JetBlue Can't Decide If They Charged An Unaccompanied Minor Fee

JetBlue promised Catie’s husband in March that the $798 fare charged to fly his children from Austin to Boston included the unaccompanied minor fee. But when Catie recently called to verify the reservation, she was told that her children wouldn’t be allowed to board unless she paid an extra $200.

She writes:

I don’t know if this is something you can help me with over the holiday weekend, but my husband and I are currently experiencing an issue with Jet Blue. In March, my mother in law paid for and I booked two tickets through the JetBlue website (at the total price of 798.00) to fly our two older children ( we have 4, two of whom are old enough to fly alone) to Boston direct from Austin for a two week vacation. The day we booked the tickets, my husband called to verify that A) the unaccompanied minor fee was included in the fare just paid (798.00) and B) the information needed for the drop off and pick up people.

He spoke with a woman named Jackie, who told him the fee WAS included, took the names of the adults and we thought all was well.

I called 20 minutes ago to verify that Jet Blue had all the adults information correct and make sure all was a go for the flight, and Jet Blue proceeded to tell us that the fee WAS not included and still needed to be paid. I handed the phone to my husband, who had verified it was included in the fare months ago, and at this point he escalated the call to the agents supervisor Laura, who completely stonewalled my husband, even after admitting that Jackie had made a mistake in informing us that the fee was included. Since we had been told that the fee was paid, we were not prepared to tell our kids grandmother that she is going to have to shell out another 200.00 for the kids to even get on the plane. (50 per kid, per way) Laura would only give us a first name for her supervisor ( Janet) and would not give us a number to reach her directly, at which point my husband asked how he was supposed to call a company as large as jetblue, as for Janet and get the RIGHT person. Laura simply said, she wasn’t authorized to give out any info, so we got nowhere. We weren’t even asking for the fee to be waived at that point, just what could be done to rectify the mistake, but Laura told him that only SHE could waive the fee and she wouldn’t and she was not going to do anything else to help us. I REALLY hope JetBlue recorded that call. It’s not like we can cancel the kids vacation, but he did manage to ask them if this is how they treat all their customers. and that he was sorely disappointed in thier customer service, and he would be sending all his business to another airline. Not that they care.

I just feel entirely swindled and almost like Jet blue pulled some kind of new bait and switch routine on us.

Is there anything we can do at this point, we really don’t want to have to pay for Jetblues customer service mistake, especially since we were told the fee was paid in full when the tickets were booked (the site even asked if they would be flying alone when it was booked). I know in the short term we will have to pay it since they leave on saturday, but I will never hear the end of it from my Mother in Law ( 🙂 ) if we don’t fight what they did to us.

Catie

Considering that the website asked if the children were traveling alone, and your husband verified that the charge was included, it’s not unreasonable for JetBlue to waive the fee.

Don’t waste time fighting with frontline customer service representatives. Instead, call JetBlue’s headquarters at (718) 709-3026 and ask someone in the CEO’s office to help solve your problem.

(Photo: mil8)

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