Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[kctt]

They really need to stand up a dedicated team (and menu option) for OWAs since its clearly a specialist skills set that Mind pearl don't understand how to resolve.

Call volumes would drop dramatically if issues were resolved first time by well trained competent staff.

Ive not had luxury of time to be on hold, am hoping to get through to Hobart or NZ over the weekend if I HUACA enough times.

Totally agree about dedicated team for issues that overseas team cannot resolve.
Maybe have a dedicated line reserved for specific QFF numbers to prevent everyone calls that number. Overseas team can add my QFF number to allow list to call that line when they know they cannot do anything with error in my booking change.
Update to my 6th call: agent can get through to support but support team cannot resolve the error. Support team transfer her to ticketing team

 

[Mr H]

Maybe have a dedicated line reserved for specific QFF numbers to prevent everyone calls that number.

They already do this - if you have a Platinum number you go through to Hobart or Auckland.

Ive not had luxury of time to be on hold, am hoping to get through to Hobart or NZ over the weekend if I HUACA enough times.

Good luck with that. I have HUACA many, many times in the past few weeks and not chanced to get Hobart or Auckland even once.

 

[auspal]

Can anyone please advise if this is a feasible option for a round the world ticket ? Brisbane - Nashville - Nairobi- Manchester- Delhi- Brisbane ? Any order would be ok.

 

[andye]

Can anyone please advise if this is a feasible option for a round the world ticket ? Brisbane - Nashville - Nairobi- Manchester- Delhi- Brisbane ? Any order would be ok.

Definitely doable
Suspect you would have greater choice of flights by going US to UK (AA/BA) then Kenya to India (QR).
Could avoid UK Departure Tax by positioning to Europe from Manchester with separate flight.

 

[Mr H]

Can anyone please advise if this is a feasible option for a round the world ticket ? Brisbane - Nashville - Nairobi- Manchester- Delhi- Brisbane ? Any order would be ok.

Here's a route that comes in under 30,000 miles using OW airlines. Your challenge will be finding availability, especially SYD-LAX.

 

[kctt]

They already do this - if you have a Platinum number you go through to Hobart or Auckland.

Good luck with that. I have HUACA many, many times in the past few weeks and not chanced to get Hobart or Auckland even once.

I mean dedicated line for people without Platinum status but having issue that overseas team cannot resolve.
Unless there is policy that Support team and Ticketing team do not interact directly with customers. They only resolve issue and call centre has to be middleman in communication.
When Overseas team have to wait 1-2 hours or more to get in touch with Support team (i asked Fiji agent where Support team is and she said Australia), there is almost zero chance you can HUACA to get to Hobart or Auckland

 

[Mr H]

I mean dedicated line for people without Platinum status but having issue that overseas team cannot resolve.
Unless there is policy that Support team and Ticketing team do not interact directly with customers. They only resolve issue and call centre has to be middleman in communication.

I hear you but I think there's zero chance that they would make the support team available for direct contact as that is what everyone would do from that moment on.

 

[levelnine]

I mean dedicated line for people without Platinum status but having issue that overseas team cannot resolve.
Unless there is policy that Support team and Ticketing team do not interact directly with customers. They only resolve issue and call centre has to be middleman in communication.

Qantas would rather you give up in frustration and use your points on toasters in the Qantas store. Indeed, that's part of the point of having a cheap, substandard call centre. To shift customers away from redemptions that make less profit for Qantas (tickets on partner airlines in premium cabins) to redemptions that make huge profit for Qantas (toasters, gift cards).

 

[Mr H]

Qantas would rather you give up in frustration and use your points on toasters in the Qantas store. Indeed, that's part of the point of having a cheap, substandard call centre. To shift customers away from redemptions that make less profit for Qantas (tickets on partner airlines in premium cabins) to redemptions that make huge profit for Qantas (toasters, gift cards).

I don’t believe that. Qantas has to pay for the toasters whereas their flights would be running anyway.

