AirAsia Support n Credit account process July 2020

I had written earlier that Air Asia’s refund process is unnecessarily complicated. There was a promise to fix it by Air Asia management but nothing happened (person who responded left job).

In 2020, given the covid crisis, airlines are in even bigger stress. Most airlines around the world are not giving refunds and fighting tooth and nail with customers demanding to be refunded in cash.

Air Asia has also changed its policies accordingly and will no longer give your money back if they cancel the flight.

I had to deal with them recently for some of my tickets and this post shares m experience.

1 Cancel option now added inside ‘MyBookings” but it won’t work.

Other airlines have a cancel button next to booking reference and if clicked, ticket cancellation/refund request can be processed without much effort. Air Asia has now added this button, but it doesn’t work. The cancel button only triggers a chat window with AVA chatbot and you’ve to give all details again- name, PNR, email etc and in most cases chatbot won’t process it and ask you to contact a human allstar (manual chat)

2 Flights cancelled are still shown as “Check-in Open”. Don’t know why- for example, my AMD-KUL INR 502 flight for 18^th July is not going to fly. 

Would have been lot easier if Air Asia automatically process credit account for think booking. But NO. The website will show “check-in open”, chatbot can’t process refund/credit, no numbers to call, twitter handle won’t reply. Your only hope is to try connect to manual chat support.

3 AVA Chatbot won’t process credit notes.

AVA is an AI powered chatbot, setup to reduce call centre cost (less humans, more work by bot) but it is still not perfect. It can’t figure out if a PNR’s flight is cancelled and if it qualifies for refund/credit. It will mostly redirect you to manual chat support.

4 Manual Chat is near impossible to connect

If you try to contact manual support, you will be shown a static screen that your wait time is several minutes. There is no live counter- this timing won’t come down automatically to let you know that you may get connected soon. So if it shows 24 minutes you’ve to sit and watch it for 24 minutes. Because it may connect anytime and if you don’t respond immediately, chat will disconnect and you’ve to begin from scratch again. There is no popup to alert chat has connected, there’s no email/callback, no waiting for couple of minutes. Try your luck. I tried connecting at 5 AM, had 24 minutes wait and finally managed to connect. During day time peak hours, you will mostly give up in frustration.

Best way out: Train your dog to keep looking at the chat screen and bark as soon as it connects.

5 No more telephone support for Indians flying abroad.

Air Asia’s India telephone call centre is now only for I5 (Air Asia India) flights. If you have a flight out of India or some other flights with Air Asia Malaysia/Indonesia or other group companies, no phone support for you. You’ve to deal with useless chat bot or impossible to connect human chat support. Earlier I could give a call and get my international bookings sorted. Late 2019 they started saying “this can be done on AVA/Chat support only”. Now the entire provision of voice support has been removed.

As such all airlines are in survival mode. Airlines are doing whatever they can to cut cost and survive.

I asked support person what happens if flight is cancelled but person doesn’t ask for credit- She didn’t give a direct reply, but hinted that airline will pocket the money. Simple.

Air Asia has been in news recently for multiple reasons

• -          A sacked pilot went viral by raising safetyconcerns at Air Asia India
• -          This business standard news claims Tony Fernandes, Air Asia’s supreme boss, has almost lost interest in India business now

-        Meanwhile AirAsia is offering chartered flights if you can afford to pay for entire flight instead of booking individual tickets. But with near zero customer support, it will be nightmare to deal with them for any changes. 

Only consolation is Air Asia has increased validity of credit account from 90 days to about 2 years. This is essential as there’s no sign of recovery in terms of international tourism returning to 2019 levels any time soon. But Air Asia can really simplify the process further by using following steps

• Auto credit for bookings that can’t per performed because flight is canceled.
• From mybookings I should be able to ask for refund/credit directly, without having to go through chatbot or manual chat

Tips to deal with Air Asia support if your bookings are affected

• Try early morning hours for maximum probability of connecting to human chat
• Try the AVA chat, but don't expect it to be perfect. Follow all onscreen instructions diligently and see if you can get lucky
• While waiting for human chat support to connect, be sure to check the screen every 1 minute. Else it will time out or support person will promptly disconnect after waiting for 59 seconds.

• Be sure to raise credit request before your travel date. If not able to contact support, send them msg on twitter, email and other mediums so that there is clear evidence that you have initiated a request before travel date
• Rescheduling option is mostly waste of time and effort as there's no sign of recovery. But it is good option if you want to buy more time and sure travel won't resume anytime soon.

Many desperate people are leaving comments on my blog posts asking for refund. Feel sad for them. [Check this post]

One good thing I would like to appreciate is Air Asia's support staff are very helpful, as long as your demand is aligned to their company policy.