Hey there.
This is my new worst ever customer experience. I thought you all better be made aware that this can happen to you - left without flights and without any money and little recourse or assistance.
Gold member going to meet a business contact in Budapest, had these flights booked for some time. The contact I was meeting caught covid, and I had to change my flight plans to a different date and destination. Fortunately I had flexible tickets and so changed the booking. Unfortunately, the phone agent gave me wrong information, stating that the booking was direct. I paid the fare difference over the phone ($3k) and then when I got the ticket, it had several stops which did not work for me for various reasons. I cancelled the flights but was told that the change fares are not refundable of course. So far, this is just your regular terrible Qantas customer experience however, nothing exceptional.
So I go book fresh flights myself using qantas.com, thinking that I will take advantage of the double credits announcement from yesterday. I book the legs separately, starting with my return journey from Prague, and then book my departure for Sunday night, Hungary via Dubai. After I pay, I get the confirmation notification on my phone that the money was deducted from my card ($17k), and decide to go into seat selection and chose where we would sit.
After receiving confirmation of our seats, I close the browser and a few minutes later, notice I didn't get my email confirmation. So login to the FF booking site and...my booking is gone. There is no sign anywhere that it ever existed. I double check my bank (NAB), and it has fully processed and authorised the purchased (it isn't pending or on hold and it says payment was authorised). In the Qantas site, the return flight is there, but not our business-class $17,400 departure flights.
So I call Qantas. Phone agent can't help me as I don't have a booking number, but I have no way to find out what it is as i did not take note of it before I closed the browser. I ask for any flights to Budapest on my name, she says there are none. I search up the the flight numbers I was meant to be on and she says our names don't appear anywhere. How can that be, I literally reserved seats? She says it clearly wasn't confirmed as Qantas never took payment and there is no record of any such booking. I note that my account begs to differ - my card is now maxed.
I give her my card number, and after checking with billing support, she flat our calls me a liar and that were no purchases to that card. So I give her the booking reference for the other flights that do appear in the portal, and were made on the same card. She can see them, now back tracking about no charges to that card before. She says that whatever happened, I never booked properly and I certainly wasnt charged. When I offer to show her my bank statement, she suggests I call NAB and that she can clearly see that Qantas never requested or authorised a payment. I note that this is a problem as clearly NAB didn't decide to pay Qantas $17k on this particular day unprompted so speaking to NAB will lead them back to Qantas.
I am now panicking, as even if I somehow get a refund, it takes weeks to process and I have no way to pay for my flights in the next 24 hours.
At this point I start to lose my temper. No swear words or screaming, but I definitely start to get upset. She is clearly done with the call and trying to get me to hang up. Then I have a brainwave : i put my ABN on the purchase. Checking my Qantas business account and ...YES!!! The booking is there! Even with chosen my seat selection!!! I give the agent the booking number and suddenly she is no longer so sure of herself. She can see something is terribly wrong with the system. So...then she starts lying. She says that yes, it does show up on my name and my flight but she couldn't tell me that before until I gave her the booking reference. The reason for this, you see, is I made the booking through Qantas business and not Qantas FF. No, I tell her, it was booked on the FF site not the business site. And that makes no sense - my name is ON THE SEAT. Why wouldn't my name show up on the flight?
She puts me on hold again, and now says that yes, you have do indeed have a booking, but you don't have a ticket because Qantas haven't been paid. Again, my account says otherwise. She says to call the bank, as their billing dept has no record of that card being processed today (back to that bs). This goes in circles for a while, as I know NAB are going to tell me what the account shows - I made a card purchase and to take it up with the vendor.
She says, after refusing many times to put me through to someone else, that no one can help me until I call the bank, then I can call back and pay again to secure my seats. After contemplating, I borrow a friend's card, and decide to just book again fresh and cancel the old booking, to prevent Qantas from claiming to NAB that I ended up taking the flight and so refusing to refund. I call back. New agent, I start to explain what I want and she talks over me loudly explaining she has read the notes and I never got charged and blah blah. I try to explain I did get charged but what I want to do is - she talks over me again loudly and rudely.
This is 5 hours into this ordeal and I am 20k in the hole and very fed up. I raise my voice and talk over her.
She loudly cuts me off again says "Are you going to let me talk?". I say "No."
She hangs up.
I contact NAB and mark the transactions as fraudulent. Another happy FF.
