Relevant to QF's treatment of pax during the mass cancellations in 2022: cancelling a flight booked as a Y award fare, and then refusing to accommodate a passenger on the next available flight, because only Y revenue seats are available. I appreciate it is not the most egregious scenario, and it all worked out in the end. But it is another example of woeful customer service, and a modus operandi of hoping the customer simply gives in.
I have used approximate times but story goes something like this:
* 6 months in advance, family member books CBR-SYD-ARM. Y award. CBR-SYD arrives into SYD circa 9am. SYD-ARM departs SYD circa 11am.
* 1 week before, QF reschedules the SYD-ARM flight to depart SYD at 9am. This meant she would miss that flight on the original connection from CBR. However, instead of putting her on an earlier CBR-SYD flight, QF offloads her from the 9am SYD-ARM, sticks her on an afternoon CBR-SYD, and an evening SYD-ARM. This would see her arriving about 8 hours later than originally planned.
* On 5 occasions, QF customer service refused to put her on an earlier departure CBR-SYD, so that she could then make the 9am SYD-ARM. The reason? The CBR-SYD flights only had revenue Y seats available, not Y award seats. Even though there were plenty of Y seats left on the CBR-SYD connection (including red e deal fares), they said they could only accommodate her on Y award seats. To this we said that, had they not cancelled the flight 1 week out, there might well have been award seats available. The response? In many instances, the agent said they would put us on 'hold', and then just hung up.
* Finally, a QF agent 'overrode the system' and booked her on a revenue seat CBR-SYD, so she could then make the 9am SYD-ARM.
I am at a loss to explain how it is an acceptable customer service policy, for QF to cancel a service for operational reasons, and then refuse to put the customer on the next most convenient flight where seats are available (in the same cabin class), because the same fare bucket is not available.