TV's worst TV show looks into LCC

[Flashback]

If you're all up for torture, and have the time tomorrow then Today Tonight on Channel 7 will be taking a look into low cost carriers.

 

[oz_mark]

What angle are they taking?

 

[Flashback]

I only caught it as I was coming back into the room, so not too sure. I did see a shot of a Tiger plane, and also heard some lady say "that's not how an airline should run!"

 

[drron]

And there was a comment about a hidden tiger as no one can contact them.Another hatchet job no doubt.

 

[mcflyer]

Paper Tiger Airways

I tried to send this to TT on the Ch 7 webpage, but there was no "Send" button on their page! Poor internet business standards are, unfortunately, universal, but don't get me started....

Anyhow, this is what I was going to send them:

I understand you are doing a story on the low cost airlines. I hope you have done your homework and not let Tiger off lightly [eg, have you read the Facebook groups?]

More likely they should be called Paper Tiger Airways. They seem to have a skeleton staff in Australia with fewer than 200 employees [after deducting cabin and technical crew that probably leaves just the CEO & the MD and a few support staff in the country] and run out of Singapore. Is it Singapore Airlines' punishment on Australia for knocking back their attempt at getting a proper domestic licence here?.

This airline is a less than desirable addition to the Australian domestic aviation scene. The call centre is probably located in SE Asia redirected from a Melbourne 03 number. Key personnel such as the Customer Relations Officer are based in Singapore. No wonder they don't understand the Australian market! Other functions such as booking confirmations appear to be outsourced to a company in the UK. Well, this sort of "globalised" operation does not work but merely underscores the rubbishy front end side of customer service.

It's a fascinating case study of the irrationality that pervades too much contemporary business strategy and structure - a domestic airline with no local customer service; a web presence that fails to provide contacts for passengers; a phone system that is established in another culture and country and fails to work for customers most of the time; rigid check-in cut-offs even for queues [good on time departures statistics with the cost of alienating pax are not rational]. It's a classic case of a business failing to comprehend that the first rule of success is attracting and retaining customers. Without that, fare stunts will do nothing more than to statistically keep pax numbers temporarily up while the qualitative outcomes [ie., passenger satisfaction with a service well-provided] are disgruntlement and eventual decline in the statistical outcomes and profit levels. Pretty stupid, really.

Hubristic statements from MDs aren't worth anything if their company does not attend to fundamentals.

This airline has no future in Australia unless they improve their customer relations.

Let me re-phrase that: Tiger Airways Australia hides from its customers and they don't return. It's no way to build up a customer base in a highly competitive industry.

Take their first point of contact with customers: in this case it is telephone and their webpage. But, they don't have online contact form or email address! And their phone is a disaster. They have a minute and a quarter recorded message which contains conflicting information. When you do survive the message the phone goes dead. That is, if you can get through at all.

Not only is their phone contact crude and unworkable, this Melbourne-based operation does not even have a 1300 number let alone an 1800 number.

Customers, Tiger is telling us, do not matter. And a company with this Fawlty Towers philosophy cannot survive, no matter how many ultra-cheap fare stunts they pull.

​

And I haven't even flown with them: I'm booked to fly from the Sunshine Coast to Melbourne and back over Easter, never to use them again, even if they do manage to survive....

 

[simongr]

So mcflyer, you have no personal experience of flying with them, no real knowledge of their operations (assumptions about where the call centre is based without any facts), no real knowledge of their staffing structure and you want TT to do their homework?

You haven't flown with them and will never fly with them after that. Based on what reasoning?

For the record, Facebook is not I believe a recognised authoratative research tool...

 

[opusman]

So mcflyer, you have no personal experience of flying with them, no real knowledge of their operations (assumptions about where the call centre is based without any facts), no real knowledge of their staffing structure and you want TT to do their homework?

Sounds no worse than what most TT stories are based on

 

[dajop]

Mcflyer, who trod on your toes this morning?

I think you're missing the whole point of Tiger - the things you point out is the very business model they are trying to bring to Australia (replicating the Ryanair model in the UK - they are there to get you from Point A to Point B without any extras). They are NOT trying to be Qantas or even Virgin Blue.

45 minutes is the cutoff. So what? THat's where they've drawn the line if you want better than that there is always DJ, JQ, QF. Every airline has a cutoff. No phone support? Tough if you want better than that there is always DJ, JQ, QF. They could go down the Ryanair route and have phone support - at premium rates (1900 style) if I understand correctly. No understanding of the market? Their problem not yours.