This is my new worst ever customer experience. I thought you all better be made aware that this can happen to you - left without flights and without any money and little recourse or assistance.
Gold member going to meet a business contact in Budapest, had these flights booked for some time. The contact I was meeting caught covid, and I had to change my flight plans to a different date and destination. Fortunately I had flexible tickets and so changed the booking. Unfortunately, the phone agent gave me wrong information, stating that the booking was direct. I paid the fare difference over the phone ($3k) and then when I got the ticket, it had several stops which did not work for me for various reasons. I cancelled the flights but was told that the change fares are not refundable of course. So far, this is just your regular terrible Qantas customer experience however, nothing exceptional.
So I go book fresh flights myself using qantas.com, thinking that I will take advantage of the double credits announcement from yesterday. I book the legs separately, starting with my return journey from Prague, and then book my departure for Sunday night, Hungary via Dubai. After I pay, I get the confirmation notification on my phone that the money was deducted from my card ($17k), and decide to go into seat selection and chose where we would sit.
After receiving confirmation of our seats, I close the browser and a few minutes later, notice I didn't get my email confirmation. So login to the FF booking site and...my booking is gone. There is no sign anywhere that it ever existed. I double check my bank (NAB), and it has fully processed and authorised the purchased (it isn't pending or on hold and it says payment was authorised). In the Qantas site, the return flight is there, but not our business-class $17,400 departure flights.
So I call Qantas. Phone agent can't help me as I don't have a booking number, but I have no way to find out what it is as i did not take note of it before I closed the browser. I ask for any flights to Budapest on my name, she says there are none. I search up the the flight numbers I was meant to be on and she says our names don't appear anywhere. How can that be, I literally reserved seats? She says it clearly wasn't confirmed as Qantas never took payment and there is no record of any such booking. I note that my account begs to differ - my card is now maxed.
I give her my card number, and after checking with billing support, she flat our calls me a liar and that were no purchases to that card. So I give her the booking reference for the other flights that do appear in the portal, and were made on the same card. She can see them, now back tracking about no charges to that card before. She says that whatever happened, I never booked properly and I certainly wasnt charged. When I offer to show her my bank statement, she suggests I call NAB and that she can clearly see that Qantas never requested or authorised a payment. I note that this is a problem as clearly NAB didn't decide to pay Qantas $17k on this particular day unprompted so speaking to NAB will lead them back to Qantas.
I am now panicking, as even if I somehow get a refund, it takes weeks to process and I have no way to pay for my flights in the next 24 hours.
At this point I start to lose my temper. No swear words or screaming, but I definitely start to get upset. She is clearly done with the call and trying to get me to hang up. Then I have a brainwave : i put my ABN on the purchase. Checking my Qantas business account and ...YES!!! The booking is there! Even with chosen my seat selection!!! I give the agent the booking number and suddenly she is no longer so sure of herself. She can see something is terribly wrong with the system. So...then she starts lying. She says that yes, it does show up on my name and my flight but she couldn't tell me that before until I gave her the booking reference. The reason for this, you see, is I made the booking through Qantas business and not Qantas FF. No, I tell her, it was booked on the FF site not the business site. And that makes no sense - my name is ON THE SEAT. Why wouldn't my name show up on the flight?
She puts me on hold again, and now says that yes, you have do indeed have a booking, but you don't have a ticket because Qantas haven't been paid. Again, my account says otherwise. She says to call the bank, as their billing dept has no record of that card being processed today (back to that bs). This goes in circles for a while, as I know NAB are going to tell me what the account shows - I made a card purchase and to take it up with the vendor.
She says, after refusing many times to put me through to someone else, that no one can help me until I call the bank, then I can call back and pay again to secure my seats. After contemplating, I borrow a friend's card, and decide to just book again fresh and cancel the old booking, to prevent Qantas from claiming to NAB that I ended up taking the flight and so refusing to refund. I call back. New agent, I start to explain what I want and she talks over me loudly explaining she has read the notes and I never got charged and blah blah. I try to explain I did get charged but what I want to do is - she talks over me again loudly and rudely.
This is 5 hours into this ordeal and I am 20k in the hole and very fed up. I raise my voice and talk over her.
She loudly cuts me off again says "Are you going to let me talk?". I say "No."
She hangs up.
I contact NAB and mark the transactions as fraudulent. Another happy FF.
