Gold yanked - thoughts?

[k_sheep]

Ahhh remember the "everyone is gold" drama of DJ? Made a lot of people very excited until the "Oops!" email came out.

Now THAT was poorly handled.

 

[opusman]

Those were the days!

 

[Haplo]

Maybe ask QF to give you free complimentary lounge access on the flights you have booked? Wouldnt cost Qantas anything and will bring back a customer.

 

[Pushka]

Just one of those QF IT things that it's best not worry about. You don't really have grounds for complaint imo since you didn't requalify and they didn't specifically tell you you were being comped.

Sure but they did say they had retained SG. Same thing isn’t it.

Ok. It’s an IT thing that must be corrected as all it does it make people antsy.

 

[opusman]

Sure but they did say they had retained SG. Same thing isn’t it.

They didn't email saying "even though your SCs have been less than required we're comping you gold this year" did they? It was a badly served banner on the website.

 

[serfty]

I saw one case of a 'false' fresh 'Congrats on retaining [status]' posted - that is, when the retained status wasn't actually earned, or comped, which is what happened to the OP. So I still don't think it's 'normal', but YYMV .

I do apologise - on review my post appeared inadvertently abrubt.

I was a little lazy, assuming most was in that thread.

I have done a deeper search and provide a few more examples from different threads wher the Qantas site showed status retained for a few days into the new "year" before dropping:

Have I been comped gold?

A very long run comes to an end...

Have I been comped to wp ?

Have I been comp'd WP

Quick status question

 

[Pushka]

Has anyone other than OP seen the banner ‘congratulations you have retained’ as opposed to the status just not changing for a few days?

 

[serfty]

Has anyone other than OP seen the banner ‘congratulations you have retained’ as opposed to the status just not changing for a few days?

yes.

E.G. See the second thread I linked to in my prior post.

 

[Pushka]

yes.

E.G. See the second thread I linked to in my prior post.

Well that involved too much work to check
Qantas have taken it to a new level of enhancement then.

 

[zenyattamondatta]

Has anyone other than OP seen the banner ‘congratulations you have retained’ as opposed to the status just not changing for a few days?

Yes.

(trying to find the screenshot, but wrong country and wrong computer)

 

[nickfromeastryde]

Has anyone other than OP seen the banner ‘congratulations you have retained’ as opposed to the status just not changing for a few days?

I got the same banner and there has not been as noted by someone earlier any apology or acknowledgement of the error. The OP only received one when he queried the subsequent downgrade

I didn't bother as after being on this forum for a while, I am now fully aware of QFF's serious IT and customer service limitations. Additionally, as a leisure traveller I have 21 OW award flights flights booked for this year (only 3 with QFF) all in J and above so no real impact other than being back to NBB this time next year. Intention for following year will be to purchase revenue tickets and back to gold or above and banking my points for the next couple of years at least.

As an aside, I noted a huge drop in award availability that I could view on the QF site as a Silver. We recently finalised our latest 280K award with return flights to the US in June next year. I could only see 3 or 4 J awards all via London whilst Mrs Nick who is still Gold for another day at least could see availability just about every day, a lot from BNE but many also from and returning to SYD and MEL, to me this being the biggest impact of downgraded status.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Has anyone other than OP seen the banner ‘congratulations you have retained’ as opposed to the status just not changing for a few days?

nope. I have often had the status take a few days to change over our families various accounts, but only seen the congratulations message when we have either been comped or genuinely requalified. And the last few comps just happened without any messages other than the congrats banner appearing so I can see why the OP thought he had it.

And he is right - we have all been beaten into submission by airlines. I just haven’t the energy to fight anymore. . I booked business class with Kenyan Air on a domestic leg recently. They cancelled the flight and the only other suitable one was an all economy. I did suggest they might like to refund the difference ($500 pp), but I think they scented weakness and said no and I didn’t take it any further - life is too short.....

 

[JohnK]

Thanks, I’m not sure what you mean by comped though sorry. I did think the message Congratulations Hugh, you’™ve retained Qantas Frequent Flyer Gold status was pretty specific!

I'm sorry but that's a poor glitch and unacceptable. I haven't been following the linked threads closely.

Unrelated to status but I saw an airfare on the Qantas website for ~$870/person but could not book it. Errored out each time. Called and was told that was a glitch and the cheapest available was $1100/person. Refused to budge but I did manage to find a workaround for same price. How do they get away with this rubbish?

 

[blackcat20]

Has anyone other than OP seen the banner ‘congratulations you have retained’ as opposed to the status just not changing for a few days?

Yes, I had it at the start of this month.

 

[Deleted member]

Thank you for the explanation. I’m honestly surprised again though by the responses here. While I do appreciate them all and they’ve helped me understand the whole situation, I can’t help but feel they demonstrate a bit of conditioning, to put it politely. I guess they don’t call it a loyalty program for no reason! A hotel chain for comparison would not be able to get away with misleading behaviour like this.

QF are notoriously inconsistent in their approach to rewarding members with a complimentary status renewal. I was consistently WP and very close (about 120 SC’s ) to requalifying and I asked if I could be comped. The answer was a very firm no.
So I have ever since been very aware of what I need to do to keep my status.

 

[blackcat20]

This is the banner; it took almost a week to update me to Gold. Which I was aware was likely given I didnt quite make the SC but the specific banner congratulating me on retaining was definitely confusing and disappointing.

 

[DrJ]

As a previous victim of the "status hangover" a few years ago I feel everyone's pain, but this new development of putting up a specific "congrats, you have retained x status" banner (rather than just letting the soon to be pulled status display for a few days past the renewal date) is a new level of building up then disappointing. Hope they fix this glitch ASAP.

 

[cambriamarsh]

As a previous victim of the "status hangover" a few years ago I feel everyone's pain, but this new development of putting up a specific "congrats, you have retained x status" banner (rather than just letting the soon to be pulled status display for a few days past the renewal date) is a new level of building up then disappointing. Hope they fix this glitch ASAP.

They really need to fix this quickly. Effectively it is bait and switch / deliberately misleading, ie we tell you you’ve retained a status, you make a booking on that basis possibly paying extra v alternatives then we pull the status but don’t let you enjoy the benefits and we keep the cash.

That will end up on ACA.

 

[juddles]

The glitch is shiite - I truly understand that the Op should be peeved. But that is Qantas, and pretty much everyone else.

On the other hand, the annoyance is because one did not get what one knew one shouldn't.

Hmmmm....

All you IT gurus should know how Qantas can prevent what seems to be a common glitch.

Specifically to the OP, yes, feel unhappy, but then decide if you want to waste emotion on fighting - many others have tried and failed....

P.S. that you did not get police called or get banned shows, as per your initial post, some restraint. That is excellent. Asking to be given the gold will just infuriate you more. Best case, IMHO, is that you get lounge credit or similar.

 

[Flying mermaid]

All you IT gurus should know how Qantas can prevent what seems to be a common glitch.
.

by having a decent IT team or having penalties for their outsourcers when they don’t deliver. Everyone scrimps on their IT - it’s just a cost centre where they save as much money as possible, rather than viewed as integral to the business. You get what you pay for and as long as stuff is released without adequate recession testing, glitches are going to creep in.

Hopefully it is now reported and eventually will be fixed in a new release at some point.

Bugs are prioritised and things that are causing major problems will get fixed first - I would suspect this wouldn’t have a high priority.

To be fair to Qantas it has a very complicated system and these sorts of bugs will creep in.