Cloud Strife
Established Member
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- 25 Feb 2014
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A small travel report and a lot of commentary about Wizz Air:
I flew from Wrocław to Luton and back this week, and it's safe to say that the bad reputation that Wizz Air have is increasingly justified. I'll prefix this by saying that I paid peanuts for the flights: around 70 pounds for two passengers, including a 10kg checked in suitcase and booked two weeks ago.
Flight one - WRO to LTN:
No complaints here from the Polish side, check in was quick and uneventful, and they were careful to ask twice about whether I had residency in the UK because I was using my Polish ID card to travel. Boarding was quick and uneventful, and Wizz Air uses jetbridges in Wrocław for their A321-200s.
Arrival at Luton was a different story. The automatic passport control gates rejected me, and of course, I got stuck in a queue with people being interrogated by Border Force officers. I had an entertaining 15 minutes watching them deal with people with very strange stories, including a guy who had been a police officer in Romania for 25 years but had a UK driving licence (??). When it was finally my turn, the incredibly grumpy officer moaned and whined about...well, I'm not sure what he was complaining about, something about having previously used my Polish ID card to enter and now i was using a British passport. Either way, that was quick, and then the long wait for baggage.
I have no idea what's going on in Luton, but I had to wait nearly 40 minutes for my bag to arrive. Other people were waiting even longer, but the one thing in common was that Wizz Air (and only Wizz Air) lfights were suffering tremendous delays with baggage.The record was 90 minutes on the screens, which is ridiculous given how lightly loaded these flights are with baggage.
Flight two - LTN to WRO
So, after a nice evening in London, we decided to go and visit the Tate Modern on the second day. And then the first information arrives about a delay to the flight. It wasn't an unreasonable delay (around 2 hours), and it gave us more time in London, so no big deal. I waited until around 3 hours before the OLCI (online check-in) closed before trying to check in, because this usually secures an exit row seat with Wizz Air. And the fun began: I simply couldn't check in. The app and the website didn't work, throwing up constant error messages and telling me to contact the call centre or online chat. The call centre were spectacularly useless, blaming my devices, blaming my phone, blaming my browser: but I tried four different phones and three different computers and nothing worked. Online chat was the same story: they continued to blame my devices while claiming that it was working for them and so they couldn't check me in.
The only thing to do was to rush to the airport to try and get them to issue a boarding pass before the deadline for OLCI passed. I kept trying, and an IT expert friend was trying a wide array of her devices at home to try and get the website to work. Nothing would work, and it was very obviously a problem at their end. Finally, just as I got to Luton, two boarding passes appeared in Google Wallet, although none of us had managed to successfully check in. I've never experienced anything quite like this before: they were openly stating that it was my fault and that if I couldn't check in, then I would have to pay.
From what I understand, this is a common problem when the flight gets delayed and you haven't checked in already. The internet is full of similar complaints, and worse still, Wizz Air appear to be in complete denial about the problem. They are extracting an airport check in fee from people although it isn't their fault, and then they are refusing to return the fee afterwards. There are also cases where they've told people to ignore the error and to head to the airport where they can check in for free, then it turns out that the airline desk won't help them at the airport and that they have to pay or nothing.
Anyway, I got to the airport, and the Wizz Air check in desks are an absolute disgrace. The people working there are rude and unhelpful and interestingly, even ruder in Polish than in English. I was observing how rude they were to people in English, and I had a strong suspicion they were Polish from the accents, so I used Polish towards them. People were being insulted and treated badly for not knowing or understanding how airports worked, the queue was incredibly slow moving, and you could see that even the Polish supervisor had no interest in speeding up the work of the people there. It was a huge contrast to the treatment in Wrocław a day earlier!
Wizz Air appear to have abandoned their self check in machines too, so 'bag drop' is actually just a traditional and very slow check in process.
All was well in the end, although the weather meant that there were a lot of delays in departing Luton. The queue for deicing took around 20 minutes, although the actual flight was a pleasure with departure to the east. I actually vastly prefer Luton over Stansted despite being further, as there's never a queue in the morning for passport control or queues for security in the evening.
Looking around online, Wizz Air appear to be in a really bad way with customer support. They're worse than Ryanair ever were, and the UK CAA is now involved: https://www.caa.co.uk/news/regulator-raises-concerns-with-wizz-air-following-complaints/
It seems that Wizz Air are not even bothering to defend claims in Luton County Court, and the court itself is overwhelmed with enforcing the payment of CCJ claims against Wizz Air for various things. In general, you have to wonder if things are much worse at Wizz Air than is publicly known, because their prices are much lower than the competition and it's hard to see how they're making money. On my return flight, they didn't sell a single thing to around 225 passengers, so where's the money coming from?
Despite all this, Wizz Air crews in general seem to be very friendly and helpful, and I've seen them often giving advice to people on various travel-related topics. I had a nice chat with one of them during the flight about the weather and the impact on their rosters, and their A321 is so, so, so much nicer and comfortable than any variant of the 737, especially the cramped hell that is the Ryanair 737 Max-8. I know the seat pitch on Wizz Air is the same as in the Ryanair Max-8, but it still seems more spacious in the cabin in general. The Wizz Air seats are also a lot more comfortable than Ryanair ones.
