A snapshot investigation by Which? Travel into airline customer service has found customer calls hung up on, emails ignored and malfunctioning chatbots.
Using undercover researchers, posing as customers, we contacted some of the UK’s most popular airlines and those previously rated poorly for customer service, or overall, in our recent surveys.
We called British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, KLM, Tui, Ryanair, Vueling and Wizz Air during the Easter Holidays (to test how they do during peak travel periods); and contacted them by online chat (or WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger equivalent), email (if we could find an email address) and on X, formerly Twitter.
Using a single booking reference for each airline, our researchers made requests such as amending a spelling mistake on the booking, and asked questions like whether our passport was valid to travel to the EU.
We performed a similar task with flight booking sites, Booking.com, Expedia, Lastminute.com and Opodo. In total, we made more than 150 separate queries.
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The endless chatbot loop
For seven of the 12 companies — Booking.com, easyJet, Expedia, KLM, Lastminute.com, Opodo, and Ryanair — online chat was the contact method promoted most prominently on their websites.
For Lastminute.com, the only contact option was chatbot; the phone number on its site was for sales only. Initially, its chatbot, ‘Lia’, told us that our booking reference and email address didn’t match. They did.
On a second occasion, none of the predetermined questions available matched our enquiry about passport expiry rules.
The bot was more helpful the third time when we wanted to add bags to our booking, pointing out where we could do this online. Apparently, live agents are available, too, but we weren’t put through to one.
In response, Lastminute.com told us: ‘For security reasons, the system does not register the information if there are gaps or spaces when entering the booking reference and contact details. The chat gives information to customers and guides them. We take into consideration customer feedback, and that is the reason why we gave autonomy to our customers through MyArea.’
Wizz Air’s chatbot was similarly hit and miss. During one interaction, the agents were too busy, so the bot told us to request a live chat connection again in a minute. It did this 12 times in 15 minutes before we gave up. Our second attempt was better, with clear instructions on changing our misspelt name, although it wouldn’t make the change for us.
Recently, the UK Customer Satisfaction Index reported that 50% of customers still needed to talk to someone after engaging with a chatbot. Online chat, when it involved a human, was, unsurprisingly, more useful.
EasyJet, in particular, proved how well a chatbot and human response can work together.
Can I email you?
For non-urgent queries, email would be better than hanging around on a chatbot all day. British Airways, Vueling and Wizz Air all had email contacts, but either didn’t reply or replied some of the time but with no useful information. This is arguably worse than the companies without email contacts for flight booking enquiries: Booking.com, Jet2, Lastminute.com and Ryanair.
EasyJet, again, was better. It replied all three times – helpfully in most instances. Tui’s online query form and KLM’s alternative – WhatsApp – were very good, gaining full marks for helpful replies on all three occasions.
Airlines must take action to help their customers get timely and effective solutions to their problems. That’s why Which? is campaigning for better customer service.
The phone to nowhere
Next, we picked up the phone. But a telephone contact for existing bookings was only immediately obvious to our researchers on Tui and Vueling.
However, Vueling’s easy-to-find phone number proved little use when its automated recordings misheard our first enquiry. It gave us options to choose from, all unrelated to our question. Unsure what to do, we dithered, prompting the voice to thank us for getting in touch before hanging up. Vueling hung up on us three out of six times.
Vueling told us: ‘Occasional challenges are not indicative of our overall service quality. We continuously evaluate our procedures to guarantee the best customer service and take the areas of improvement pointed out by the survey very seriously.’
Elsewhere, we found telephone numbers that were premium-rate — like Wizz Air’s £1.45 per minute line, found easily on its website. Infuriatingly, the airline has a local-rate number. However one of our researchers told us they gave up looking for it after 30 clicks on Wizz Air’s website.
Wizz Air told us: ‘We do not accept these findings.’ It continued that the research was ‘misleading’, only asking ‘a handful of people to give their opinion and attempting to disguise it as representative. It is simply not accurate or fair.’
Still, at least Wizz Air will help amend your booking regardless of when your flight is. With Ryanair, an automated voice (wrongly) told our first caller that their phone number didn’t match the booking reference and cut them off. It hung up on our second caller, too, because their flight wasn’t within 30 days. The third, flying the next day, got through, where a disinterested customer service agent awaited them.
We aren’t surprised. Our latest airline survey confirmed that Ryanair’s customer service is abysmal – rated just one star out of five. Wizz Air also mustered a single star. Some flight booking websites were also rated below average for customer service in our most recent survey.
Calling Opodo, we could see why. After entering our booking reference, an automated voice informed us that we weren’t an Opodo Prime member (an upsell costing £60 a year). The voice continued: ‘Since you are travelling with a low-cost carrier, we kindly ask that you contact the airline directly to make any additional changes or cancellations. We do not have access to any further information related to those.’
If Opodo, by its own admission, has ‘no information’ to be able to make changes to our booking, how could it help customers with crucial requests like adding a bag or fixing a spelling mistake in a name?
Opodo said: ‘This analysis is based on just one single booking. Any credible researcher knows that this is not a valid sample to take conclusions from. Our monthly surveys, which gather feedback from 150,000 customers, consistently show that 9 out of 10 are satisfied or very satisfied. These surveys represent more accurate and credible findings.’
Know what you are legally entitled to when flying by using our travel consumer rights guides
Social media
In the past, X was a reliable way to contact companies that ignored customers elsewhere – because it was public, they had to be seen to make an effort. In our investigation, it was the best method of contacting Vueling. BA and Jet2, all of which consistently sent helpful replies on the platform, too.
Worryingly, though, we were spammed by multiple bot accounts impersonating many of the airlines, asking us to share personal information, including our phone number, booking reference and email. https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/travel-scams-airline-customers-targeted-by-fake-accounts-on-x-aZ06a7s683Xj
Tips for contacting companies through X
- Locate a company’s X profile directly from its website
- Ensure the same account responds
- When sending a message, click the button that only allows the account you mention (@) to respond
Tell us about any recent customer service difficulties
Customer service findings
Our snapshot research shows several companies could improve their customer contact channels. KLM, Ryanair, Vueling, and Wizz Air, in particular, fell short of expectations.
Ryanair’s refusal to pick up the phone more than 30 days before a customer’s flight and ignoring our researchers on X was especially unhelpful.
Ryanair told us: ‘We don’t respond to Which? fake news stories or its equally fake and routinely inaccurate “surveys’’.’
Predictably, we found the booking sites that scored poorly in our recent flight booking survey were either difficult to contact on the phone or couldn’t help with some of the most crucial customer requests.
Better companies got it right. Jet2 agents cheerfully read out in-flight snack options and prices when we asked about gluten-free food. Tui similarly went the extra mile when we asked about passport expiry rules. Staff sourced the correct information and read it aloud to us. Overall, Easyjet performed excellently.
What to do if you are being ignored by your travel company
When all other contacts go unanswered, search for an email for the CEO or head of customer service. Use only to escalate an ignored claim if you’ve exhausted all other regular contact avenues. Go to CEOemail.com to find email addresses.
Our research: Which? refers to the flight booking site survey, as well as the airline survey results. You’ll find overall customer scores and sample sizes for each company on these pages.