Indonesia forum

First step: "Determine the aim of the flight' What?!!

My take on it is that once you select 'Singapore and Other' as 'Location' somewhere on the booking page, you will be directed to pay through PayPal, and they in turn will process your credit card.

Unfortunately Air Asia and Garuda only fly to very obvious places and I prefer very obscure places. I've never had any problem booking Air Asia fights either (Garuda didn't work a couple of years ago) from home.

HOWEVER, Visa (or my bloody bank) now makes me jump through impossible security hoops whenever I try and buy anything online when I'm abroad. eg They send a 6 digit security code to a phone which MUST be in your home country and the code expires after a few minutes. Try coordinating with someone in a completely different time zone and getting them to text you the code in time to make the purchase. No es possible... I've tried. Were you trying to make a booking from Canada or from abroad Tyler?

LOL Lizzy! My "aim" is to get from A to B in one piece and I feel the chances of achieving this are marginally higher on Batavia than Merpati....could totally wrong though. Thanks for your interpretation. You are always sooooo much better at understanding incomprehensible gobbledygook than I am, I wish I was as clever as you, but I thought that's what it said too. Usually I go through a booking agent (and pay commission for the service) but as internet availability and speed in Indo has improved markedly in the last few years, I check annually to see if the airlines have staggered into the 21st century yet. And if so, I was curious to hear what (if any) online payment security they offer. Paypal should be OK (if it works).

Only one way to find out I guess... experiment time again.

Weird that you couldn't book Air Asia if you were able to book it from elsewhere in SE Asia.

My bank and credit card seem to think the whole of SE Asia is very dodgy. My credit card treats every online transaction as highly suspect and sometimes won't even let me withdraw money from an ATM.

I tried to buy travel insurance with paypal in Malaysia once. They said they'd detected that I wasn't in my home country and informed me that I couldn't make the transaction without a 4 digit security code which would appear on my bank statement the following month. How very convenient... I have fly halfway across the world to pick up my post if I want to use paypal?

Anyway.

Pleased to report that Somtam was wrong and me and lizzy were right!

You CAN pay for Batavia flights online now. If you're trying to do it away from home (I wasn't) then I suspect paypal will try to make things difficult so you'd need to make sure any supplementary security checks are sorted out beforehand.

I'm exceptionally good at finding bugs that nobody else can reproduce so I did find a few little quirks when I was trying to book.

Try 1. I managed to get to the pay process without using the ID and password the first time I tried (this is not supposed to be allowed). But then I messed up with the paypal password so I don't know if I'd have been able to actually buy a ticket. Paypal didn't recognize my password and I had to reset it.... I hardly ever use paypal, so maybe I'd made a different password and not noted it down or maybe paypal passwords expire after a certain time? Dunno.

Try 2. This time I couldn't get to the paypal process without the ID login. (Eventually found the ID login stuff in my junk mail files. Look there first, because it's where they sent my ticket too). I typed the login details but the box kept saying this field has to be filled in (even though it was filled in) and it refused to let me proceed any further. Clearing cookies and retyping the ID details didn't help. Suggest rebooting the computer, pouring yourself a glass of wine, and starting all over again. Seems to work a lot better than deleting firefox cookies.

I think you'd be able to book tickets on either a PC or a Mac because I was using an Ubuntu operating system and it worked.

One last thing .... I'm almost certain that the promotional price ticket I wanted to buy cost $35 when I looked a few days ago. Batavia seem to have upgraded the site in the last few days (reaction to my email enquiry I expect) and it now automatically detects that you aren't in Indonesia. The default language is English and "other" country is already pre-selected. The promo price has mysteriously risen to $45 as well, a 28% hike.

So I'm not sure if booking direct with Batavia is any cheaper than booking through an agent, might even be more expensive.

@SBE - Weird is right. No rhyme or reason to it. So I'll continue what I've been doing while I'm in Indonesia and support our travel agency friends. BTW - where are you trying to go?

@busylizzy - experienced the time out repeatedly as well. Fun stuff! Part and parcel with the connections as you said. But my card has not been allowed to book with Garuda, AirAsia and LionAir. If I remember correctly LA has a disclaimer on their website about foreign card - I can't be bothered to look it up right now. My present connection is worse than anything in Indonesia!

I got up to the Arctic for work last night... I'm just happy to have ANY connection Needless to say I won't be booking any flights from here!

Haven't even heard of these airlines, SBE. Hope you know what you're doing!

I've tried that agent you linked in the past Casey but they took ages to get back to me so I went with another one called travelindo instead and have used them since.

http://www.travelindo.com/

Travelindo reacts to enquiries lightning fast and are also quite helpful with any further enquiries you may have. You pay through paypal and, like Batavia, they only accept payments in $US. I've never had any problems with the tickets they sold and I think their fees are a bit lower than the agent you mentioned too.

Just wanted to see if I could book tickets without using an agent yet!

The problem with both these companies is that you have to email them before you can see the airfares so it's time-consuming comparing prices and you then have to check fares on the airline websites as well to make sure they didn't "forget" to mention a promo fare.

Travelindo tends to do this but they'll modify their quote without argument if you point out that a lower fare is available. (ie you still have to do a bit of work yourself).