It's just a great pity that Wizz Air has diabolical customer support.
I flew from Wrocław to Luton and back this week, and it's safe to say that the bad reputation that Wizz Air have is increasingly justified. I'll prefix this by saying that I paid peanuts for the flights: around 70 pounds for two passengers, including a 10kg checked in suitcase and booked two weeks ago.
Flight one - WRO to LTN:
No complaints here from the Polish side, check in was quick and uneventful, and they were careful to ask twice about whether I had residency in the UK because I was using my Polish ID card to travel. Boarding was quick and uneventful, and Wizz Air uses jetbridges in Wrocław for their A321-200s.
Arrival at Luton was a different story. The automatic passport control gates rejected me, and of course, I got stuck in a queue with people being interrogated by Border Force officers. I had an entertaining 15 minutes watching them deal with people with very strange stories, including a guy who had been a police officer in Romania for 25 years but had a UK driving licence (??). When it was finally my turn, the incredibly grumpy officer moaned and whined about...well, I'm not sure what he was complaining about, something about having previously used my Polish ID card to enter and now i was using a British passport. Either way, that was quick, and then the long wait for baggage.
I have no idea what's going on in Luton, but I had to wait nearly 40 minutes for my bag to arrive. Other people were waiting even longer, but the one thing in common was that Wizz Air (and only Wizz Air) lfights were suffering tremendous delays with baggage.The record was 90 minutes on the screens, which is ridiculous given how lightly loaded these flights are with baggage.
Flight two - LTN to WRO
So, after a nice evening in London, we decided to go and visit the Tate Modern on the second day. And then the first information arrives about a delay to the flight. It wasn't an unreasonable delay (around 2 hours), and it gave us more time in London, so no big deal. I waited until around 3 hours before the OLCI (online check-in) closed before trying to check in, because this usually secures an exit row seat with Wizz Air. And the fun began: I simply couldn't check in. The app and the website didn't work, throwing up constant error messages and telling me to contact the call centre or online chat. The call centre were spectacularly useless, blaming my devices, blaming my phone, blaming my browser: but I tried four different phones and three different computers and nothing worked. Online chat was the same story: they continued to blame my devices while claiming that it was working for them and so they couldn't check me in.
The only thing to do was to rush to the airport to try and get them to issue a boarding pass before the deadline for OLCI passed. I kept trying, and an IT expert friend was trying a wide array of her devices at home to try and get the website to work. Nothing would work, and it was very obviously a problem at their end. Finally, just as I got to Luton, two boarding passes appeared in Google Wallet, although none of us had managed to successfully check in. I've never experienced anything quite like this before: they were openly stating that it was my fault and that if I couldn't check in, then I would have to pay.
From what I understand, this is a common problem when the flight gets delayed and you haven't checked in already. The internet is full of similar complaints, and worse still, Wizz Air appear to be in complete denial about the problem. They are extracting an airport check in fee from people although it isn't their fault, and then they are refusing to return the fee afterwards. There are also cases where they've told people to ignore the error and to head to the airport where they can check in for free, then it turns out that the airline desk won't help them at the airport and that they have to pay or nothing.
Anyway, I got to the airport, and the Wizz Air check in desks are an absolute disgrace. The people working there are rude and unhelpful and interestingly, even ruder in Polish than in English. I was observing how rude they were to people in English, and I had a strong suspicion they were Polish from the accents, so I used Polish towards them. People were being insulted and treated badly for not knowing or understanding how airports worked, the queue was incredibly slow moving, and you could see that even the Polish supervisor had no interest in speeding up the work of the people there. It was a huge contrast to the treatment in Wrocław a day earlier!
Wizz Air appear to have abandoned their self check in machines too, so 'bag drop' is actually just a traditional and very slow check in process.
All was well in the end, although the weather meant that there were a lot of delays in departing Luton. The queue for deicing took around 20 minutes, although the actual flight was a pleasure with departure to the east. I actually vastly prefer Luton over Stansted despite being further, as there's never a queue in the morning for passport control or queues for security in the evening.
Looking around online, Wizz Air appear to be in a really bad way with customer support. They're worse than Ryanair ever were, and the UK CAA is now involved: https://www.caa.co.uk/news/regulator-raises-concerns-with-wizz-air-following-complaints/
It seems that Wizz Air are not even bothering to defend claims in Luton County Court, and the court itself is overwhelmed with enforcing the payment of CCJ claims against Wizz Air for various things. In general, you have to wonder if things are much worse at Wizz Air than is publicly known, because their prices are much lower than the competition and it's hard to see how they're making money. On my return flight, they didn't sell a single thing to around 225 passengers, so where's the money coming from?
Despite all this, Wizz Air crews in general seem to be very friendly and helpful, and I've seen them often giving advice to people on various travel-related topics. I had a nice chat with one of them during the flight about the weather and the impact on their rosters, and their A321 is so, so, so much nicer and comfortable than any variant of the 737, especially the cramped hell that is the Ryanair 737 Max-8. I know the seat pitch on Wizz Air is the same as in the Ryanair Max-8, but it still seems more spacious in the cabin in general. The Wizz Air seats are also a lot more comfortable than Ryanair ones.
It's just a great pity that Wizz Air has diabolical customer support.