Background

A lady and her daughter needed to get from Port Harcourt to Lagos on Tuesday (today) and back to PH from Lagos on Saturday.

On Monday I made the booking on Air Nigeria's site. 

Paid the money using the directions in the mail I got from Air Nigeria using the online quickteller payment.

Payment is successful on monday morning and I get a text and mail from Interswitch confirming payment.

I send her the booking reference and she gets to the airport on time today for her flight only to be told they are issuing refunds to passengers for some reasons.

She gives them her booking reference and they say payment hasnt been made.

I call customer care and after several hours now they tell me they have now confirmed payment.

I want a refund and its a shame that it takes an airline 24 hours to confirm an online payment.

Any advice? She cant get to the Airport again until Saturday (she had to do a fresh booking with another airline and is air borne (thankfully) not on the wings of Air Nigeria).

Dual Core:

Background


I send her the booking reference and she gets to the airport on time today for her flight only to be told they are issuing refunds to passengers for some reasons.

She gives them her booking reference and they say payment hasnt been made.

I call customer care and after several hours now they tell me they have now confirmed payment.

I want a refund and its a shame that it takes an airline 24 hours to confirm an online payment.

Confirm if the ticket is refundable

Call Customer service again to ask for you refund, give them your ticket/payment reference

They are requesting I goto the airport for a refund. The airport is not at my backyard and I cant put it in my tight schedule this week. The earliest anyone can be at the airport is on Saturday and its the woman, when she arrives from LAG. I can arrange for her to get to them on saturday but I have no faith in these people and their system. She may get there on saturday and they tell her it was a missed flight or something which isn't the case here. Has anyone had this kinda experience?

Their plane were not cleared by the engineers

Call them again, tell them you paid online and you want the refunds the same way you paid

Ask for a reference number to take to the airport for a refund,
ask for the name of the person you are speaking to,
ask for an appointment to say Mrs XYZ is coming for a refund and who she which 2 manager will be on duty (as one is very likely 'not to be on seat')

She must have boarded by now, everything has been sorted out.

If you are late and miss your flight, you will pay for it. Make them pay for their error and sue for damages.

Paying for tickets using interswitch is for most times,messed up.and Getting help from inter switch takes a donkey hours.

If you paid online and most likely got a discounted economy fare,chances are its non-refundable.Check the fare rules again.

Gotta LOL @ SUE interswitch for late payment confirmation and missed flight.Na naija we dey bikonu,nobe abroad.

@OP,Next time,do your bookings online then go pay at any of the designated banks,airline city/airport office or simply use a travel agency.

@OP,If it happens that your ticket is non-refundable(most likey would be),don't throw it away as its still valid.They would only void the ticket,leave it open then you can still use it for same route in the future(as cancellation was from airline) though you might probably pay for date change which should be like 3K.

Another option is to re-route the ticket,pay fare difference and date change fees. ie You can use it for PH-ABUJA(or anywhere).fare difference = difference in fare for ticket for PH-LOS AND PH-Abuja.

I highly doubt you'd get a refund and even at all you get,it would be like 70% of what you paid.

Please before paying for tickets online or anywhere,request for and read the ticket rules so you know exactly how "cheap" your ticket is.

So bad, my girl friend was in Lagos on Friday to visit me via Arik airline and on Monday we left home early so she can catch first flight to get to Abuja before noon to resume work,i dropped her off at the airport and she called me few minutes later that she has bought a ticket to fly with Air Nigeria, 2 hours later she called me that they will not allow Air Nigeria to fly, there payment was refunded in full and she has to book for another airline, at the end she got to Abuja by 4.00pm,i just cannot imagine the bull000shit, Well i know i cannot use that airline neither a friend,Brother,sister or even a fellow traveler that i meet in the airport because i will discourage anyone that attempts to fly with them

@OP, kindly detail your experience on the CUSTOMER SERVICE NAMING AND BASHING thread that was created recently.
On a related note, never do online transactions with Air Nigeria.
Infact if you must book and pay for a ticket online, insist on Aero contractors.
Their online system is tested and trusted. besides each time i have had reason to call their customer care line, the service has been exemplary.
Aero are no angels as travellers at the port Harcourt Airport must have noted on Sunday but when it comes to online transactions and customer call center, they are head and shoulders above the rest.

Sacarstic:

So bad, my girl friend was in Lagos on Friday to visit me via Arik airline and on Monday we left home early so she can catch first flight to get to Abuja before noon to resume work,i dropped her off at the airport and she called me few minutes later that she has bought a ticket to fly with Air Nigeria, 2 hours later she called me that they will not allow Air Nigeria to fly, there payment was refunded in full and she has to book for another airline, at the end she got to Abuja by 4.00pm,i just cannot imagine the bull000shit, Well i know i cannot use that airline neither a friend,Brother,sister or even a fellow traveler that i meet in the airport because i will discourage anyone that attempts to fly with them

An Airline that refunded money to passengers due to reasons beyond their control no try abi, try that with other airlines and see if you would get your money back on time (that is if you get it back).

I fly with Air Nigeria and their services are exemplary.

Lets get somethings clear here;
The late payment/confirmation of payment is NOT air Nigeri's fault.Had the OP bought his ticket @ their office or paid for it with cash at a bank then it would have been VK's palaver.The problem is either from the OP's bank(services are erratic) or interswitch,or both.

