On May 31st I was supposed to fly to Phuket in Thailand to start a new job.
I began my flight in New Zealand, but was refused travel on my connecting flight because I didn't have an onbound ticket.
When I arrived in Sydney for a four hour stopover I tried to contact a jetstar representative to get my boarding pass, but the phone number for this purpose did not work.
I was told that there would be a rep 90 minutes before departure.
The transfer desk staff member, "Ivan" was thirty minutes late, and proceeded to tell me I had to have an onbound ticket out of Thailand before I could fly. He came out with some great one liners such as " I don't want to have an argument, but you're wrong."
I asked him to organise me an onbound flight but he told me everything was booked!
He then tried to take me through to Immigration, so I could be threatened with being deported, the immigration department was having none of it and told jetstar to take me back into the lounge. Apparently if an airline lands a passenger who doesn't have a visa then they have to pay AU$5000 fine. I was almost empted to spend a night in jail just to make them pay! They were very helpful and I managed to get a new date for free my using the threat of the fine to make a new travel plan for free.
I had to go back to my point of origin, and when I arrived I found that there were plenty of flights I could have been booked on.
I really think that the staff member "Ivan" really messed up my trip, as he was unreasonably late, either lied about there being a lack of onbound flights, or simply incompetent in his ability to work their booking system, and to ptop it all of, took me to the immigration office for a high pressure bargaining situation.
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