I’m not sure if Joe is a real person or a bot. I hope he’s a real person, because if he is a bot, I fear for the future of humanity and the hope that technology will save us.
I started my conversation with
Joe when he popped up on the bottom right-hand side of my screen and asked if
he could help. I was trying to book a flight. In the old days, you’d walk into
a travel agent, deport yourself in a comfortable seat and speak to a lady in a
crisp white shirt and colourful neck scarf. After giving her a rough idea about
where you wanted to go to, you’d engage in polite conversation about your
holiday plans while waiting for a ticket to come out of their dot matrix
printer.
But apparently technology has
made this better. You can now book from the comfort of your sofa. This started
out well. You found the airline’s website, filled out your name and credit card
details and it was done.
I don’t want to appear like a
grumpy old man, but the truth is that I am. Everything has gone downhill since.
It started when they websites wanted personal information they don’t need. If I
want to book a flight, why does it matter where I live or what my date of birth
is. I guess it stops three-year-olds stealing their Dad’s credit card and
plotting a trip to Disneyland. But if they were clever enough to do that, I
doubt if they would have entered their actual date of birth.
Then they started upselling.
Offering Insurance, car rental and hotel suggestions and making it as difficult
to navigate these pages as it is to find your way around IKEA. Then someone
came up with the great wheeze of splitting the fare. It used to be taken for
granted that you needed a seat on a plane, would quite like to sit next to your
partner and to bring a suitcase along on your travels. Somebody, probably
Ryanair, realised that if you sell these separately, you could spin the myth
that air travel is cheaper than ever, when actually it ends up at the same cost
it always was, after you have added on all the items you used to take for
granted.
Apart from everything else, this
makes booking a flight more complicated than brain surgery, with a similar pain
impact. After you have unclicked all the items you never wanted to purchase in
the first place, entered more personal information than even your wife knows and
committed your credit card details to a website that otherwise filled you with
suspicion, you might finally get the “Flight Confirmed” message. Or more often
than not a message that would send you back to the first page like a naughty child.
That’s how I ended up talking to
Joe. The Auckland to Sydney route is dominated by the national carriers of New
Zealand and Australia, who clearly call each other every morning to agree their
eye-watering fares.
There is an alternative to this.
An Asian interloper that is trying to sneak into this market. We travelled with
them at Christmas and they were half the cost of the national airlines. However,
my daughter was disgusted that there was no TV screen on the back of the seat
in front of her, I was annoyed that my seat that was stuck in the reclined position
and left me staring at the ceiling for the whole trip and we were all upset on
the return trip when they seated the three of us in random seats throughout the
plane.
Nevertheless, I turned to them
again last week when I wanted to book another flight to Sydney and saw the eye
watering fares that Air New Zealand were quoting. Since Christmas, their website
has changed in one key aspect. You now have to set up an Account. You can no longer
be a casual traveller, you have to a fully signed up member, willing to accept
daily emails and share all of your personal details. They have also enforced
two factor authentication. This is normally enforced by banks and government
agencies or other parties that need to protect you from fraud. It’s rarely used
by websites that simply want to sell you a product.
I went along with the charade. Entered
my phone number and pressed the button that promised to send me a text that
would finalise my account set up.
The text never arrived and that’s
when I started talking to Joe.
“Please uninstall the App and re-install
it”
“I’m not using your App, I’m looking
at your website”.
“Thank you for your response. Please
uninstall the App and re-install it”.
“I’M NOT USING YOUR BLOODY APP”.
At this stage, the conversation changed.
Joe passed me onto an anonymous manager who gave me an official case number, as
though I’d stumbled into a murder case. His suggestion was that I install their
app and try to do a booking through this. I was indignant that technology had
got us to the point where an App was needed for a simple transaction but did it
anyhow.
The App didn’t work. I still didn’t
get a text to finish my account set up.
I gave up and booked a flight
with Qantas. It was expensive, but it came with a meal, movies and a bag included
in the price, without having to navigate 12 screens.
The cheap airline wasn’t giving
up though. They sent another email from a “Do-Not Reply” email address, saying
that if I wanted to keep the case open, I should reply to the email.
Two weeks later, I got my final
message. It said that they were closing the case and if I wanted it reopened, I
should log on to my account, ignoring the fact that my problem was that I
couldn’t open an account.
I hanker for the old days and
ladies with crisp white shirts.
