Jetstar to honour discounted fares despite glitch

Photo / Greg Bowker

Upset Jetstar customers who were prevented from taking advantage of $99 flights to Singapore by a website error have had their bookings honoured.

Pushkar Naik, of Auckland, took advantage of the promotion on Monday night to buy six return flights for his wife, daughter and friends.

But the glitch prevented him from finishing the booking process.

"We did it and we were quite excited," he said.

"My little daughter and my wife were sitting next to me and I called up my friends and they said 'book our flights as well'.

"I filled in our details and the passenger details. It asked us to select the seat numbers as well.

"Finally, I went to the last page where it asked for my credit card details ... I did everything and we were all excited.

"I clicked at the bottom and I thought that the payment had gone through and suddenly this message popped up saying 'this is a duplicate of the original booking'."

He tried to call the company, but couldn't get a ringing signal.

When he finally got one, he was left hanging on for more than 20 minutes as his call went unanswered.

Mr Naik said he found the ordeal particularly upsetting because transactions sometimes did not show up on his bank account for some time so he did not know if he had paid for the flights.

When he went to book again, the flights were more expensive.

After being contacted by the Herald yesterday, Jetstar said a "small number" of customers had received the error message.

Jetstar spokesman Gerard Blank said the company was contacting those customers to honour the sale fare.