Wizzair Sucks

WIZZ AIR review : 10 March  2009 : by L Ponczek

// April 5th, 2009 // feed, frontpage

I fly with them whenever I can. So far always on time. Comfortable leather seats, new airplanes, numerous destination from my airport (GDN), friendly crew, and prices are bargains!, Luton to Kiev (Ukraine). New A320, service onboard was ok, flight attendants were helpful and patient. As a low cost airline, food and beverages were offered to buy during the flight. Only negative point for Wizz is there outrageous surcharge for extra luggage at the airport. I paid 60 UK Pounds for a 13 kilo extra bag. Again, low cost airlines will milk money out of anything they could, so it is key to make sure you carry little luggage. No problems at the counter, staff was helpful. Both crew and pilots were Polish-based., I am a musician and rely on air travel for much of my work. I fly many times a year, with many different airlines, and I always bring my violin with me. It is an expensive antique instrument, and it is my life. Upon checking in for my flight to Warsaw yesterday evening, I was informed it was too big for the overhead compartment, and I would have to check it. This is not the first time an unknowing stewardess has attempted this – however, ever since popular air travel in the first half of the 20th century, all airlines have had agreements with musicians’s guilds to allow them to bring their instruments on board (with the obvious exceptions of large instruments, such as a cello, tuba, etc.). Smaller instruments, such as violins, etc., are extremely fragile and can never be checked. Airlines have always understood this. Till now. The woman at the check-in was adamant, saying the company had revised its policies in the past few months (I had flown wizzair just 4 months before without incident), and now they were even banning instruments. I was equally adamant, and, lucky for my sake, the security manager came over and made an exception for me. But how many others were not so lucky? In the ailing world economy, musicians are struggling more and more, and by targeting musicians in this way, everybody loses – the musicians can not fly the airline conveniently, and the airline will simply lose their business. This is, of course, brought on by Wizzair’s progressively expensive baggage fees, which lead to more and more people trying to fit massive things into the overhead compartments, which is not right, on both accounts. But instrument cases are the same size they have always been, and overhead compartments haven’t gotten phsyically smaller. If this becomes a precedent for other airlines, then musicians, and music all over the world will be doomed, as we will be forced to pay for separate seats for all our instruments, doubling the costs. Projects all over the world will cease to happen, because it will be too expensive to bring artists in., The planes are fresh and comfortable and the crew has always been very nice to me. On the negative side is that they only accept Hungarian forint and euro when selling snacks and beverages onboard their flights, which can be quite annoying when you aren’t “warned” about this matter before the flight., Customer Service is a joke. Booked flight Luton-Warsaw, had to cancel booking. Sought refund. Premium rate number at 65p per minute for customer services. Staff did not seem to properly understand English and when you said something they did not like, you were cut off, meaning you had to call again and go through the same spiel again. Email sent re: refund, but no reply received except an automated message saying that a response might take 30 days because of “resource problems”. I wonder if this company is in trouble., I have travelled to Poland on several occasions in the last 18 months and have used Wizz air for most of the trips. My experiences are that you get what you pay for ie. a very cheap flight, I have only been delayed once in the 10+ flights I have taken and the planes are quite new. I just wish it was impossible for passengers to recline the seats as it makes for an horrendous flight for the person behind them., Bourgas to London. Cheap flight of around £45, around half the price of flying BA out of Varna on the same day. Check-in swift, flight left more or less on time. Plane seemed in reasonably good condition although some of the seat upholstery a little tired and dirty. Cabin crew efficient rather than friendly and dealt well with a drunk man in the row behind me who thought it would be clever to light up in the toilets. Arrival was about 5-10 mins late but this may have had something to do with the disturbance on board. Overall, this is no frills but it got me from A to B cheaply and just about on time., Dortmund – Wroclaw. Booked in early December 2008 for a 15.99 EUR Super Promo Fare (plus 4 EUR credit card fee and 10 EUR for each checked bag). When I checked their website two weeks later the fare was down to 9.99 EUR. When checking again in early January 2009 I found out that WizzAir had cancelled all flights from Dortmund to Wroclaw. I never received an email by them so I called them and they told me that the flight had been cancelled. I could either fly to Poznan or Katowice or they would refund the money. I chose the latter option, the money was refunded a week later. What really annoys me is that nobody ever bothered to inform me about the cancellation. When did they plan to tell me, at the check-in counter? That’s not the way to treat customers. My verdict – don’t let them fool you with their cheap offers, it’s an unreliable airline. They don’t care about their customers’ needs. Not