I quite agree with Dungren,air Nigeria to the best of my knowledge are one of the few "smooth operators" on the local terrain.Never had any negative feedback from them before now.

They refunded some pax,that's fair enough.

@Poster,, when u make payment for a ticket online & its not issued, the fault is from the service provider (interswitch & co) and not our airline, what we do on our own just like u rightly said is to check if the cash has actually entered air nigeria account & this can only be done at the airport, if the cash is there, we put u on the flight immediately but if not, we always advise u get a fresh ticket & talk to your bank.

With respect to your complaint, i personally apologize for this & like the lady here mentioned, pls take that ticket to PHC airport or our office on olu obasanjo -UBA or i-cinema stadium road and get it revalidated for any future trip or use it on any domestic route of your choice. Secondly, i hope you explained well enough to them so that a remark will be in the system for that particular ticket which will enable u use it free of charge anytime within 12 months of purchase.

Bros, i sincerely apologize, pls drop your number & i'll call u to get the ticket ref  & sort this out with our PHC office if its ok with u,

On the issue of grounding, the airline was not grounded, what we had was a minor internal dispute , but its all sorted now & our machines are back in the air, a press conference will take place later today.

For others that had flight delays, apologies too but i tell u, no airline in the world is without its problems and like some mentioned here, air nigeria remains their choice airline & we'll keep striving to do our best for u guys,

Regards. 
B.

offtopic - air nigeria services are exemplary?

have i stepped off into the twilight zone?

Its a pity it happened like that, thats what's involved wit travelling, but sincerely there is no airline that's got no issues once in a while.
-i've experienced a delay wit air nigeria,
-arik air delays is a monumental issue.
-had issues wit dana air online booking, got to the airport and found out the booking not made.
-my most prefered airline- aero contractors had cancelled and refunded once a time.
So in a nut shell, airlines do have issue even international airlines, recently Australian QANTAS , the always union issue wit BA management wit union.

Please note, most times online tickets are not always flexible-refund, Re-route etc. But most importantly always read de terms&conditions wit respect to the class of ticket you booked and paid for.
As well , whenever you book and pay for ticket online, go back to the airline home page, and confirm the booking has been confirmed on their site, if not you know how to go about it so as not get disappointed.

Thanks everyone for your comments.

princedant:

Bros, i sincerely apologize, pls drop your number & i'll call u to get the ticket ref  & sort this out with our PHC office if its ok with u,

Thanks I will really appreciate if you can do this for me. Dealing with service providers over the counter in matters like this (without knowing anyone) may just require protocols upon protocols. My number is 08038138483



On a technical note. . . Aero may be better in terms of online transactions because it pulls the Interswitch gateway directly from its site and on successful payment a callback is made to aero's site marking that transaction as successful and everyone is happy. So Aero's billing system uses interswitch as a third-party gateway.
I cannot remember seeing the Interswitch option on AirNigeria (was in a bit of a hurry). The "book on hold" payment is processed for AirNigeria by Quickteller so there is no callback procedure to AirNigeria's database to mark transaction successful once the payment is successful.

A plausible solution will be to tie an automatic callback to AirNigeria once interswitch reports transaction successful. This really has nothing to do with bank delays, Interswitch is tied with nuts and bolts into our banking system. Once funds successfully leave and arrive at destination, interswitch triggers successful. Interswitch will never trigger a transaction successful if it has not successfully pulled out that fund from the paying bank.

These are just my personal opinions, from experience.

Pease how can one contact interswitch. Made payment on quickteller for PHCN but did not receive meter token.

contact your bank and they will initiate a reversal wit respect to the failed transaction. yu cant do anythin without ur bank. be guided accordingly

No offence, but you are surely pissing on your customers. An organization uses Interswitch to lure passengers for easy online instant payments/booking and then you place the onus on the customer for the money to be transferred from interswitch to the merchant's account. If you do not have a smooth partnership with interswitch or some third party, then, simply do not ask customers to book online. It's as simple as ABC. You cannot turn around and say we have not gotten the funds from interswitch when the customer has a confirmation.

But then, again, this is Nigeria where customers do not know their rights and are used to manage manage!

princedant:

@Poster,, when u make payment for a ticket online & its not issued, the fault is from the service provider (interswitch & co) and not our airline, what we do on our own just like u rightly said is to check if the cash has actually entered air nigeria account & this can only be done at the airport, if the cash is there, we put u on the flight immediately but if not, we always advise u get a fresh ticket & talk to your bank.

With respect to your complaint, i personally apologize for this & like the lady here mentioned, pls take that ticket to PHC airport or our office on olu obasanjo -UBA or i-cinema stadium road and get it revalidated for any future trip or use it on any domestic route of your choice. Secondly, i hope you explained well enough to them so that a remark will be in the system for that particular ticket which will enable u use it free of charge anytime within 12 months of purchase.

Bros, i sincerely apologize, pls drop your number & i'll call u to get the ticket ref & sort this out with our PHC office if its ok with u,

On the issue of grounding, the airline was not grounded, what we had was a minor internal dispute , but its all sorted now & our machines are back in the air, a press conference will take place later today.

For others that had flight delays, apologies too but i tell u, no airline in the world is without its problems and like some mentioned here, air nigeria remains their choice airline & we'll keep striving to do our best for u guys,

Regards.
B.