Viva Macau update

We were hoping to get our refunds by now, but instead, yesterday I received this letter from the Macau Consumer Council. The important excerpts are below, with semi-snarky comments interspersed:

“Dear Sir/Madam,

The Consumer Council has received a few hundred complaints against Viva Macau Airlines for the refund of flight ticket and claims for damages as a result of various flight cancellation by Viva…(Only a few hundred, really? That wouldn’t even be one plane, and at least 20 flights were cancelled so I’m sure they have many, many more unhappy people.)

However, Viva’s announcement of its office closure and subsequent cessation of business on 7th April 2010…rendered the liaison between Viva and our office and the follow-up actions for subsequent complaints unavailable. (Uh oh…)

Meanwhile, the arrangement of the refund of flight ticket and the related follow-up actions still remain uncertain, it casts doubt as to whether Viva would honour its promise to reimburse to the complainants within 1-2 weeks after flight cancellation (which was the verbal commitment made by Viva’s staff at the time of handling complainants’ refund procedures. As Viva has made no reply to the complainants’ complaints so far and its business being ceased, most complainants suspect fraud as a result of the non-compliance of the refund pledged by Viva. (Oh drat. I should have known that special fare was too good to be true!)

In view of this, pursuant to the regime of [insert law and section yadda-yadda], our office will refer the related complaint cases to the Judiciary Institutions for investigation. Should the Public Prosecution Office regard that there is sufficient evidence amounting to prosecution against Viva, you may pursue your claims for the refund and compensation under the civil litigation procedures.” (Wtf?! I have two months left in Macau – no way they’re going to move this fast enough for me to get a refund that way.)

In other words, it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get my money back from Viva, not to mention the related costs of cancelling the hostel reservation/overnight bus tickets. My only other option (which I am currently pursuing) is filing a claim with the trip cancellation insurance that (thankfully) came automatically with my Mastercard, but that’s also going to take a while because they have to mail a claims form to my US address and then my family will probably have to fill it out for me and mail it back. The slightly tricky issue is proving the flights were canceled because of the carrier’s “financial inviability,” aka the carrier must have gone bankrupt, but considering Viva has pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth, that should count, right?

In the meantime, I was able to see sakura semi-vicariously through the photos of my two friends in Japan: Garrett and Kunmi. *sigh* Oh well, maybe next year I'll just take a short jaunt to Washington DC instead...

No sakura for me =(

I had this lovely trip planned out for Easter break: 6 days in Japan with fellow ETAs Susan, Emily, and Amy, touring Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nara. Even better, I was hoping to meet up with two Yale ’09 friends, Kunmi (studying in Tokyo) and Garrett (studying in Kyoto). Best of all, we would be going smack in the middle of cherry-blossom season, but we had managed to scrimp down to a budget of $1000 US including round-trip flight from Macau to Tokyo, hostels, transport within Japan, admission to various sights, food for the week, plus a little for souvenirs. In anticipation, I even changed my Firefox persona to a cherry-blossom theme!

However, it was all too good to be true…things began unraveling the morning before our flight was supposed to leave at 2:30 PM. I was actually at the UM office finishing up a few things before heading to the airport when I got this call from Amy:

Amy: Uh Jen, Viva Macau is going bankrupt or something.
Me: WHAT?!
Amy: Yeah, check it on Google.
Me: …

I quickly checked Google News, and while Viva Macau wasn’t technically going bankrupt, it might as well have been. The Macanese government had abruptly pulled its operating license as of March 26, citing that they needed to repay 200 million MOP in loans and hadn’t been keeping up on fuel payments. All flights were subsequently grounded, with no idea of when they would start again. Susan and I went to the airport anyway, on the off chance that our flight might still take off, but if not, to figure out what to do next.

At the Viva Macau counter, we were met by two officials from the tourism bureau, who took us to a sort of crisis headquarters in the China Hotel across the street. There, we realized that at least we were luckily to be leaving from Macau, rather than stuck in it. We registered our “case” with the tourism/consumer complaint bureau, hoping it would increase our chances of getting a refund since it didn’t seem like Viva had any sense of corporate responsibility. That night, we sadly canceled our reservations for the hostels and the overnight bus trips.

The next morning, Amy, Susan, and I headed for the Viva Macau office in the AIA Tower, just behind the Grand Emperor Hotel. We had heard from some local friends that Viva was giving out refunds there, but apparently, plenty of other people were waiting for the same – we got there before the opening time at 9 AM and there was a already a waiting area set up in the courtyard behind the tower.

Sign directing us to the courtyard

There, we waited for another half hour before this guy came out:

The Viva employee is the one in the striped sweatshirt

Unfortunately, he was there not to let us into the office, but to hand out numbered slips telling us to come back later. Apparently, there were still lots of people from the previous day that hadn’t been processed, so those were the ones who had first priority. We were annoyed (though not as clearly miffed as the people in the photo above) but took our tickets for an appointment at 1:30 PM. Clearly, this was also some of the biggest news to hit Macau in a while – there were at least 3 video cameras rolling to capture the 20 or so of us waiting in line.

When we came back at 1:30, we were smoothly escorted up to the office, where we filled out a few simple forms and received an apologetic letter stating how sorry Viva was for the inconvenience, but refunds would be processed in the next 2-3 weeks. That being as much as we could do, we went back home and started thinking about where else we could go on such short notice without spending too much money…