Have you ever looked through an airline inflight magazine Duty free guide and found exactly what you want? The price is right, the trolley comes by and then – “Sorry, No Stock”. Instant disappointment. AirAsia BIG Duty Free lets you book online before you fly and have the item delivered to your seat. This assumes, of course, that the trolley does actually make it’s rounds. Bad weather can mean lengthy periods of seat belt status, meaning no services.
BIG Duty Free – Pre Book or not?
To be fair, the trolley can’t stock everything, so this look like a winner. We decided to check it out because we’ve been disappointed many times, on various airlines. The instructions look pretty easy…
How to Pre-Book
Now, the instructions are easy, right? Let’s see how we go. When you go to the bigdutyfree.com website, now called OURSHOP.com you can choose to log in or continue as a guest. If you’re a BIG loyalty member, you don’t want to miss those BIG points, do you?
- Select your items and add to your cart.
- Click on the cart (top right hand corner) and enter the Booking number.
- Choose the flight and person who will receive the purchase.
- ** This is specially important if there are two or more legs and/or more than one passenger.
- You still have to confirm even if it’s one passenger on a single flight.
- Confirm the details and continue to payment.
- If your flight is not international, the GST in shown in the total.
- If you have a Promo Code, don’t forget to click on the red link and enter it.
- Payment is by Credit/Debit Card (Visa or Mastercard) or Unionpay.
- We found the verification a little slow, but be patient, it depends on your connection.
- Upon confirmation of payment, an email will be sent to the email address used to make the booking.
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The process was easy to follow and worked smoothly. Now to wait for the delivery!
The delivery
As they say in Malaysian cinemas – “akan datang!” (coming soon). This will be before the end of October.
The result:
Nothing dramatic to report. Despite a flight delay and seat change (done beforehand) the package was delivered to the correct seat. A check of the Duty Free trolley confirmed that it was a good idea to pre-order. So BIG Duty Free pre-order gets a tick from us.
Useful to know
You don’t need to be the traveller to actually place the order. If you have the booking number and name of the person travelling, you have all you need. This is useful if there’s something you want, but aren’t flying – ask first if the traveller is OK with this. If the purchase is a surprise, you should warn them though. You don’t want them to refuse the item because they thought it was a mistake, do you?
Important to know
If you don’t log in and are making the purchase as a guest, the site is not secure. When you go to the website, use the secure site. You can also do this manually by typing in https:// before the www.bigdutyfree.com. This means your payment will be done securely.
Give us your feedback!
If you’ve pre-booked your duty free – whether BIG Duty Free on AirAsia, or on another airline, please share your experience in our ‘Comments’ section.
I pre booked an item in June this year. after payment, I did not receive a receipt in my email. I have flown on 4 D7 flights since then , but have not received item which I have paid for. without a receipt, I can do nothing. not happy.
Hi Michael, Thanks for sharing. Strange that you didn’t receive the email. One thing I often do when making an online purchase is take a screenshot of the payment, in case I don’t receive the emailed version. It’s probably a long shot, but perhaps if you check your credit card statement, you’d have the proof of payment there and you could use that as a basis for a follow up. Good luck. The passenger in our story received a receipt straight away and now we’re waiting for Thursday to see if the purchase arrives as expected. The story will be updated then.
hi, my name is hjh normah..i did purchased online which booking number is 00000XXXX. My Flight is from Korea- KL…the items that i purchased onlibe should be given on that flight on xx dec 2017. But i dont receive any those items..my flight booking no is CXXXZ.
can u help me how im going to get the items that i ordered online..
Hi Hjh Normah,
You will need to contact AirAsia Customer service, giving them your details as above.
I’ve edited your details, as this posting is visible to the public.