A positive experience

[cbrendan]

Hi all,

Reading through these forums recently paints a pretty dire picture of the current state of Qantas customer service.

Thought I'd just share (what ended to be) a positive experience, and the twists and turns experienced along the way.

During the classic reward release I managed to snag 4 x return Mel-Syd-Sin return flights for 2 adults & 2 kids in J in the September school holidays.

Fast forward to last week, and I received an email last week advising `Please note that your flight QF1 to Singapore Changi has changed...` with the departure time having been brought forward by ~50 min. Due to this change my Mel-Syd / Syd-Sin connection time was reduced to only 45 minutes creating an invalid itinerary.

I initially called the 13 13 13 number, but hit a brick wall twice with both agents in FIJI advising that no alternative MEL-SYD award flights were available in J that day, and that I'd have no choice but to downgrade the domestic leg to economy.

Not thrilled with that outcome, I did a bit of reading through some threads here and came across the 1300 659 161 number.

I rang it this morning, and within only a few minutes I was connected to a very helpful lady in Manilla who was able to release 4 x direct Mel-Sin QF35 J revenue seats, and within about 10 minutes all was sorted and updated e-tickets hit my inbox while I was on the phone.

Putting aside the disappointing initial experiences, this mornings experience was actually fantastic.

Qantas. Consistently inconsistent.

TL;DR - call 1300 659 161 not 131313 if you need something actually fixed.

 

[djkelly69]

I haven't had to call in the last few months, but my experience over a lot of calls in the 12 months before that was that there was no discernable difference in the quality of staff you connected to whether calling the 1300 or 13 number (or 131211).

 

[ChrisMars]

Hi all,

Reading through these forums recently paints a pretty dire picture of the current state of Qantas customer service.

Thought I'd just share (what ended to be) a positive experience, and the twists and turns experienced along the way.

During the classic reward release I managed to snag 4 x return Mel-Syd-Sin return flights for 2 adults & 2 kids in J in the September school holidays.

Fast forward to last week, and I received an email last week advising `Please note that your flight QF1 to Singapore Changi has changed...` with the departure time having been brought forward by ~50 min. Due to this change my Mel-Syd / Syd-Sin connection time was reduced to only 45 minutes creating an invalid itinerary.

I initially called the 13 13 13 number, but hit a brick wall twice with both agents in FIJI advising that no alternative MEL-SYD award flights were available in J that day, and that I'd have no choice but to downgrade the domestic leg to economy.

Not thrilled with that outcome, I did a bit of reading through some threads here and came across the 1300 659 161 number.

I rang it this morning, and within only a few minutes I was connected to a very helpful lady in Manilla who was able to release 4 x direct Mel-Sin QF35 J revenue seats, and within about 10 minutes all was sorted and updated e-tickets hit my inbox while I was on the phone.

Putting aside the disappointing initial experiences, this mornings experience was actually fantastic.

Qantas. Consistently inconsistent.

TL;DR - call 1300 659 161 not 131313 if you need something actually fixed.

Great that you have the outcome you were after.

It's a positive outcome. IMHO that's not a positive experience. Having to resort to find a special phone number somewhere in a forum to get a simple booking fixed is not normal. The ask was not difficult: fix a scheduling issue introduced by Qantas, where all the flights are on Qantas metal, on a route that is well served by Qantas. It should be straightforward, and the two staff in Fiji should have been able to handle it. The fact they couldn't is concerning, and I would hope that by now, the offshore call center would have had enough experience to handle those requests. Apparently not.

 

[cbrendan]

It's a positive outcome. IMHO that's not a positive experience.

Very valid point.

Last week after my initial calls with the 2 agents in Suva I certainly wasn't feeling positive.

But assuming the 1300 number actually ends up routing to different team, and its not just all agent roulette... by reading this forum and being pointed to that number, from that point forward I was able to get the issue resolved painlessly and quickly.

Of course it would be better if Qantas had a consistent baseline level of competence across the entirety of their phone based staff.

But in absence of that, hopefully others who come across this thread when they find themselves in a similar situation are able to skip the painful initial experience and skip straight to the positive outcome.

 

[RooFlyer]

Great that you have the outcome you were after.

It's a positive outcome. IMHO that's not a positive experience. Having to resort to find a special phone number somewhere in a forum to get a simple booking fixed is not normal. The ask was not difficult: fix a scheduling issue introduced by Qantas, where all the flights are on Qantas metal, on a route that is well served by Qantas. It should be straightforward, and the two staff in Fiji should have been able to handle it. The fact they couldn't is concerning, and I would hope that by now, the offshore call center would have had enough experience to handle those requests. Apparently not.

I agree - it was a satisfactory final outcome (that is, the OP simply got what they paid for) but if it was me, I wouldn't call it a positive experience.

But in absence of that, hopefully others who come across this thread when they find themselves in a similar situation are able to skip the painful initial experience and skip straight to the positive outcome.

Cross fingers.