*Update: January 21 1.06pm* Tan tells Mothership that Scoot has in goodwill, refunded her the money with no additional charges.
*Update: January 21 5.18pm*
Here is Scoot's statement shared with Mothership in regards to Tan's post.
"According to Scoot’s records, Ms Tan was not doubly charged. She had made bookings for two Singapore-Melbourne flights on a third party website on 9 November 2019.
Based on Scoot’s identical bookings policy, we will refund the full cost of the duplicate booking in the form of Scoot travel vouchers, and this was communicated to Ms Tan when she approached our customer service team.
Upon her acceptance, we proceeded to process her refund request.
Scoot would like to clarify that in order to avoid duplicate charges, all credit card payment transactions made on the Scoot website require customers to input a One-Time-Password for authentication, however Ms Tan’s bookings were made on a third party website without this mechanism.
As stated on our website, in general, refunds will be provided within 30 business days. Scoot has been in touch with Ms Tan to resolve this issue."
Rachel Tan booked a S$600 flight to Melbourne in November 2019.
While booking her flight, she was double charged for her ticket, which basically means you pay double while trying to purchase a ticket.
Scoot has told Mothership that this booking was done on a third party website on November 9, 2019.
Tan requested a credit card refund, which took five weeks to process.
According to their site though, the process is seven business days for credit card purchases, although it is not clear if the same duration applies to refunds from being double charged.
Nevertheless, the request was made.
Five weeks later though, Tan noticed that the requested refund had not shown up in her balance.
Instead, she received an email.
The email informed her that the refund would come in the form of a Scoot voucher, with a validity of one year.
Scoot tells Mothership that this is company policy, and that it had been communicated to Tan by their customer service team.
"Based on Scoot’s identical bookings policy, we will refund the full cost of the duplicate booking in the form of Scoot travel vouchers, and this was communicated to Ms Tan when she approached our customer service team."
Why the trouble
While refunds are part of the Scoot experience, this one could have been made more difficult by the fact that Tan had booked a non-refundable ticket.
Tan said that a Scoot personnel had told her that "it was in good will that (she) was even refunded anything".
Now the problem Tan took with this was that it was not of her own volition that she was charged twice for her one ticket to Melbourne, but rather due to a technical issue with the system.
The officer then claimed that Tan had been the one who had agreed to a voucher refund.
Tan asked for the recorded call, but according to her, she had been largely ignored since then.
Here's a succinct summary of why this might anger someone:
"I'm greatly upset at this because I did not cancel nor change my flight, scoot put their hands in my wallet and took out more than what was agreed upon. To me that's an equivalent to stealing or at the very least a dishonest practice."
On Jan. 15, Scoot reached out to Tan with this offer:
"The CSO said that in order to get back my refund by credit card. I will have to pay a $50 administration fee."
An offer Tan rejected as she felt "Scoot should incur the cost for their own negligence".
She further pointed to the many hours she spent "emailing back and forth".
The comments on Tan’s post were unanimously in support of Tan, who they felt had been rather hard done by.
Tan herself made it rather clear that the technical issue itself wasn't the problem but the handling of the refund had been quite poorly carried out.
As for what Tan can do, while Scoot remains a viable option to get the refund, failing that, the next step might be to go to the bank.
Today wrote a piece explaining what one can do to reverse a charge:
"Bank staff will ask for details about the transaction so they can decide whether they can do a chargeback. They may also ask for a letter, a copy of your credit card receipt, or other documents to strengthen your case, which is why it is important to keep a record of your purchases. Once they have the information, they’ll review the dispute and decide whether they can charge back the transaction."
The Association of Banks in Singapore, however, did suggest that customers be as prompt as possible as "most banks will require cardholders to submit a dispute resolution form within 14 days from the card statement date".
Image from Scoot
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