My horrible experience with Bravofly, Singapore Airport and Xiamen Airlines
 

I like to share my horrible experience at customer service counter in Terminal One Premium Check in Suite of Singapore airport.

We are Chinese born Australian citizens and passport holders. Earlier this year, we booked our flight tickets from Singapore to Xiamen through Bravofly web site (http://www.bravofly.com.au/), the online booking system only allowed First name, Last name, passport id and date of birth to be entered.

Booking Details:

ID Booking :335577443

Flight Number: MF 0852

Departure: Singapore Changi Terminal 1

We travel regularly, many online booking system only allowed First name, Last name, passport id and date of birth to be entered, we never had any problem before. But this time it was the worst nightmare we ever experienced, it ruined our tour completely.

At Singapore airport Terminal One Premium Check in Suite, we were told by a check in staff at customer service counter that there is a special requirements regarding to middle name by Xiamen Airlines, the check in staff said that our middle names were required because we are Chinese.

We were insulted by the comments made by her that middle name is not required for European, in particularly she mentioned that a Caucasian is not required to match middle name.

We don't believe they could not identify us with matching First Name, Surname, passport id and date of birth.

The check in staff asked us to contact Xiamen Airlines immediately to amend our middle names. Xiamen Airlines has special requirements on middle name but its system refuses to change middle names for more than 4 characters. My wife’s middle name contains 5 characters, so we were forced to purchase an additional costly ticket from Xiamen Airlines without any option and help from airport staff.

We were warned by Xiamen Airlines on the phone that ticket will be run out any time and will be unavailable if we didn’t pay for an additional ticket immediately.

To make it worse, Xiamen Airlines won’t accept international credit card payment, they only accept Chinese credit card payment, and we will definitely miss the flight and stuck in the airport without payment from my relative from China.

We felt helpless and under enormous stress at airport.

Singapore Airport said they were following instructions from Xiamen Airlines.

We suffered a total loss of CNY6134.00 plus enormous stress from this ordeal.

We have tried to protect our right and recover our losses since, but up until now, nobody claimed responsibility and nobody offer to help.

We contacted Bravofly customer service hoping they can contact Xiamen airline and help us to get our refund, they refuse to take any responsibility. At first they said we can still use our first ticket but now they told us the matter is closed and they refused to answer our calls. Fair trade NSW has been unable to contact them.

We called Xiamen airline customer complaint hotline at Xiamen, the officer (ID752) was very rude, impatient and refuse to take any responsibility. Fair trade NSW has contacted them and got the same answers. We also tried to make complaint to Civil Aviation Administration of China but were ignored.

We have been making complaint to Singapore Airport, they told us they were sorry to hear our ordeal but when we asked them to investigate further, and we have not got any response since.

We are now left without any option but go to media. We hope we get a fair go and hope no one else go through the same ordeal.

Your identical post was already removed from TripAdvisor.

What’s your point, AJPeabody? This seems like legitimate complaint, not to mention racial discrimination and the type of horrendous customer service readers here will have come to expect from Bravofly.

Sometimes these kinds of difficulties are resolved in favor of the passenger, but as far as I can tell, often not, and apparently always with weeks or months of effort. While I'm sorry for your experience, and the loss is significant, I don't think it's enough to ruin the amount of time in your life it may take you to remain angry and motivated. I hope that if I felt as abused as you must, I'd expend the effort in trying to regain my mental equilibrium, rather than fighting with a faceless enemy. I hope I would.