There appears to be a systematic problem where Qantas call centre staff are accidentally cancelling confirmed Classic Flight Reward bookings when customers call to enquire about changing their flights.
Over recent months, multiple Australian Frequent Flyer members have reported that their Classic Reward bookings were cancelled without their knowledge after they phoned Qantas. In each case, the customer had simply enquired about changing their flights, but were told there was no availability on the alternative flights they wanted.
After being told they couldn’t change their flights, these customers simply ended the call. What they didn’t realise is that in the process of searching for alternative flights, the call centre operator had cancelled their original booking without telling them – most likely unintentionally.
Australian Frequent Flyer already brought you a story about this happening to forum member davidhes in May. They ultimately lost their confirmed Business Class seats from Brisbane to London on Qatar Airways and had to fight with Qantas for weeks, wasting hours of their time, until eventually the airline offered replacement reward seats on a Qantas flight to London.
It’s bad enough that the call centre would make such a serious error once. Unfortunately, it’s happened yet again.
Another Qantas booking accidentally cancelled by call centre
AFF member Tmcsyd was thrilled after finally saving up enough Qantas Frequent Flyer points to redeem for a Business Class ticket from Sydney to London with Japan Airlines. They had successfully booked and had a confirmed ticket. Unfortunately, things started to go pear-shaped when Tmcsyd tried to change the date of the flight.
Qantas is currently advertising that frequent flyers can make unlimited, fee-free changes on international Classic Reward bookings. So, when this member found alternative reward seats to London available on a more suitable date, they called Qantas to switch their flights.
The overseas-based call centre operator could not see availability on the other flights, even though reward seats appeared on the Qantas website. Unfortunately, in the process of searching for alternative flights, the operator also accidentally cancelled the entire existing booking – leaving Tmcsyd without any flight to London at all.
Despite then calling Qantas again multiple times to try to get the flights reinstated, and even though the problem was caused entirely by Qantas in the first place, Qantas refused to help.
Tmcsyd posted this on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum:
I made a booking for Sydney – London (via Tokyo on Japan Airlines) in business class, finally saved enough points for this. I called Qantas after I made the booking to change dates, the operator could not see availability from her end so I got her to look at the Qantas website and my booking directly and she said she was not able to change it. However in this process when she was in my booking she inadvertently cancelled it – I noticed this when I received an email saying my booking was in the process of being refunded – alarmed I called Qantas and they said they would escalate to their manager.
When I followed up on this I was constantly put on hold and hung up on or told there was nothing they could do. I know you are able to request classic reward business seats be made from revenue so I requested they do this. I finally got through to one gentleman who helped me with this but unfortunately he put the booking request in the wrong name!
Calling back Qantas they said they were unable to help, one lady tried to charge me $3k to fix it in and put it in my name with no guarantee the booking would be in business class! When I explained this was all because my booking was cancelled they said they couldn’t do anything to help. I have spent many many hours on the phone to them to be literally abused, one lady yelled at me and told me that I’m lying and they can’t make up seats and it’s not their responsibility now that the refund points have gone back through. I have also tried to contact qantas on email and all forms of social media and have gotten no where. If anyone can help? I don’t know what else to do! This has been so stressful and upsetting 🙁
How could this happen?
There seems to be a systematic issue where some staff at Qantas’ outsourced call centres in Cape Town and/or Suva are accidentally cancelling existing bookings when the customer enquires about changing their flights. It appears that there is either a glitch in Qantas’ reservations system, or more likely, that some of the call centre staff are not trained properly to use it.
It should not be possible for reservations staff to accidentally cancel a ticketed booking without realising and without informing the passenger. Period. This is not a normal thing that happens at other airlines and it’s simply astonishing that Qantas can allow this happen.
To make matters worse, each time this has happened, Qantas has then wiped its hands of responsibility and refused to fix the problem until either Qantas’ Chief Customer Officer or the media got involved. Instead, Qantas’ default response is to offer a refund. This is totally unacceptable and Qantas Frequent Flyer members deserve better than this.
How this was resolved in this instance
Fortunately for Tmcsyd, Qantas did eventually call them to offer a replacement Business Class seat on a Qantas flight from Sydney to London. But this only happened after Australian Frequent Flyer got involved and contacted Qantas for comment on this story.
Sadly, it seems that this situation would have been impossible to resolve through Qantas’ regular channels as Tmcsyd had already tried repeatedly and failed to do so. Again, this is simply not good enough.
A Qantas spokesperson told Australian Frequent Flyer that it was sorry for any inconvenience.
“We have been in touch with the passenger and have confirmed a new reward seat booking. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and are investigating how this occurred,” the Qantas spokesperson said.
How can you prevent this happening to you?
Both of these stories have a few things in common. They were both attempts to make changes to Classic Flight Reward bookings with travel on partner airlines, and both people tried to make these changes through an overseas-based call centre.
To prevent this happening to you, it would probably be wise to avoid trying to change a confirmed Qantas Classic Flight Reward booking if possible until Qantas rectifies this issue.
If you do need to make a change, Qantas is still offering fee-free cancellations on Classic Flight Reward bookings made until 30 September 2022. So, you may be better off making a new booking and then cancelling your initial booking for a full refund. (Make sure your new booking is ticketed properly before cancelling your old one!)
If you need to change a Classic Flight Reward booking over the phone, try to do this only through the Qantas call centres in either Hobart or Auckland – where the staff are usually highly competent and are unlikely to make such a basic mistake. (Unfortunately, this is easier said than done as almost all calls are being routed to an overseas contact centre unless you have Platinum or Platinum One status. Qantas does not offer a direct line to a call centre where you can be sure the staff won’t stuff up your booking.)
If you have absolutely no choice but to change your booking over the phone with an overseas-based call centre, it’s probably best not to provide any information about your existing booking until the staff member has confirmed there is availability on the new flight/s you want. In both of the recent incidents, the call centre could not find availability on the new flights that had been requested so, in hindsight, there was no need for these customers to give the call centre access to their original bookings.
Flights can also be lost due to Qantas ticketing delays
Finally, if you do need to make a change to a Classic Flight Reward booking (or there is a schedule change made by the operating airline!), make sure your ticket is re-issued promptly.
Qantas has an extremely bad habit of failing to issue and re-issue tickets involving flights operated by partner airlines before the operating airlines’ ticketing deadlines, meaning the flights are automatically cancelled. This is another systematic problem that has been ongoing for months. Many people have lost their Qantas reward bookings as a result, with no recourse available to them.
If your new ticket has not been issued within a day or so (i.e. you don’t have a new ticket number starting with “081”), you may need to call Qantas and insist that you won’t hang up until you’ve received your new ticket. The call centre will probably tell you that your booking will be ticketed within 24 hours and that you don’t need to wait on hold, but this rarely seems to actually happen.
It’s regrettable that Qantas Frequent Flyer members need to go to so much effort just to use their points as advertised. If you think this is unreasonable, it might be a good time to reassess whether earning Qantas Frequent Flyer points is the best option for you. There are plenty of other frequent flyer programs out there that don’t make things so difficult for their members!
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Qantas cancelled my Business Class classic reward and tried to charge me $3000 to reinstate!
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