recommended!, Sofia – Rome – Sofia. The planes are pretty new. There was no food on board, but not a problem because of the flight length. The staff is polite and speak English quite well. There were no delays – fine for a low-cost company., Luton-Budapest-Luton. Outward flight experience was pretty good – on time, modern aircraft with more comfortable seats than some budget operators. Totally let down by return journey from Budapest. Flight was delayed by more than 6 hours while aircraft was being repaired. No information at all from Wizz Air for people waiting, no customer services people at Budapest airport despite this being a Hungarian airline. Airport dispatches told us they could not get hold of anyone from Wizz to explain the delay. Eventually let through security to wait at departure gate with no information whether flight would arrive or not. Farcical organisation that nearly led to riot among passengers – at one stage some of the passengers were on a bus to go to the non-existent plane, some were in the terminal refusing to move and the rest were milling around on the tarmac! All could have been easily avoided by giving information but Wizz Air don’t seem to do that., MMX-BUD. The best experience I had comparing to other European low cost airlines. From Malmö to Budapest. I purchased ticket online well before departure and got confirmation email including itinerary immediately. There was no absolutely delay at departure and had a quick in., I had booked Wizz Air to attend a close friends wedding in Poland with my partner. After booking the flight I received an email from Wizz Air stating the outward bound flight had been rescheduled from early afternoon to early evening. The outward flight was then delayed a further hour from the already 5 hour delay to the original schedule. However things were to get worse. Arriving back at Katowice on Sunday morning for the flight home were shocked to discover that the flight was cancelled (along with many other Wizz Air flights that day) with no notice whatsoever. The ground staff at Katowice were very unhelpful and didn’t even provide us with a cup of coffee or a phone call. I then spent 3 hours in the queue at the travel agent at the airport while I fully depleted the credits on my pre paid mobile trying to get through to someone on Wizz Air’s premium call line. Lovely hold music but no help whatsoever. When we finally worked our way through the queue to the travel agent we were advised that the best Wizz Air could offer was to go on standby for a flight the following Wednesday. We ended up having to spend £950 with a real airline to fly us back to London (Lufthansa). Over the last 4 months I have been struggling in vain for compensation but to date I have received absolutely nothing. I will never fly with this rubbish airline again and strongly recommend that you don’t either., Beware of the high cancellation fees (over £40/person/each way) which is designed to make cancellation more expensive than the initial fare paid. This fee does not seem to be advertised anywhere on the website! Curious that! Also customer service was deplorable, with less than helpful staff! Makes me sort of glad I had to cancel as all the indications are that the service would have been deplorable as well (judging by all the other reviews on this site!), This airline is the worst I’ve ever flown. After checking my emails found out my flight from Warsaw to Doncaster had been cancelled that day, offered an alternative to Glasgow – which I had to take after reassurances they would pay for any costs incurred. The total costs came to well over £250 for train and taxi fares. When I emailed their customer services, they told me to fax the receipts and they would reimburse me. Have they? not one penny., Gdansk-Doncaster-Gdansk. Very poor experience. I would assign them no star, if possible. Delay on one leg (one hour) and cancellation on the other. After three hours in a queue, we were proposed another return flight in 48 hours. I had to travel to Luton at my own expense. My claim has been left without any response for 4 months. Call centre is unable to help (and I have to pay for the connections with helpless ‘consultants’). ‘Low cost airline’ appeared to be ‘high cost’ both in terms of money and time/efforts. Never again., Luton to Cluj. The flight was booked a few weeks in advance and was cheap – £154 return for two people including all extras and extra legroom both ways. The outward flight was delayed by about half an hour and the return was bang on time. The staff were helpful, friendly and polite. The plane was clean and comfortable. Little stickers were put on boarding cards to show that extra legroom had been bought and there were no arguments about this. All the adverse comments on these pages caused me some concern before I flew but perhaps those who have no problems don’t comment. I did notice that a Wizz Air flight later in the day of the return flight had been cancelled. No doubt those who were let down by this will be commenting in due course., After 6 months and numerous emails and phone calls, still waiting for a refund for a flight they cancelled., Luton – Gdansk return. I found that Wizz Air compared favourably with the other budget airlines I have used. Only 15 minutes delay on departure while waiting to take off from Luton and a bit of a delay at the baggage reclaim in Gdansk. My first experience with Wizz was a lot better than some of the better known airlines have given me., LTN-KTW Outbound delayed by 3 hours as plane had been away for servicing. Cabin crew banned photography on board and