What does Tiger bring to the market?
- Some innovative routes (eg MEL-ROK/MKY)
- Some competition on other routes (MEL-ASP)
- Preventing DJ & QF/JQ from forming a cosy little monopoly
- A proper no frills airline for people who do just want to get from A to B at a random time on a particular day.

My parents booked Tiger to get to Launceston last year (for $20 each return), but no longer could travel due to medical reasons. Fine, no problem they were prepared to forgoe the $40. But as their flight had moved >4 hours they rang Tiger (yes the virtually non-existent Tiger call centre) who arranged for a full refund.

I wouldn't use them if time pushed, or for business travel, but have used them to fly to ROK (and have used the Singapore based operation as well) and found them perfectly adequate.

I am sure time will tell if they get the support of Australian travellers. And as for lack of phone support, there are other business that probably need more urgent attention to customer support than airlines ... ever dealt with a phone company? Last time I did I could have sworn it was a gotcha call, as I was ping-ponged round the business.

 

[mcflyer]

No, I haven't flown, yet. But I have experienced their quality of service. And if they can't provide the up front proper customer service that other airlines provide, they will not attract or retain Australian customers. No frills does not mean no customer service.

Dajop writes:
I think you're missing the whole point of Tiger - the things you point out is the very business model they are trying to bring to Australia (replicating the Ryanair model in the UK - they are there to get you from Point A to Point B without any extras). They are NOT trying to be Qantas or even Virgin Blue.
​

No accessible phone [after trying for hours over many days and getting an engaged signal - you've got to be kidding], no email contact, & no contact form indicates a rubbish service. This is not about no extras. It's about poor service. And by the time you pay a booking fee, a luggage fee, a seat booking fee, etc, the price differential isn't worth the hassle. I've flown cheap airline sectors in Europe [not Ryanair] booked online from Australia and I was impressed with the service from a no frills airline. And if Paper Tiger is on the Ryanair model, then I'll never even consider Ryanair next time I go to Europe either.

Dajop also wrote:
No understanding of the market? Their problem not yours.
​

Yes it is my problem, because I have had to endure hours dialling unsuccessfully on the phone, researching contacts on the internet to finally get through to a real person. These are real opportunity costs in getting my bookings right.

This all started when I made a mistake in selecting the outward flight. When I corrected that a short time later, they slugged me $160! Eventually, after I complained, writing to the web techs listed in the Whois for the website, who passed on my concerns, and phoning the Media contact whose number I found on a media release on another website, I received an email from customer services, and later a call.

Following my discussion with the CSO they agreed to refund me $80. Later I received a letter from Singapore. Now, here's part of the problem with this company. This from two paragraphs, one following the other:

... as discussed today, we have processed a refund of the additional charge fee for the return flight which was not intended for change. The refund of AUD80.00 has been processed on March 2009 to your [Credit Card]...

Kindly allow up to 3-4 weeks for the bank to process the refund....
​

They say they have processed the refund to my credit card but I have to wait 3-4 weeks - because of the banks? Have they processed the refund or not? In fact they haven't. When someone else rang me from Singapore about the departure time [I kept getting emails telling me about a change of schedule when the departure times they had given me on the original confirmation document already recorded the time they were telling me it had been changed to] I took up with them the 3-4 week delay in refunding the overcharged fee. It is company "policy" the gentleman from Singapore said. Well, bollocks to that. What bank takes 3-4 weeks to process a refund? Certainly not even the Australian banks, and certainly not my financial institution. And it didn't take 3-4 weeks for the money to be transferred out of my account! More opportunity costs.

Simongr wrote:
For the record, Facebook is not I believe a recognised authoratative research tool...
​

Exactly. I found the various Tiger groups after I did the homework I wished I'd done before trying them out. Tiger employees on Linkedin list their company as having 51-200 employees. Not a statistic, to be sure, but indicative if this is what the employees are putting down. And, of course those facebook people could be employees of other airlines. Indeed, what is your day job, Dajop? That's a rhetorical question. Me? I'm retired. I worked in the airline industry 20 years ago, but not for an airline.

I live in a region served by Tiger and I have never heard people talk about flying on them. They fly, and comment, about Virgin and Jet Star. That, together with the broad span of complaints that people make indicates that Tiger has, at the very least, a significant image problem, no frills or not.