 

[vetrade]

Qantas would rather you give up in frustration and use your points on toasters in the Qantas store. Indeed, that's part of the point of having a cheap, substandard call centre. To shift customers away from redemptions that make less profit for Qantas (tickets on partner airlines in premium cabins) to redemptions that make huge profit for Qantas (toasters, gift cards).

Unlikely that would be their mindset at all because doing that would be counterproductive by devaluing the lucrative Qantas FF brand.

 

[DC3]

Anyone looked at the “bargains” on toasters lately. Maybe more profit in those than the flights.

 

[levelnine]

I don’t believe that. Qantas has to pay for the toasters whereas their flights would be running anyway.

Wrong. A OWA is primarily paying other airlines for seats. You also don't seem to appreciate just how high margin the toaster selling business is. Qantas makes more money than regular retailers because they make money on selling the product as well as selling the currency.

Unlikely that would be their mindset at all because doing that would be counterproductive by devaluing the lucrative Qantas FF brand.

All evidence is to the contrary. They want to sell you on the idea of being able to redeem for luxury seats, but are oriented to making the reality as difficult as possible so that you will go for a higher margin redemption (or let the points expire).

Read any of the thousands of credit card and frequent flyer threads/posts on OzBargain or Facebook and you will see the same pattern over and over and over again:
1. A person attains ~100,000-200,000 Qantas points through flying and credit cards bonuses.
2. That person searches for a luxury getaway (ie they bought into the hype) and realises that they cannot find reward seats for their desired time/destination. They post their frustration about it.
3. Many replies saying flight redemptions are hopeless and to cash out for gift cards or products instead.
4. The original poster resigns themselves to that option and starts to go for gift cards/products into the future (ie success for Qantas; they bought into the loyalty program on the hype and are now switched over to high margin redemptions).

 

[Mr H]

Wrong. A OWA is primarily paying other airlines for seats. You also don't seem to appreciate just how high margin the toaster selling business is. Qantas makes more money than regular retailers because they make money on selling the product as well as selling the currency.

All evidence is to the contrary. They want to sell you on the idea of being able to redeem for luxury seats, but are oriented to making the reality as difficult as possible so that you will go for a higher margin redemption (or let the points expire).

Read any of the thousands of credit card and frequent flyer threads/posts on OzBargain or Facebook and you will see the same pattern over and over and over again:
1. A person attains ~100,000-200,000 Qantas points through flying and credit cards bonuses.
2. That person searches for a luxury getaway (ie they bought into the hype) and realises that they cannot find reward seats for their desired time/destination. They post their frustration about it.
3. Many replies saying flight redemptions are hopeless and to cash out for gift cards or products instead.
4. The original poster resigns themselves to that option and starts to go for gift cards/products into the future (ie success for Qantas; they bought into the loyalty program on the hype and are now switched over to high margin redemptions).

Qantas does not make money on selling the product. There are two transactions. One where they get money when they sell points. And one where they spend money to buy the product the FF member redeems on. There is obviously a good margin on the toaster - perhaps they double their money by selling the point for 1c and offering the FF member 0.5c value. But they make far more on selling flights on their own metal. I don't have data to indicate the cost to QF of redemptions on other carriers, but I expect it would be roughly in line with - or cheaper than - toasters.

I suspect the typical FF member might explore redemptions on premium cabins (though I doubt it) and redeem either on QF shorthaul economy seats (for which availability is generally good) or gift cards.

 

[kctt]

All evidence is to the contrary. They want to sell you on the idea of being able to redeem for luxury seats, but are oriented to making the reality as difficult as possible so that you will go for a higher margin redemption (or let the points expire).

