Optus/Qantas points scheme failure

[Deleted member]

More on the saga …
First – thanks to all who posted above.
I took winchester’s excellent advice and wrote an email to QFF. All I received in response was a template reply saying essentially “ go ask Optus”
After several months, and taking the problem to the Telecommunications Ombudsman (TIO) and to the MD of Optus SMB I received a phone call from a Pinay (Sonya) who seemed to be actually working in the Optus “points” department. Finally I was in touch with the “nerve centre”
Sonya’s advice was that my account had not been awarded points because my Optus account name was in my business name and my QF FFlyer account was in my own name. She had no answer to the question: why did it take months of complaints to discover this?
Different account names ? Well that is no surprise surely? I changed from a personal to an SMB account at Optus years ago – to get a deal that suited me. A requirement was that the account changeover to a business name. Given that, I would guess that 99% of all SMB accounts would be in business names.
100% Of FFlyer accounts are in personal names - they have to be! So do 100% of SMB customers have the same glitch? It seems not, given member’s advice above.
Sonya’s suggested solution? To change my QFFF account over to my business name! how plain dumb. She just didn’t understand that ALL FF accounts have to be in a person’s name - I educated her as kindly as I could muster – explaining that FF records include personal phone numbers, passport details etc, so they must be in a person’s name, just as an airline ticket must also be.
Again: the Optus implementation, integration and training is proven to be sadly inadequate.
Aside: I now see on “My Optus” a web page that allows me to change the user name on my account. I am not going to touch it! Lest I disturb some workaround.
10 Jan 5:38pm Sonya leaves me a voice mail “everything is fine now” I have no idea what that means. I say that because over the last few months I have had been given similar assurances several times. If Sonya had explained some it workaround in detail then I would have felt more assured, but alas I missed her call and had no opportunity to ask detailed questions.
SO – I now have my $8.16 worth of points - all manually input. Let’s see over the next month if it starts to work automatically. Maybe by March we will know. I’m not holding my breath, but I am hoping that my tenacity on this issue will assist other FF members who are not as stupid as me – and don’t waste so much time for $10 p.a. worth of points.
Keep smiling
Gary

PM me , I will sell you some one path life insurance and you can have the points very quickly


If it doesn't matter if you win or lose.......How come they keep score?

 

[Deleted member]

Really?

From my point of view, used to use Vodafone, 3 and Optus..now I'm with Telstra, can not be happier.

Excellent 3G network, even in extreme conditions and areas. perfect for traveling domestically.

Home Internet has been very fast and reliable

Best part is when I ring up i get to speak to Australians most of the times..

I expect qff to team up with other 'premium' business as they are a 'premium' airline..

Optus is not one of those in my book

While I HATE Telstra , you are right. The benefits are in being able to actually get coverage , my original Optus experience was enough to convince me to stay away for ever


If it doesn't matter if you win or lose.......How come they keep score?

 

[mannej]

Really?

From my point of view, used to use Vodafone, 3 and Optus..now I'm with Telstra, can not be happier.

Excellent 3G network, even in extreme conditions and areas. perfect for traveling domestically.

Home Internet has been very fast and reliable

Best part is when I ring up i get to speak to Australians most of the times..

I expect qff to team up with other 'premium' business as they are a 'premium' airline..

Optus is not one of those in my book

In terms of the QP internet, Telstra failed with that one, so yes.

And yes they are better than Vodafone/3 in Australia.

 

[albatross710]

Thinking about the OP's original issue and the difficulties that Optus & Qantas have to deal with may be one of data quality. Collection and matching of the data and the interchanging that in the correct format could be the issue. Some member accounts are being credited while at the same time, others are getting no points. For instance:

QFF Number
Possible issue with leading zeros ie 0045678, 00045678, 45678. Optus members needed to update their profile with the number and Optus needs to have handled it correctly along the way.

Name matching:
This is the area that would be trickiest. Qantas want to match the membership name and the membership number to ensure that the points go to the correct account. How have both companies been storing names, how are Optus exporting them? For instance

Cathy Jones
Catherine Jones
Jones, Cathy
Jones Catherine Ms
Ms Catherine Jones

Unless someone got the C & K mixed up.

Kathy Jones
Kathryn Jones
Jones, Kathy A

Qantas could easily and justifiably reject many of these in the interests of retaining the integrity of their data (garbage in, garbage out)


Data Interchange
Each day, week or month Optus are passing a file to Qantas for posting into their database. Many of these sound like they are being posted correctly. At the end of each import I'll assume the Qantas provides Optus with feedback files, these records imported, these records not match. What would Optus do with the 1,000s or 1,000,000s of rejected entries? They may not be able to even match them back to the original source.

It sounds like Optus & Qantas may not have put enough resources at the front end into prevention. Optus needs to get its customers to update their names to be consistent with the Qantas names....but hang on....it costs money to change an account name and weren't they copied correctly from the ID provided at the time of commencing the account.

To me it sounds like a solvable problem, but it may not be cheap.

Alby

 

[GaryBne]

Thanks Alby for such a detailed and thoughtful post.
I guess I come back to my key points. