A holiday experience

A holiday experience

In early September we reserved seven seats with Garuda to
Lombok. By the end of November, the travel agent requested us to
issue the tickets otherwise the reservations would be canceled?
We were very surprised also to learn that Garuda had issued a new
regulation on Oct. 23 stating that tickets for the season should
be three month tickets. This meant that suddenly we had to pay Rp
1,000,000 more for our flight compared to the price issued at the
time of reservation. Nice way to generate more income Garuda!

In Lombok, staff of the Senggigi Beach Hotel (an Aerowisata-
Garuda company) went to the airport to re-confirm our return
flight to Jakarta three days before departure on Jan. 2. We
received the reconfirmation code Q8VSX4. On Jan. 2 we went to the
airport accompanied by a staff member of the hotel. While already
printing our boarding cards (!) a group came to check-in. Only
half of them were reconfirmed but they supplied their tickets in
which some Rp 100,000 notes were folded. This was witnessed by
several other people. Suddenly they stopped producing our
boarding cards and we were told that regretfully not enough seats
were available for our party of seven people.

The Garuda manager was more than willing to help us if we were
willing to help him as well (I just wonder what that means?).
They also suggested that my two and a half year old and nine year
old daughter should sit on our laps (!) to Jakarta which we
refused based on safety reasons. (By the way, why did I have to
pay for my two and a half year old daughter a fare of 60 percent
of a one-year ticket which cost just US$5 less than a normal
adult ticket? And why were two kids aged nine and 16 years old
not allowed a student discount?). GA's staff at Lombok told us
that we had to accept the option of one person flying with
Merpati to Bali and then with GA to Jakarta on the 8 p.m. flight.
That person, however was only on stand-by for Bali-Jakarta!

During the discussions our luggage reappeared from the plane
and we were all simply thrown off the flight which took off
without us! We were then told that over the next few days we
could be on the stand-by list and come daily to check whether
seats were available! Unbelievable! We told them that we had seen
them receive money from the non-confirmed passengers and that was
why we were thrown off the plane and that we would go public and
file a law-suit if we were not booked on a flight the next day.
This was not possible since that particular flight was already
overbooked twice!.

After I took photographs of the staff they suddenly gave us
boarding cards for the next day's flight. Please note that now
another seven other people were just thrown off that particular
flight! Upon checking in our luggage the next day the staff of
Garuda were extremely impolite again and during our wait we
noticed chaos again at the Garuda check-in with many, many very
upset and angry passengers. Please note that I have witness
reports and photos available of everything as described if
requested.

Garuda...your advertisements are promising...when will you
start acting accordingly and professionally and how did you
"earn" the Indonesian Customer Excellence Award?

LEO LAMMERINK

Bogor, West Java