To be honest booking on website is not that difficult for Economy. Economy reward is still very good use of points.
For Business, main difficulty is availability. To make it worse, we want to take advantage of as many destinations and difficult places to reach as possible. I'm quite skilled in computer stuff so it can be different for people not using computer 8 hours a day.
The strict limit of 6 flights is one annoying thing. Increasing that limit should reduce significant amount of calls.
Do not allow user to make change to OWA booking online means every owa redemption will require multiple phone calls.
I don't know if technically it's not possible for end user to change. Just run cost of new flight vs old flight, calculate tax difference, let user pay and spit out new itinerary. If I can search a new trip online and it matches all owa rules, returns tax then it should be possible to calculate difference, reserve seat and send off to ticketing team for final review and issue ticket.

 

[kctt]

6th call to Fiji update: I got a patient agent. She waited for Support, Support cannot resolve issue, transfer her to Ticketing team, Ticketing team managed to add flight with new date in, Ticket team transferred her back to Support to do pricing. Upon checking trip in my account, i found new flight has correct date but wrong time. I asked her to change to flight to desired flight time. She worked with Support and they managed to update the flight to desired flight time. Support worked out tax difference, she took my credit card and I got charged some more money. She said ticket will be issued in 24-48 hours.
Total 4.5 hours on call. In queue about 35 minutes. Majority of time was on hold.
At one point she asked if she can hang up and call me back when she got update from Support. I told her previous 5 agents promised call back but noone called back.
It's still a wonder how previous 4 call centre agents could not get re-price and 1st support in 6th call could not do re-price but ticket team can change flight and 2nd support person can generate new tax.
From reading this thread, once I got charged new tax, it's like my new trip is safe to have new ticket issued?

 

[vetrade]

All evidence is to the contrary. They want to sell you on the idea of being able to redeem for luxury seats, but are oriented to making the reality as difficult as possible so that you will go for a higher margin redemption (or let the points expire).

Read any of the thousands of credit card and frequent flyer threads/posts on OzBargain or Facebook and you will see the same pattern over and over and over again:
1. A person attains ~100,000-200,000 Qantas points through flying and credit cards bonuses.
2. That person searches for a luxury getaway (ie they bought into the hype) and realises that they cannot find reward seats for their desired time/destination. They post their frustration about it.
3. Many replies saying flight redemptions are hopeless and to cash out for gift cards or products instead.
4. The original poster resigns themselves to that option and starts to go for gift cards/products into the future (ie success for Qantas; they bought into the loyalty program on the hype and are now switched over to high margin redemptions).

Your perspective is too narrow and, perhaps unwittingly, you have actually produced data which proves my point, i.e., I think you are failing to see the "big picture".

To explain, the success of all reward schemes relies on growing the number of participants and encouraging their ongoing participation. Factors which would discourage people from joining a reward scheme or which encourage existing members to abandon the pursuit of reward points, such as the scenario you subscribe to, would fly in the face of what is a universally accepted concept among the people who manage these schemes - with great success, I might add.

My final comment on the matter (as this discussion is already way OT) is to take issue with your proposition that people can't find a suitable flight redemption for 100,000 - 200,000 points. It's not that hard to find business class redemptions to Noosa or Cairns etc with that number of points so I am bemused that you suggest people would prefer to stay at home with their new over-priced toaster instead.

 

[Mr H]

6th call to Fiji update: I got a patient agent. She waited for Support, Support cannot resolve issue, transfer her to Ticketing team, Ticketing team managed to add flight with new date in, Ticket team transferred her back to Support to do pricing. Upon checking trip in my account, i found new flight has correct date but wrong time. I asked her to change to flight to desired flight time. She worked with Support and they managed to update the flight to desired flight time. Support worked out tax difference, she took my credit card and I got charged some more money. She said ticket will be issued in 24-48 hours.
Total 4.5 hours on call. In queue about 35 minutes. Majority of time was on hold.
At one point she asked if she can hang up and call me back when she got update from Support. I told her previous 5 agents promised call back but noone called back.
It's still a wonder how previous 4 call centre agents could not get re-price and 1st support in 6th call could not do re-price but ticket team can change flight and 2nd support person can generate new tax.
From reading this thread, once I got charged new tax, it's like my new trip is safe to have new ticket issued?

