Last night I selected two return seats from London Heathrow (LHR) to Los Angeles (LAX), via the website lastminute.com.
I’ve had an account with lastminute.com for years and never had a moment of trouble with them.
Until now.
Having selected the flights and checked that the dates and times were correct, I logged in to my lastminute.com account and selected the ‘Buy Now’ button.
I was directed to the lastminute.com payment screen, where I filled out the card information (the card saved in my lastminute.com account has expired) and selected the ‘Pay Now’ button.
The payment website redirected me to the ‘Verified by Visa’ website where I entered the correct password to authorise the transaction of £1,117.68
And then I was direct to this lastminute.com webpage:
The red text at the top says:
We’re sorry, there’s been a problem completing your booking.
Please call our team on 08712223200 between 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday – where one of our agents will assist you further.
Please do not click ‘buy now’ again or use your browser’s back button.
That’s nice.
So today I checked my bank balance.
£1,117.68 missing.
I called lastminute.com and that’s really where the fun and games start.
Firstly, to call lastminute.com – even if you’re calling to find out what the fuck they’re up to, and where your money is – you have to call a premium-rate phoneline.
Stunning.
Secondly, to call lastminute.com – even if you’re calling to find out what the fuck they’re up to, and where your money is – you have to navigate a push-button menu that is littered with revenue-generating recordings that you have to listen to.
At premium rates.
Wonderful.
Eventually, with patience and an ever-increasing phone bill, you get to speak to a person.
I’m going to go out on a limb here.
I don’t mind speaking to call-centres, but speaking to call-centres (possibly because of the last year of dealing with BT), induces feelings of near-suicide in me.
The guy on the other end of the line said that ‘something had happened’ and the booking I had made last night didn’t go through.
I told him the money had gone from my account.
He said that lastminute.com had received and authorisation to take the money but, because of the problem, the money had not been removed.
I checked my balance again.
Definitely down, to the tune of £1,117.68.
Marvellous.
The guy on the other end then said that he would (and I quote) ‘reverse the authorisation code which will get my money back in up to six working days’.
Wonderful.
I then spoke to my bank and they said ‘the money’s gone. It’s gone to lastminute.com. We issued them with an authorisation code for it.’
Great.
So then I called lastminute.com back, and successfully negotiated their menu system.
On their premium rate phoneline.
When the human came on the line I asked for her manager and wouldn’t be fobbed off with any ‘I can help you’ rubbish.
The manager came on and she and I did the same lastminute.com dance that I had been through 30 minutes previously.
I explained the same information that I had gone through with the previous call-centre person.
Gradually losing the will to live with every passing second.
The lastminute.com person explained that sometimes this happened, but I think my question blew her out of the water.
‘Why?’
I’m sorry?
‘Why does it happen? What are the things that cause this to happen? If it has happened more than once to the point that you can say ‘it sometimes happens’, please tell me precisely why it happens’
She launched in to a very wordy explanation that I extracted a few meaningful words from.
‘So you’re telling me that if the flight availability vanishes between me selecting the flights, and me going through all the card entry and anti-fraud authentication processes, your system’s fall-back position is to take the money and offer an unhelpful error message?
Umm. Yes.
Breathtaking.
The lastminute.com person said I could book the flight again, and that I’d get the money back within a week.
‘But what if my budget for the travel is £1,117.68? And what if that’s all I’ve got in my account? You have put me in a position where I’m almost £1,200 down and I can’t spend any of that’
She saw my point of frustration.
Beautiful.
So we talked about what lastminute.com could do to try and put things right.
I was then put through to the sales desk where a very understanding lady sorted me out with two return bookings.
Which I had to pay for out of a new tranche of money.
Slick.
So here’s my thing.
The last person at lastminute.com – Gemma – gave exceptionally good customer service.
The first person showed a remarkable lack of understanding.
But these things aside, the system rules that mandate a lengthy anti-fraud authentication process – that do not put a temporary ‘lock’ on the travel details that are being booked, are unbelievably flawed.
What kind of business/system analysis signed off on a system, where the default process is to request an authorisation for payment, but not book the travel details?
What kind of a person would ever think that this is acceptable?
The same kind that thinks it okay to print multiple boarding passes for a single passenger without any form of identification – including at the gate.
Christ alive what a faff. That’s got to drive you nuts. It really does sound like a crappy system, what kind of half-assed nonsensical logic states that if the product is unavailable, the answer is to take your cash and not give you any flights? Makes you wonder if they’d just have kepy your cash if you’d not phoned up and said something.
Exactly the same thing happened to me with lastminute.com, I’ve now waited 4 days and still no sign of the money back in my account.
I even got the exact same line from the guy when I rang up.
I would NEVER book a flight with them again. There’s plenty of other places to get the same deals without getting your finances messed up.