I used to believe that easyJet offered value for money – that they had the cheapest or best prices for flights to Spain and elsewhere in Europe. My wife and I used to fly with them two or three times a year. Then easyJet taught us a lesson - that the cheapest air fares were not necessarily the best.

We fly regularly to Europe but, these days, we never book with easyJet. EasyJet charged us so much for a simple name change that they ended up losing our business.

In October, 2008, we booked return flights to Valencia, Spain for 21 February of the following year. I immediately saw that there was a problem with the names on the booking confirmation – ie my wife’s first name was the same as mine; the booking showed her with a man’s name. I went onto the easyJet web site and, with some considerable difficulty, found the page which allowed me to report the problem. The initial response from the easyJet Customer Experience Team was that they had looked at my email and so provided a web link referring to the Greek strike on the 21st of October 2008, and they hoped I would find it helpful.

Later, an email from a Customer Experience Champion suggested that the error was caused by the ‘autofill’ on my PC, when I was making the reservation and advised me to phone their Customer Services on an 0871 number. This seemed like a reasonable explanation, so I rang the number but I was advised by a recorded voice to contact easyJet via their web page again.

I contacted easyJet again via their web page and explained that I was going around in circles; the 0871 Customer Services number refers me to the web page and the web page refers me to the 0871 number. A ‘personal’ reply came from another Customer Experience Champion: ‘Thank you for contacting us. I would request you to contact our Customer Services on 0871 … … Thank you for taking the time to contact us Mr….If you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us again via the contact us section of the easyJet web site.’

All this was very frustrating and anything but easy; I put the matter aside until February, just before we were due to fly. The original price of my wife’s ticket was £95.27 but on February 17th easyJet charged me another £149.12 just to change her first name from a man’s to a woman’s name. In total, her ticket came to GBP 244 instead of GBP 95.

We still fly two or three times a year to Europe but, since that incident, we have never booked again with easyJet. We don’t fly with Ryanair or any so-called budget airlines either. We would prefer to pay not much more and have peace of mind with reputable airlines such as British Airways or Iberia.

We felt cheated by easyJet over that expensive name change but easyJet has lost much more in losing our business.

EasyJet under Stelios was great, cheap, friendly and great service, now its just a blood sucking bunch of morons in a flying bucket to swindle you out of as much money as possible. Buy yourself a PUSH IN PASS, if you have the money you can PUSH IN, or eat some of their awful food and god help you if you feel ill or fainst because they wont give you a cup of water they will ask you if you are drunk???? and then sell you a sip of water for £1.50. I have given up and moved on they fly less flights these days as people go elsewhere and I advise you do the same, but avoid Ryan cause he is just as bad. We need Richard Virgin to take on the budgets and show them how its done.