In recent times, it has been noticed that the number of complaints regarding low-cost carriers in Japan have increased. After this, the National Consumer Affairs Center called for caution by users who travel with low-cost carriers. There have been many complaints regarding their services offered and the airlines were urged to make appropriate improvements.
It was observed that in the year that ended in March, the consumer body’s consultations related to LCCs increased drastically from the previous year, to 579. In many cases, it was noticed that most low-cost airlines did not offer any confirmation screens on their websites for reservations. Moreover, passengers who completed bookings without final confirmations were forced to pay unexpected charges for changing names, as well as baggage fees.
The electronic consumer contracts law mentioned that the companies are not allowed to turn down consumer’s demand to nullify mistakenly concluded online contracts if no measures have been taken in order to confirm the contracts. The LCCs have been asked to provide more final confirmation pages on their websites and to revise displays as they might be misleading.
Complaints regarding low-cost carriers also included cases where consumers were denied refunds due to reservation cancellation caused by unilateral changes to flight schedules by the operators.
