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Fuzzy Logic Jetstar website stuck on the tarmac
Fuzzy Logic Jetstar website stuck on the tarmac | Jetstar website stuck on the tarmac |
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| Written by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 20 June 2007 | |
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On the surface, the Jetstar site is working normally, but once you’ve gone through the flight and seat selection process, made the choice about buying insurance, entering in address and credit card details everything stops when you click the ‘Purchase’ button. Nothing happens. Firefox reported no errors, but simply did nothing, while Internet Explorer 7 reported ‘Done, with errors’ in the right hand corner after the ‘Purchase’ button was pressed. We’d have tried Safari and Opera but guessed that the site must be having an outage, so we called Jetstar’s 24 hour sales and inquiry number in Australia on 131 538 to make a booking that way, and ask for the same price as on the Internet for the inconvenience of not being able to book there, if it was indeed their site that was having the problem. We called, and listened to Jetstar’s on-hold music and advertising. After a couple of minutes, we were informed that there were higher call volumes than normal, and that there would be a wait. Helpfully, and naturally with a touch of irony in this particular circumstance, the voice informed us that we could always go to "www.jetstar.com" for more information. Anyway we waited. We heard the message that there were higher than normal call volumes again, but hey, we wanted to book a ticket, so just decided to wait a bit longer still. After a while longer, the phone was set to speakerphone, as we could tell we were going to be in for a long wait. At the 22 minute mark, we noted that we had been waiting for 22 minutes. Then at the 30 minute mark, we made a similarly notable observation. Finally, at around the 33 minute mark, a ringing sound was heard, and at last, we’d connected through to a human being. We mentioned that we’d been having difficulties ordering through the Internet, and the young fellow explained that we weren’t the only ones having the problem, with Jetstar authorising phone sales to proceed at the Internet sale price, although no other concessions were made. The rest of the phone call was effectively the standard ordering process which proceeded smoothly as you’d expect, and was over in just a few minutes. A couple of minutes after that, our itinerary appeared in an email from Jetstar, and we were secure in the knowledge that the booking had been made. There’s no doubt that Jetstar’s IT department will be trying to fix the problem as soon as they possibly can, and that the likelihood is that the site will begin working normally again soon. The call centre was clearly flooded with many more calls than would normally be received and made the 30+ minute wait time an unfortunate and unintended inconvenience, but in the end, we made our booking. There’s always Virgin Blue, or course, or Qantas itself, but in this case, Jetstar’s price was the best on the day. Your mileage will vary! So, if you were trying to make a booking on Jetstar’s site tonight and weren’t having any luck, you were not alone. Be prepared for a long wait on the phone line, or just try again later – or tomorrow – and hope that the flight you want is still available. It’s just a little reminder that outages are a fact of life, and that sometimes they’re unavoidable. I wonder what caused this one? {moscomment}
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