We will never fly Air NewZealand ever again. We have used several airlines in United States and Air newZealand has not only one of the worst customer service, but also they try to take advantage of bad customer situations and even rip people off when they're going through travel issues due to earthquakes (recent christchurch).
Recently we did a booking a month ago to ChristChurch Newzealand. Because of the earthquake, the family we were planning to visit for vacation has serious damages and we couldn't make the trip for the next few months. So according to the new policy put forth by air newzealand (no penalty, no charges, no fees, and you can get credit for 12 months on any of their routes and just pay the difference for a new booking elsewhere). So we called them, cancelled the trip and then next day called back for a new booking for a trip to australia.
So before we called them to book the new trip we went to their airnewzealand.com website and prepared a itinerary and printed it and called the customer serrvice to book it (because they can only do it through a representative as the credit from previous cancellation needs to be applied — their website won't allow to punch in cancellation credits). So we tellthem the itinerary and asked them to book for the price. Guess what they did. They gave a complete different price for the same flight, same itinerary that we saw on thier own (not 3rd party, or travel agent) web site which was almost a $1000 over their online price.
Now even though they don't charge fee or penaltiese according to their earthquake policy, they try to riip people off by saying they can't accept their own website price (WTF!) and they can quote whatever they come up with and you have to agree to it (Because now you're stuck with them, they won't credit you, they won't give you a real price and now you're their next victim of fraud). We even talked to their managers and supervisors and now they're still scrambling. We've travelled many airlines and I've never seen an airline try to rip people of in their dire situation and pain. Not even the customer reps and managers understand their own policies. Never again, never. Just to save $50 or $100, we now realize how much good customer service we're sacrificing with other decent airlines.
Our advise is to never use them. If you're in situations like these, you're on your own and they'll do everything possibly to take advantage of you.
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