SIA chief says sorry for new website’s glitches
Singapore Airlines (SIA) chief executive officer Goh Choon Phong has apologised for the glitches on the company's new website, which has sparked many complaints among users.
In a message to customers on Thursday, Goh acknowledged that the new site, which was launched on 22 May, has caused inconvenience to many passengers.
Cases of timeouts, credit card rejections and seating system glitches have been reported, and some customers have had to resort to booking by phone to buy their tickets instead.
"I am truly sorry that the new website has caused much aggravation for many of our customers. We make no excuses for our failure to deliver an acceptable level of online service," Goh said.
A customer on a forum hosted on Whirlpool said that the new site was "horrible and messy."
"This is driving me nuts. I've been trying to search flights all morning but it keeps timing out on me. Why couldn't they have just kept the damn old website?" said one user.
In a letter posted on the Singapore Business Review, Stephen from Sydney, Australia, said: "For an airline that prides itself on its inflight and on-the-ground service, the new website is a complete disappointment so much so that it would easily encourage someone to switch to another carrier."
Goh said SIA has "committed full resources to resolving the website problems and have made significant progress in rectifying many of the defects. We will continue to relentlessly pursue all other outstanding issues."
"An in-depth investigation as to how the issues that arose went undetected is well underway, and we are treating this with utmost importance," he added.
Still, some netizens continue to report problems in using the site. In a comment on a story on the world's best airlines, Yahoo! user 'E' said on Thursday, "While I am writing this comment, I am struggling to do a web check-in for a business class ticket from Seoul to Singapore.... I have been using web check in for years now and the new SIA website is not working...."
