads for the software, buildings, data etc.
Service costs money, as Michael O'Leary famously said "Customers would walk barefoot over broken glass for lower price."
the airnz website is very complicated and not easy to use. and some behaviors are confusing. for example, if I book a flight from Auckland to Shanghai, it's airnz website, but if I book a ticket from Shanghai to Auckland, it'll always reroute to the their Chinese site, and make me to pay in RMB, which is almost impossible to make the booking at all.
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