demanded to have my camera so they could delete photos. On arrival, the promised bus made us wait well over an hour and dropped us at 3.30am in a deserted car park. Had to bribe Wizzair driver to take us to hotel and then he demanded more money in a very aggressive way. On the return flight, plane full of loud drunks – some unable to stand unaided. Amazingly, the captain let them all on – even the ones the cabin crew had denied boarding. Was very scared., Our flights to and from Bourgas-Luton, were both delayed by an hour, without any information about why, so we were just left on a plane with no information. However, there was no baggage loss, which I was most happy about. The seats were quite close together, but its not a first class airline, so that was to be expected., I was due to fly back from Poland, Katowice airport on 24th July 2008 – as normal I always check on the internet for delays etc. On checking flights out of Katowice to Belfast I could not find my flight and decided to give Wizzair a call and unfortunately was on hold by telephonic robot for over an hour at a cost of £1.00 per minute. At this stage I was very angry and decided to call Belfast International airport who kindly told me that Wizzair had pulled all of their flights out of Belfast as of the 17th of July. I was devastated, I, my heavily pregnant wife and my 2 year old daughter were left stranded in Poland and had no way of contacting Wizzair. I looked on the internet for alternative flights and they were a fortune – the best I could do was to fly from Prague the following Sunday, 4 days later and a 5 hour journey by car. I have since sent multiple emails to Wizzair and have had no response. I would not recommend this airline to anyone and as far as I am concerned they are unprofessional and you cannot get in touch when anything goes wrong., LPL-GDN. Punctual and was clean. Impressed by professionalism of staff and nice comfortable seats. Have used Wizzair regularly from LPL to GDN and KTW and cannot complain., Luton-Zagreb-Luton. A word of advice regarding reserved extra legroom seating. This option was available for £4 each way. I would happily pay a great deal more for this option that means that you do not have to take part in the competitive seat scrum and you are rewarded with extra leg room. Well it is almost too good to be true. It would appear that there was no actual working system in place to notify the cabin staff that fiercely guard the 12 reserved seats over the wing exits that you have in fact reserved one of the seats. I expected that my boarding pass would automatically indicate this but imagine my surprise when the fearsome flight attendant accused me of being a potential liar and refused me access to the reserved seating. Fortunately I happened to have my printed invoice in my hand luggage and I was able to ‘prove’ payment of the charge. On the return journey I did everything possible to avoid the humiliation again by insisting that the check in staff write something on the boarding card to indicate my reserved seat, at first they refused stating that they do not reserve seats but they eventually appeared to understand and they scribbled “EXTRLR” on my boarding card. Unfortunately this portion of the boarding card was separated and retained by the gate staff therefore rendering my small boarding card / coupon to be left with no evidence of my reservation. I attempted to explain this predicament to the gate staff who replied by stating that they do not reserve seats. After some persuasion that member of staff pulled out a pen and scribbled “EXTRLR” on my remaining boarding card. This provided me with instant access to the reserved seating when on board., It didn’t surprise me when I went to re-check our booking, (made and paid for in April of this year and confirmed by Wizz Air in an email), to find that they’d changed it – to a whole day earlier and without notifying us! As we’ll still be on tour then, we won’t be able to make our flight and to add insult to injury, we’re not able to get through on any of the numbers they list as contact. In fact, if you ring Hungary you get a recorded message saying that their call centre numbers have changed and the changes are listed on the web site – wrong! The numbers given on the recorded message and the web site are different – yet neither work. I checked with international directory assistance and they said the number that was listed for UK callers could be in Turkey, but that it wasn’t a UK number. I was able to get through to Wizz Air in April this year, ringing from here, (Australia), so can’t understand why there’s a problem now. I’ve sent them an email, but don’t hold out any hope of a reply. Oh well, at least we know now – reading some of the other comments I realise that many other travellers have had it much worse. Now we have to check out train travel as it looks like no airline is flying from Budapest to Venice on Sunday 14th September – not even indirectly., Luton to Sofia return – have always been quite pleased with them up till now. Although Wizzair use a very young fleet, planes are overworked and undercleaned. There were pieces of food scattered all across the plane, toilet seat was broken and had been stuck together again with tape! Think you get what you pay for, cheap no frills and practically useless customer service., BBU (Bucharest Baneasa) to BCN (Barcelona) return. There was no delay flying from Bucharest – Baneasa airport is like a bus station, if it’s crowded then you’re screwed, that being the only downside. Plane was clean and new, the Romanian stewardess friendly enough.