She tried to make the arrangements online, but wasn’t sure if the credit would be switched over properly. Since there was no way to access her credit online, Karen went ahead and called AirTran’s customer service line.

When she spoke to the customer representative, she was informed that she would be charged $15 for their assistance. Apparently Air Tran charges a direct booking fee simply to have a live person assist you instead of doing it yourself.

Let me tell you, my jaw dropped to the floor when she told me about this. I can’t believe ANY company would charge money – let alone $15 dollars – to try to force you to do your booking online. I’m still stunned!

Maybe I’m clueless and more companies do this than I’m aware of; probably because I usually try to do everything online anyway and avoid talking to customer service reps whenever possible. But if this is standard practice, I’m appalled.

In my opinion, if you have a customer service representative that you’ve hired to assist customers, then this means you expect customers to have need of their help. There should be no extra charge to a customer if they aren’t capable of completing an online transaction without assistance. To me, it’s punishing the customer for their lack of knowledge – whatever it may be. And in my friend’s case, she was being punished for something that wasn’t her fault in the first place.

Let me ask you readers – is this common practice? Have you run across companies who force you to pay fees for using their “direct service” instead of doing it yourself online? Which companies were they and how did you handle it?