Another good flight with easyJet

[papabravowhiskey]

Another Easyjet account

OK, here's another story: Sunday 20th Dec, Easyjet LGW-MPL. We checked the Easyjet website before travelling having seen the number of flights that they cancelled on previous days: the flight was still scheduled to go. We arrived at LGW and went through security; our flight was still showing on the screens, though with a half-hour delay. 1.5 hours before the original take-off time, a PA was made specifying a series of Easyjet cancellations, ours not included. One hour later; suddenly the screen changed to show our flight as "cancelled". We went down to the "Menzies" desk (I had retained the info from the previous cancellation PA). The staff were handing out "Your Rights" photocopies: we noted the term that all rights were abrogated by weather-related cancellation. We had to wait over half an hour just for someone to decide to escort us back groundside. We had to wait with incoming passengers to clear Passport Control (not a short queue; Borders Agency staff were wondering what the heck was going on, since according to them there is a procedure to be followed which could have got us through rather faster). Another passenger from our flight was trying all this time to get through to Easyjet Customer Services/Bookings (remember, this is an 0870 number) on his mobile: he finally got through after many retries and holds. He was trying to find ONE seat to the south of France: he was told that there was nothing available before Christmas. We needed FOUR seats.

There was at no point any offer of any kind of help, never mind hotac, and as for booking on another airline, forget it! Groundside flight sales was under seige and evidently unable to help, telling people to go on the Internet.

We went back to my relative's home and got on the Internet: Easyjet's on-line system was fine if you wanted to change the booking (apart from the fact that there were no seats available) but VERY unfriendly if you wanted to claim a refund. As we have had previous need to use their "help" system, my email address was known to the system but it would not let us submit the claim with that email address: we eventually had to set up and use another address just for this claim. The only acknowlegement that we received was an automated one saying "please don't contact us again because we are receiving large volumes of requests" with no indication of a timescale for being dealt with. We have still not received any follow-up communication from Easyjet and no refund. I have been reading with interest the various reports about why this scale of cancellation was necessary, but one thing sticks in my mind: on that day, Ryanair cancelled 20-30 flights IIRC; Easyjet cancelled over 200. And no, the flights WEREN'T "cheap".

Regards
PBW