Jet2 Complaint

Jojocat · 18 February 2017 at 11:08AM

Why isn't there a travel agent ombudsman? ABTA can only do so much.
I booked a summer holiday with them in mid Jan 2017 for myself +2 kids and paid the £180 deposit. I'm not a foolish person and always read through absolutely everything before I buy anything, especially online purchases.
I've been looking at the price for the same holiday every few days since booking - you know, to see how it varied....did I buy at the right time? The price did go up and down but I'm not complaining about that.
My complaint is about misleading advertising. When I looked at the price again on Sunday 12/02/17, they'd added on 'Additional Information'. This related to having to provide a 600 euro breakage deposit - this info was not on their website at time of booking.
I don't have an extra 600 euros and don't have a credit card.
I complained to Jet2 and their attitude was 'tough.......that info was there when you booked...'
Other holidaymakers on Tripadvisor have complained about the same issue so Jet2 are wrong.
Is this false advertising?

Bogalot · 18 February 2017 at 3:02PM

Can you prove it was not there when you booked?

Why not just take out a credit card before you go, place the deposit on there and cancel when you get back.

daytona0 · 18 February 2017 at 9:09PM

Wouldn't necessarily say "false advertising", but more possibly an error.

I would firstly recommend typing "waybackmachine" into google and clicking on the google link. This will allow you to see the webpage on certain days in the past, though it may not work in some cases because the internet doesn't take a snapshot of every single website. You MAY be able to see what the site looked like BEFORE purchase...

Aside from that, what evidence do you have? The final step would be to take Jet2 to a court and why would a judge side with you when you have nothing in the way of evidence?

Harsh if you are correct, but that's just how it goes sometimes

(but in your instance it wasn't misleading but more likely a mistake)

Sooler · 18 February 2017 at 10:58PM

Grab their T&Cs
http://www.jet2.com/terms

updated 11th Jan 2017, no mention of breakagebut they may have it covered in

4.3
The taxes and charges mentioned in section 4.1 are constantly changing and may be imposed or increased after the date that your booking is confirmed. If any such tax or charge is introduced or increased after confirmation of your booking you are obliged to pay an extra amount to us to cover the additional tax or charge before departure. Failure to pay this may affect your ability to be flown by us.

Jojocat · 18 February 2017 at 11:53PM

Thanks guys. Tried waybackmachine, but no joy there. Just went on Trustpilot and seen more people complaining about Jet2. The same holiday on another website, says the breakage deposit is 100 euros (same dates etc).

codger · 19 February 2017 at 11:46AM

Jojocat wrote: »

Thanks guys. Tried waybackmachine, but no joy there. Just went on Trustpilot and seen more people complaining about Jet2. The same holiday on another website, says the breakage deposit is 100 euros (same dates etc).

Must be the first recorded incident of Trustpilot ever providing anything in the way of honest information. . .

As to jet2, it's just another of the aviation industry's MFI operations (named in loving memory of a one-time furniture retailer whose "pre-sale" prices were never those that any sane person would've paid and thus its "amazing savings!" were, in every sense, unreal.)

I have no experience of using jet2 as a package holiday provider nor any desire to do so, but using it as just another charter carrier is fine, always providing you don't register your email address with it until the time you actually make a booking otherwise you'll be spammed silly with 'member only' discount offers whose value may, given the prices to which the discounts relate, turn out to be anything but impressive.

Do what everyone else does with a charter carrier: go to Skyscanner and register (it's free and takes less than a minute), input the dates/places of your flight departure and return, and ask Skyscanner to email you as and when there's a price change.

If that route on those particular days using those particular airports is exclusive to Jet2, then all you'll get from Skyscanner are Jet2's price changes. If it's a route serviced by many operators, then you'll get all their price changes too.

The aviation industry uses simple computer algorithms to monitor demand for a route according to the number of website hits received; the algorithm maintains, increases, or decreases prices accordingly. Every time you visit a carrier's website, your IP address is logged along with all the IPs of other potential customers enquiring after the same destination, departure airport and dates in question -- which means you're actually feeding in data that may be helping to keep prices high when what you were hoping to find was that they'd dropped lower.

Skyscanner's hits don't betray a computer user's own IP address and because so many samplings are commissioned by so many different Skyscanner users, airlines know that any data they acquire is pretty much meaningless -- especially as it's quite common for someone to make a flight booking, but still leave the Skyscanner price check in place.

As to the situation you face with your holiday, it's most often the case that a get-out clause will exist in a contract's T&Cs in relation to error, or some right will be asserted to force-of-circumstance modification. It may well be possible to go to Law to claim that the right is unreasonable and unenforceable but as that'll wind up costing many £100s if not £1000s, it's not a course of action even worth bothering to consider.