I don’t usually use Neo to book flights, but this time I decided to give it a try and see what can be done.
The good news is that Neo has a partnership with FlightHub, which allows users to get rewards, with an extra reward for their first time purchase. Unlike other loyalty systems, this reward is not tied to a particular airline or points system, which is great – and you can still enter your rewards number for any particular airline when booking the ticket with flight hub so you are not missing out on that.
To get a reward, you have to use the FlightHub App and rewards do not apply if you book through FlightHub.com
It is not currently possible to book flights within the Neo app itself. You have to leave the app and rely on a third-party tool that other people have built.
My first time experience was mixed: while I am very satisfied with the rewards from Neo, booking flights through FlightHub mobile app was a pain and added stress that I can easily avoid by choosing more user-friendly tools that I normally use.
I would like to do a detailed walkthrough to show the team that user experience does not end when the user leaves the app. What users will remember is the entire journey, and experience with other partners that Neo is working with is part of the experience. Great experience will reinforce positive feelings about the Neo brand, while poor experience with partners can reflect poorly on the Neo brand.
In order to pay with Neo through a FlightHub mobile app, I chose not use use FlightHub mobile app to search for flights and use Google Flights instead. FlightHub does not show prices when looking for dates, which makes it difficult for the user to decide on the best date to fly.
Here is what you will see if you try to search for a flight from Calgary to New York, for example:
For some destinations, squares with dates will be marked green, yellow and red based on how expensive they are with price ranges given on top. It is unclear why some destinations are colour graded while others don’t show any prices at all. Google Flights gives you the cheapest flight for each day in preview with the ability to compare prices by date using the price graph tool. I find it more convenient so I chose to use Google Flights to search for flights and then go to the FlightHub mobile app to book them. It would be nice not having to download an app and use another tool to use it – it would be more convenient to be able to book everything in the Neo app.
After choosing the flight, FlightHub leads the user to the screen to select your payment method. Despite FlightHub being a Neo partner with dedicated cashback for Neo users, what users will see is a generic screen that everyone else will see. This is the screen where users can change their mind and opt for a different payment method, even after Neo brought them here. It would be nice to have a smoother flow where users brought by Neo don’t have to make this extra step and have Neo payment as the default payment that is already set up because they logged in using Neo or something. Neo doesn’t have a bank ID to let users login to other websites and apps and make it easier to pay with Neo, and the current transition between Neo and third party apps is rough and clunky.
I have Neo and other cards saved in the Apple Wallet, but FlightHub does not allow to use saved cards. As you can see, clicking on the card number field does not trigger autofill suggestions in the bar below, which I believe is a native iOS feature that does not work here for some reason.
Users have to enter everything manually, which can lead to errors. It is also difficult to enter all the digits of the card on your phone and would be easier to do on a laptop, but users need to use the mobile app to get the reward from Neo.
It would be easy to add Apple and Google wallet button to make it easier for users to pay, but FlightHub did not do it. No one remembers their sixteen digit card number, expiry date and security code, so I have to go and locate the app. Neo makes it easy to view card number in the Neo app, but I decide to go and get a physical card in front of me because I don’t want to be switching back and forth between apps and accidentally close them when copying my card number.
There is a button to scan card on top, which I decide to use. This is not a native iOS card scanner, but a scanner that FlightHub added.
This scanner sucks.
If you try to use their scanner to scan the Neo card, you will see the following result.
First, FlightHub card card scanner does not pick up the First and Last name at all despite good light and perfect visibility of the card.
Second, FlightHub card scanner copies the sixteen digits of the card and spaces between each block of four digits, but FlightHub app that the number is copied into does not auto-remove spaces and requires a sixteen digit number without spaces. User has to manually delete each space between the blocks of four digits, which is hard to do on mobile. I don’t have large fingers, but accurately hitting the exact spot after the space that has to be removed is a challenge. After succeeding with the removal of the first two spaces I made a mistake and gave up, thinking it would be easier to erase the whole thing and reenter card number manually. Entering sixteen digits manually is not only a waste of user time – it is also stressful because it is so easy to make a mistake, and making a mistake means I would have to do it again.
The scanner picks up the expiration date, but not the security code, which has to be entered manually.
FlightHub doesn’t suggest to use autosave to fill out the billing address and every other field, which has to be entered manually. Entering all of these things on the mobile app is much more difficult than on the keyboard. FlightHub has a website, but using the website means I am not getting the reward, so I proceed with the mobile app.
I wonder why the reward is structured to only work with the mobile app. I think it is likely that FlightHub wants to leverage Neo partnership to drive their mobile app adoption, but they don’t quite understand that people are unlikely to use their app that is so poorly built. If FlightHub user tested their app, they would know what the problems are and how to make it better. I hope that they will do it, but for now, I’d choose much rather use the desktop version.
Out of curiosity, I created an account with FlightHub to see if it would make the autofill any easier and it didn’t.
I had three tickets to book, which I decided to book separately because the multi city tool was not giving me the same range of options as booking the same tickets individually.
After booking the first flight, I realized that the payment went through but the ticket was not issued automatically and issuing it might take “up to 4 days”. I’ve never seen this before. I had two more flights to book, so I did not know what to do. I wanted to book all three at the same time, but after the first ticket issued I started to think of all things that could go wrong. If I wait for the first ticket to be issued before booking the next one and it takes too long, it would be too late to book as the prices would be astronomical at that point. If I booked all three flights and there is a problem with any one of them, I could lose the entire trip with $1,000+ worth of flights.
I imagined that I could go to support and try to explain what happened, but this would be very painful and likely not solve my problem.
I decided to wing it and just book it to see what happens. What happened was that the second leg ticket was issued while the first two were pending. I decided to wait. After waiting for a few hours for tickets that I paid for to be issued, I decided to contact support.
The good news is that FlightHub has 24/7 support. AI agent wasn’t helpful, but after several prompts I was connected to live agent chat queue with a 40 minute wait time. I liked that I did not have to stare at the screen for 40 minutes and could just go about my things and wait. FlightHub has an integration with iMessage and pinged me a couple of times to confirm that I am still waiting. When the agent arrived, I got a text message. After explaining my situation, I waited for a few more minutes and my tickets were issued. I was happy with the resolution although it left me wondering that if agents are able to issue tickets manually, why were they not issued automatically?
I got $22.76 in rewards from Neo, but the stress wasn’t worth it.