How to book a Classic Reward over a few months

[vetrade]

I've had great difficulty in getting phone agents to add segments into existing bookings lately, as they repeatedly say that the can't find availability. And this is just for something that should be simple: adding a Qantas-operated domestic flight into an existing reward ticket with an international segment. Even when the availability shows both on the Qantas website and on ExpertFlyer, agents keep saying there's "no availability" to make the change. I wonder whether this is just agents not knowing what to do, or whether there may be something else at play with Qantas tightening up these times where we should be able to add a flight for 'free' to an existing reward ticket. Anyone else had similar issues?

It's very difficult to know what is going on in the heads of QF agents ATM. I despair at the havoc these people are wreaking on the travel plans of so many people. Unaccountable, inadequately trained and incapable seems to sum them up, going by the reports I read in AFF.

I never ring the call centre without having researched availability beforehand so that I can give them exact details of what I would like them to do, but our OWA is rapidly turning into a confusing jumble, with various agents having now put multiple ineligible flights into our itinerary - all just because QR rescheduled one flight. Unbelievably, we now have 3 separate sets of flights via various routes to get us from DOH to Australia (all in the same booking), but no flight to actually get us home to MEL. Neither of the "U" (business award) class flights I requested have been added to the itin. but for some unfathomable reason, we now have had multiple "J" (full business), "D" (discount business) and "I" (also discount business) flights included, some of which are not even for routes which make sense.

My last 3 calls have gone through to the Fiji call centre but in 2 cases the agents added incorrect flights without apparently putting any notes into the record of our booking, with the result that there is no paper trail to provide some sort of explanation.

 

[RealtimeY]

I recently had a segment added to my booking by the Fiji call centre. It was all done smoothly and correctly, but the process itself took about 25 minutes, with lots of holding while it was being completed. Is it normal for these requests to take that long? I would imagine you can't actually handle that many customers a day if these things take so long to complete.

 

[sanne]

I recently had a segment added to my booking by the Fiji call centre. It was all done smoothly and correctly, but the process itself took about 25 minutes, with lots of holding while it was being completed. Is it normal for these requests to take that long? I would imagine you can't actually handle that many customers a day if these things take so long to complete.

Have done several of these pre Covid and it was as easy as booking a single flight BNE/SYD. And didn’t have to wait forever for phone to be picked up. Efficient and friendly was my experience. Never had a problem.

 

[RooFlyer]

thanks for the help and advice guys. Seems there are a bit more things to consider to get this over the line. I'm also considering using the Award Flight Assist service AFF offer, but for the two of us, it'll cost around $500 which isn't all that cheap.

Worth it. But be ready to book when the answer comes back.