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Vietnam Visa scam involving Flight Centre and Jetstar
Just back from Vietnam and I have experienced another disgusting practice where Qantas/Jetstar collude with Flight Centre and someone in the Vietnamese visa centre to lift $500 from travellers. Applied on Oct 13 for a visa to Vietnam, with my partner. Flights had been booked for Nov 6. Her visa was granted without delay after 3 days. Mine was rejected. Reason: incorrect full name. I had taken particular care to state my full name as per the requirements of the Vietnamese Visa Department, i.e. as written in my passport. So I then deleted the hyphen in my Christian name - as per the requirements of all airlines, and joining the two names. Resubmitted the visa form. Rejected on the grounds that this unhyphenated name was not identical with what was in the passport. After making some enquiries it seemed that the Vietnamese visa office required the hyphenated name to be unhyphenated - with a space. Again, against the original rules of conforming with the passport name. But this time they withheld the visa. After making several phone calls to the Visa office I was told that the visa would be issued to me some 3-4 days before my flight was to leave. Not so. Jetstar would not allow me to board. My only option was to go to Flight Centre (at the advice from Jetstar) and obtain an instant visa on payment of $500. Sometimes the payment is $600. After the flight and before immigration controls in Vietnam we discovered at least another 20 people whose visa had not been granted on the grounds of hyphenated names or just non-issue of the visa. A nice little money-spinner for Flight Centre and of course some crooks on the inside of the Visa section. Beware Australian travellers !!! It will be interesting to see what Fair Trading will have to say about this Jetstar/Flight Centre scam. The refusal to allow me to board was also against a number of publications (one by Jetstar) which stated that a visa could be obtained upon arrival in Vietnam (for a fee of course). There is clearly an element of collusion here. Apparently, the number of people on every flight is around 20. Leaves a sour taste in your mouth at the commencement of a holiday. I felt quite sorry for a few young people on my flight who were severely impacted financially by this scam.
