Passengers Beware!
By Kevin Anthony Stoda
December 21, 2010
Am I the only one having issues and losing a lot of money trying to book tickets online--an not finding major airlines and regional airlines helpful these day?-- I look at one regional airport in Southeast.
Am I the only one having issues and losing a lot of money trying to book tickets online--an not finding major airlines and regional airlines helpful these day?
SECURITY ISSUES, DOUBLE BOOKINGS AND CEBU PACIFIC AIRLINES
Cebu Pacific's online booking system is often operating internationally illegally and unsafe--as well as passenger-unfriendly.
"MOST OBVIOUSLY by ALLOWING DOUBLE BOOKING OF PASSENGERS WITH SAME NAME AND AGES--WITHOUT ANY initial online SECURITY CHECK is only one KEY EXAMPLE of INCOMPETENT SECURITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. Any disguised individual could occupy the second sets of seats."--KAS
For example, this past Friday, I was "permitted" on-line with CEBU PACIFIC in a crisis this past Friday to "accidentally book myself and [pay for] two family members" 2 times on the same flight--using all the same names and credit card address.
NOTE: This occurred because the local airline I was in (in Taiwan), UNI Air, is also incompetent and failed to tell me that 3 planes were canceled on December 10--due to weather issues--from tiny Beigan Island to Taipei. This thus made it impossible at the last minute to make my December 11 (1:20am) flight to Taiwan.
Next, when a few minutes later, I understood my error with CEBU's illegally operating system (1. the online system, 2. its fax-address and 3. phone numbers in Taipei for Cebu Pacific) failed to respond to my request to not double book myself and two families--and NOT TO CHARGE MY FAMILY 10,000 PESOS twice for each December 11 booking, i.e. for 3 passengers.
CONTACT THE MANILA PHONE NUMBER, MR. STODA
After getting no help from the Taipei contact addresses for Cebu Pacific, we went to the airport. All the Cebu Pacific staff at the International Airport in Taiwan could do was to tell me to contact Cebu Pacific when I arrived to Manila.
Yesterday, I arrived in Manila with my wife and child.
NOW--TODAY--when I CONTACTED face-to-face CEBU OFFICIALS in Manila, they claimed that the company would REFUSE to refund my second or DOUBLE BOOKING of 3 passengers on December 11, 2010 from Taipei to Manila--stating the company "considered it solely the responsibility of the passengers involved when there is any online booking error."
HOW CAN PASSENGER BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE IN A DOUBLE BOOKING?
I suggest you inform the FAA or ICAO about this matter. Caap will surely be in favor of cebupac. No changes will be made with this security flaw unless some international agency would say so. I certainly believe this security flaw have already been exploited by so many people, I for one have done it so. Knowing cebupac customer service personnel, they don't really care about safety, they don't want to lose their jobs by delaying a flight just because of some online booking problems. As long as you have some ticket and some guys to take its seat then its all good, that's the risk of having contractual employees. Why would the company spend on additional programming expenses when they couldn't even spend on a decent ticket stub. I don't think a ticket like a paper receipt would make that much of a savings, if so then might as well make a ticket stub out of toilet paper to maximize profit.
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