Singapore—Even if Rachel Tan, who has posted four times on Scoot’s Facebook page over the carrier’s mistaken double charges, doesn’t want to fly with Scoot anymore, she doesn’t seem to have a choice, as she was given a voucher instead of a refund, for Scoot’s error.
When she refused the voucher and asked for a refund again, she was told that she needs to pay S$50 for the administration fee. Ms Tan refused this as well, for the reason that the error was on Scoot’s part, and not hers.
“Why should I have I have to pay for your mistakes?!,” she wrote in her most recent post.
Ms Tan posted on FlyScoot’s page on Jan 1, 12, 14 and 20, telling the story of how she booked a flight to Melbourne in November of last year. She was erroneously double charged for her online booking, and therefore reached out to Scoot to correct this.
Ms Tan says that she asked for a refund on her credit card, which Scoot agreed to. She was told that it would take five weeks to complete the refund, but instead of getting her S$616 back, she received an email saying that she would get a flight voucher that was valid for one-year from Scoot.
To make matters worse, when she called the airline, she was told that “since my flight was non-refundable, it was in good will that I was even refunded anything. (Bear in mind I did not make the decision to buy 2 tickets but rather was charged twice for the same ticket).”
After emailing again, Ms Tan was told that she had been the one to agree to the voucher instead of a refund. However, when she asked for an recording of the call as proof that she had agreed to this arrangement, her emails have been “blatantly ignored.”
Ms Tan, who describes herself as a “peanut-earning millennial” several times, was understandably upset over the matter.
After her January 12 post, which was addressed to Scoot CEO Lee Lik Hsin, she was told that she could, after all, avail of the credit card refund, as long as she paid the S$50 admin fee.
Ms Tan wrote, “I rejected this proposal as it’s a stupid one. Scoot should incur the cost for their own negligence. Why should a customer pay for their mistake? The only reason why we are in the situation is because of a lapse in Scoot’s operation and backend. Additionally, as a customer, have I not paid enough with my frustration and 2 months of chasing? Not to mention the countless hours emailing back and forth…”
In her most recent post on FlyScoot Facebook account, which she addressed again to the company’s CEO, Ms Tan painstakingly explained her plight all over again. But this time, she wrote that she would not fly with the carrier anymore and would let others know about her experience, saying that she was “very disheartened” with the way Scoot staff treated her issue.
“In the end I have $600 of scoot voucher with a validity of only 1 year. The audacity and inconsideration of your company to think a peanut earning millennial like me can afford to fly on trips as and when I want… really astounds me.
I understand if your system had an error or a bug, it would have been easily forgiven if your staff hadn’t caused me all this frustration and anxiety from chasing my money since November only to be ignored… To push the cost of your system failure on to your customer … makes your company the typical corporate bully.
You forced me… a customer to take your flights because I have no choice but to use my vouchers and you think I’d want to fly with you again?! Please.”
UPDATE to the story: As of 1:00pm on January 21, Ms Tan wrote in a comment to her January 12 post on Scoot’s account, “Updated: Scoot has apologized and agreed to refund me in full back to my credit card. Thank you Scoot for making good of this situation.
Scoot’s statement on the incident:
According to Scoot’s records, Ms Tan was not doubly charged. She had made bookings for two Singapore-Melbourne flights on a third party website on 9 November 2019. Based on Scoot’s identical bookings policy, we will refund the full cost of the duplicate booking in the form of Scoot travel vouchers, and this was communicated to Ms Tan when she approached our customer service team. Upon her acceptance, we proceeded to process her refund request. Scoot would like to clarify that in order to avoid duplicate charges, all credit card payment transactions made on the Scoot website require customers to input a One-Time-Password for authentication, however Ms Tan’s bookings were made on a third party website without this mechanism. As stated on our website, in general, refunds will be provided within 30 business days. Scoot has been in touch with Ms Tan to resolve this issue.
-TISG