Low-cost carriers in Taiwan have been asked to address some of the major complaints filed against them, particularly regarding ticket refunds caused by flight changes.
The request was made at a meeting on Thursday last week between the Civil Aeronautics Administration and representatives of 19 budget airlines offering flights in Taiwan, following an increase in the number of complaints about the services provided by the carriers.
According to the administration, a majority of the complaints are about refunds, changes in flight reservations and errors in booking systems.
The administration said budget airlines have been asked to inform their passengers as soon as possible in case of flight changes or cancelations, adding that the carriers should clarify the procedures that should be followed if passengers ask for refunds or request to change their tickets when their flights are canceled.
The administration said budget carriers often offer discount tickets to attract passengers and abnormalities in ticketing systems are likely to occur when there is a surge in Web traffic that could overload the system’s service capacity. As such, consumers might experience system errors when they try to purchase tickets or would simply be unable to enter the system to book tickets, the administration said.
To avoid disputes arising from the booking process, the administration said that budget airlines should conduct stress tests to see if their ticketing systems can withstand surges in online traffic, adding that the results of the stress tests could help them determine if they should expand the bandwidth of their online systems.
The carriers have been asked by the administration to disclose the clauses in their service agreements pertaining to the items that can be transported and their limitations. It has also demanded that carriers increase the number of customer service personnel to handle complaints in extraordinary cases.
The carriers have also been asked to be more lenient and flexible in handling requests for refunds or changes in flight reservation if there is a major international event that might cause people to cancel their trips, it said.
The administration added that the Web pages of the carriers must have Chinese versions and they should have Mandarin-speaking customer service representatives handling complaints from Taiwanese customers.
Aside from customer protection officers in local governments, people can file complaints through a toll-free hotline: 0811-211-798 or via e-mail to gencaa@mail.caa.gov.tw.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,