Letters: Lion Air service

On Feb. 12, my family and I were at Terminal 2 of Soekarno Hatta International Airport.
We planned to take a Lion Air flight to Palembang.

The flight was scheduled to leave at 5:05 p.m. We arrived at the check in counter at 4:30, and were told that they had closed at this time. We were then directed to get assistance at counter 12, where we joined a queue. The person behind the counter was very busy, all the while looking down while people queued in line waiting for help. We were almost completely ignored.

Finally I got her attention and quickly asked for help in order to try to get on the flight or the next one.

The response was abrupt, and gave me the feeling that she didn’t have the time to even find out what I needed. She took my tickets and quickly said to come back at 7 p.m.

I said to her “If I am going to get on the 7:30 o’clock flight, it will be too late. She didn’t answer, but just told me to come back at 7. We came back to counter no. 12 at 6:30 p.m. and I stood there in front of the same person. She was still looking busy, ignoring me.

By this time it was 7.05 p.m. Finally she said we had to pay an additional amount for new tickets. We rushed to the ticket counter etc, but by the time we got through customs the plane had taken off already. We didn’t make it to Palembang that night, but had our money refunded minus a certain percentage and arrived home in Kemang at around 10 p.m.

Our experience with Lion Air’s customer service was a nightmare. Normally, the motto of
many businesses is “customer is king”, but the way we were treated it seemed like the Lion Air motto is “customer is beggar”.