Here’s what happened when I needed a Batik Air refund…

In all my years of flying, I have never come across anything quite like the Batik Air refund and customer service experience. It truly is an interesting beast and I’m here to reveal how it all works.

Batik Air Malaysia have recently commenced services between Kuala Lumpur and Sydney. I scored an excellent deal in a business class sale from Hong Kong and was quite looking forward to the trip.

The Schedule Change

Just two weeks after making my booking, I received an e-mail with the subject, “Flight Replacement/ Time Change”. Upon initial review, the one hour time change looked fine to me… until I realised it reduced the connection time in Kuala Lumpur to just 50 minutes.

When I went on the website to manage the booking, I discovered that there were no options for me. As the flight time change was presumably under the minimum connecting time, you could no longer book Hong Kong to Sydney via Kuala Lumpur at all.

Contacting Customer Service

Here’s where things begin to get interesting. When you go on the airline’s website, there are two options to contact customer service. You can send a Whatsapp or alternatively you can e-mail them. There is no telephone service at all.

Whatsapp proved to be useless as it’s just a bot, one which couldn’t do anything for me. E-mail it was and I sent one off asking a question and received back my case number. Now it was time to wait.

The Batik Air Refund

After four days, I went online and selected to auto-refund my ticket. I needed the money back so I could book a replacement flight before prices increased. A day later I received the first reply from Batik Air customer service, advising me I’d requested an auto-refund and advising me it was up to 30 days to receive the money.

From here, the game of e-mail tennis began. I asked if it would be a full refund, they responded that since it was only a one hour flight change and 50 minutes was fine for the connection, so I was not eligible for a full refund. My response was that the flights were no longer available to book on the website, but if it was valid, reinstate the booking and cancel the refund request.

To that, I received a response that it was being escalated. Hours later the agent responded that it had been reviewed and “as a goodwill gesture” they would proceed with a full refund. That was received back to my credit card five days later.

I raised my e-mail request on 15 June, they replied 20 June (a five day wait), I wrote back same day, they came back 25 June (another five day wait), and a couple more quick replies back and forth had it all wrapped up on 26 June. My refund arrived on my credit card four days later on 1 July. All in all from schedule change e-mail to receiving the money back was just over two weeks.

Overall Thoughts

Getting a Batik Air refund was a little bit discombobulating. Had I been able to telephone and speak to someone, I imagine it could have been wrapped up on the same call. That is how these things usually work with other airlines around the world.

For those needing a refund with Batik Air, avoid Whatsapp entirely. That was truly a waste of time, though not much time as I realised pretty fast it was useless. E-mail is the way to go, but count on it not being instant. You will need to be prepared for your money to be held for a while.

That all being said, the refund was processed quickly enough. Rather than 30 days, I had it back in half that time. That was a fair enough result in the end.

What do you think of the Batik Air refund and customer service experience? Have you had similar with other airlines? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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All images via Batik Air.