You are only out of the woods when the itinerary is ticketed, not when payment is made. Also, check that the payment has been made. I had one agent make up an amount and pretended to take a payment just to get me off the line.

 

[Danger]

I've lost my Royal Air Maroc seat because of Qantas's delay in ticketing.

Weeks ago I secured a seat in Y. Last week a seat opened in J. I phoned to book it and spoke with an onshore agent who informed me of the additional taxes and points and sent the ticket off. Today I wake up to an alert from EF advising the seat I'd chosen in J had suddenly become available. I logged into my QF account and my entire booking had completely disappeared. I now don't have a seat anywhere on the plane and Y and J are both no longer available for redemptions. Qantas has put in a request to AT to have the seat reinstated.

This didn't end well ... for QF.

After 24 hours, AT hadn't responded to QF's email requesting the ticket be reinstated. How is there not a specialised oneworld team for these sorts of mistakes? As we know from experience, QF needs its own dedicated direct dial red phone for asking partners to reinstate reservations it's been too lazy to ticket in time.

At this point, I was minutes from departing Australia so I pushed the QF HBA agent I was speaking with to fix it, now. He escalated to a supervisor and the call dropped but he did call back (it seems only QF HBA and AKL staff have the right to make outgoing calls). I was told QF would cover the cost of a replacement revenue ticket and in return would keep the points and taxes I'd paid. The complication was QF can't issue tickets ex-Morocco, so I was asked to open my own wallet! I was literally walking to the gate to depart Australia, booking the AT flight on my phone but I got a confirmed booking. The agent created a customer care case for me to reply to with the receipt and credit card statement.

A few hours later, I land at my destination and guess what? My original AT points booking had been reinstated. Qantas clearly hadn't managed the process well and I was now double-booked, in two separate cabins, on the exact same flight. I cancelled the QF points booking. A few days later, the points and taxes for that booking - the same points and taxes QF said it would keep - were refunded to me.

Four days after making the reservation, the international transaction (in euros) settled on my credit card so I sent a statement excerpt to QF by replying to the customer care email, along with my bank details for reimbursement. Can you guess what happened? I know you can. Nothing! A month passes and donuts so I join the QF phone circle of hell. I'm eventually told someone didn't do something or other and that's why the refund hadn't been processed but the HBA agent was onto it and said the money would be back in my account in a week or so.

But it didn't end there. The next day the agent calls me back to say his supervisor had looked into the case and, low and behold, "It seems we made a mistake" in that QF wrongly refunded the points and taxes (the ones it said it would keep). The agent said they'd need to be recouped. I was having none of it, explaining to the agent the cough show that had transpired and how it should never have happened in the first place. He said he would pass it to his supervisor and it would be his decision. A few hours later he calls back: My refund will be processed in full and no points would be claimed back.

The reimbursement - all $800+ of it - landed in my account about a week ago.

 

[Lynda2475]

They already do this - if you have a Platinum number you go through to Hobart or Auckland.

Unfortunately even that is not true all the time anymore, although they seem to be the only ones who have been able to get Hobart some of the time recently.

On the plus side requesting e-ticket recipt via Finnair (link below) is now giving me details per the amadeus dump that QF sent me, even though downloading the same from QF still has older e-ticket number.

Order your e-ticket receipt

You can use this form to order your e-ticket receipt. If the reservation is no longer active, please contact our customer service.

www.finnair.com

Ive been keeping a spreadsheet (as well as all the emails) tracking changes, reason (me or airline) and e-ticket number changes. Hoping everything sticks now.

 

[straitman]

[mod hat] Whilst this chit chat is actually quite interesting it is (once again) off the topic at hand and really shouldn't be in this thread.

ie let's get back to the topic folks or posts will be deleted and people will lose their access to the thread.

[/mod hat]