The Tiger business model that places impediments on customers contacting the airline and rigidity for the sake of ontime departure statistics can only be counter-productive. Perhaps I have an old-fashioned idea of what business is about. You keep the customer happy - word of mouth is the best marketing tool. The customer gets the service he pays for [base fare + all those extras, which places TT's fares in the range of the other airlines] and returns. Long-term profitability is the outcome of service and customer relations. Short-term profit motives lose sight of the fact that customers can walk across to the next counter. Soviet-style customer service [yes, I have experienced that too] does not work in Australia, low cost models or not.

 

[Dee Thom]

From the thread title, a presumed you meant " Deal or no Deal ".
Cheers,
Dee

 

[Hvr]

It was a how much can we bash Tiger Airlines beat up. A waste of 5-6 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

If you're going to fly an LCC then you know what to expect.

I reckon Ch7 (Prime) shouldn't expect any advertising from Tiger in the near future, or at least until they do a beat up story about how good Tiger are.

 

[pauly7]

It was a how much can we bash Tiger Airlines beat up. A waste of 5-6 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

If you're going to fly an LCC then you know what to expect.

I reckon Ch7 (Prime) shouldn't expect any advertising from Tiger in the near future, or at least until they do a beat up story about how good Tiger are.

LMAO Of course they will still advertise on Seven (if they even do TV?)... TT bashes every major company in Australia and they still advertise, you have to if you want to build efficient TV marketing campaigns.

 

[mcflyer]

I went for a walk!!!!!

 

[drron]

Hasnt started here yet!
Mcflyer-unfortunately 3-4 weeks for a refund is pretty good for an airline.BA took 11 weeks for mine after quoting 8-12 weeks.

 

[Bundy Bear]

Malaysia Airline hasn't refunded a flight that was canceled back in November and its now April.

They said it would be cheaper to buy a new airfare instead of trying to rebook the existing airfare. Yeah right.

You get what you pay for. :-|

 

[mcflyer]

Following my discussion with the CSO they agreed to refund me $80. Later I received a letter from Singapore. Now, here's part of the problem with this company. This from two paragraphs, one following the other:

... as discussed today, we have processed a refund of the additional charge fee for the return flight which was not intended for change. The refund of AUD80.00 has been processed on March 2009 to your [Credit Card]...

Kindly allow up to 3-4 weeks for the bank to process the refund....
​

They say they have processed the refund to my credit card but I have to wait 3-4 weeks - because of the banks? Have they processed the refund or not? In fact they haven't....

Well,what do you know! Tiger have refunded my money after a fortnight. In my account this morning. Mind you, I shouldn't have had to hassle them for it!

Cheers

 

[straitman]

Well,what do you know! Tiger have refunded my money after a fortnight. In my account this morning. Mind you, I shouldn't have had to hassle them for it!

Cheers

.... and you have still missed the point that 2 - 4 or even 6 weeks for a refund is pretty quick for the airline industry :!:

At 2 weeks their customer service is way above average

 

[odysseus]

At 2 weeks their customer service is way above average

I'm not sure it's much of a consolation to say others are bad, so theirs is better than bad.

When they expect immediate payment from their customers - and their requirements are also above average in that you can hold fares and pay later for the higher class fares of competitors - they should be willing to apply very close to that standard when they need to return funds.

 

[straitman]

I'm not sure it's much of a consolation to say others are bad, so theirs is better than bad.

When they expect immediate payment from their customers - and their requirements are also above average in that you can hold fares and pay later for the higher class fares of competitors - they should be willing to apply very close to that standard when they need to return funds.

The delays in returning fares is deliberate and part of a business model. It is to stop people purchasing, then chopping and changing deliberately and at will. This has the potential of bogging down the support side of the business to such a degree that it become unworkable.

 

[mcflyer]

.... and you have still missed the point that 2 - 4 or even 6 weeks for a refund is pretty quick for the airline industry :!:

At 2 weeks their customer service is way above average

I must admit, I cannot understand the tolerance for poor service that some people have. I had to hassle them for my money. If you read my posts, you'll see that they gave me conflicting information about processing it and gave me some nonsense about the banks holding the payment up for 3 - 4 weeks.

If TT are reflecting the industry [which I don't think they are; and they are certainly not leading it in customer service] then that is a bad state of affairs not something to be celebrated or endured.