I recently paid for a flight with Air Asia to Indonesia and purchased extra baggage on top of the complementary baggage allowance allocated to people with surfboards. We travelled trouble free to Indonesia via KL where the complementary baggage allowance was honored as per Air Asias policy for flights to and from Australia.
It was when my group and many other people all with surfboards attempted to travel back to Sydney we were all denied entry to the plane unless we paid for the excess baggage. At 15 KGs each we were all stung between $500 and $600 each.
In attempts to have the issue looked at they created a case number for an investigation which was quickly responded to with an email stating my case is closed. 3 more attempts to resolve the issue were attempted with all quickly being processed by an automated BOT and me receiving an email stating it is resolved.
I guess be careful flying with other airlines apart from those covered by the Airline customer advocate unless you wish to pay a special tax.
It is not just off-shore airlines, it is specific airlines that have opaque or nil contact points, no published phones or email, and from internet posts also ignore attempts to reach them on their limited social media accounts. In this case it is part of the price of using a low cost off-shore airline.
Their web site T&C show an email to complain about the web site of dpo_my@airasia.com that might be worthwhile trying. It seemingly could not go worse than what you have tried.
There might also be something useful from this web site (more current than 2019). My takeaway is that flying Air Asia is a punt nothing will go wrong and if it does good luck as there is no assistance available and Air Asia keeps a wide moat between themselves and their customers.
