EasyJet letter about Flight Checker

sissle_v

Hello All! :j

After being instructed by :money:, I wrote a short note to EasyJet asking them to include themselves on the flight checker. Here is the response I recieved today:

Dear sissle_v

Thank you for your email dated 04/03/2005 suggesting our company joins
FlightChecker as that would make our services more appealing to you.

I can confirm that easyJet has many commercial relationships with web
portals, ISP's etc. which are seen as useful marketing tools that are
beneficial to the airline. We also advertise easyJet.com through a
multitude of different media channels. However, we do not have any commercial
relationships with any companies that allow them to display our flight
schedule, flights or fares. Our position has not changed since we first
accepted bookings through our website easyjet.com. We want customers,
regular or prospective, to access easyjet.com directly where the
information they access is both current and relevant to their needs prior to
and following a sale.

As for FlightChecker facility, it is misleading because it only shows
the fare without the appropriate taxes and charges. The customer has to
go to the airlines website anyway in order to get the 'real' price for
the flight. Their site works by trawling each airlines website once
every 24 hours which means that there is a very good chance that the
prices are out of date especially the closer you get to the date of
departure. Obviously, it does not include any other relevant information that
assists the customer in making the decision to buy. They state that
'easyJet refused permission arguing "no one'd want that"; but in reality
our official position was that we did not see any benefit to the customer
and that they would be better off going directly to the airline website
where the information is more complete and updated continuously.

I hope this to some extent explains our decision not to offer
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com access to our pricing information.

I have updated our records regarding this correspondence, which will
assist us in providing you with a better and faster response in the
future, should you need to contact us again.
A brief summary of your request and our reply, together with a list of
actions taken has been added to our contact database.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us, sissle_v. If you
require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us again,
either by phone on 0871 244 2366 (calls cost 10p per minute; calls from
mobiles and other networks may cost more) or via the contact us section
of the easyJet web site. We look forward to welcoming you on board in
the future.


Yours sincerely


Alex Sousa
easyJet Customer Services Team


Somehow I get the feeling I'm the only one who wrote to them....

alared

Disappointing response from an airline that led the way with cheap flights.

saveapenny

"As for FlightChecker facility, it is misleading because it only shows
the fare without the appropriate taxes and charges. The customer has to
go to the airlines website anyway in order to get the 'real' price for
the flight"

Make you laugh really whe they advertise 99p flights as part of thier marketing ploys and you have to add the tax on to that but thats fine for them to do...not misleading at all is it??

satan666wayne

how do http://www.skyscanner.net/ do it then

trisontana

saveapenny wrote:

"As for FlightChecker facility, it is misleading because it only shows
the fare without the appropriate taxes and charges. The customer has to
go to the airlines website anyway in order to get the 'real' price for
the flight"

Make you laugh really whe they advertise 99p flights as part of thier marketing ploys and you have to add the tax on to that but thats fine for them to do...not misleading at all is it??

Someone from EasyJet on the radio today said that in future they are going to display the true and final cost of their flights (including all supplements and taxes) prominently in their advertisements and on the first page of their web-site. So that should make things more transparent. As an aside I heard Simon Calder say today that Ryanair are now thinking of charging people to use the loos on their planes !

researcher

I had a similar reply saying the same thing - but written by someone else, and in all fairness obviously not 'cut and pasted' from some document circulated at head office to fob us off. In this case I think they really do think they're doing their customers a favor -even if they're wrong!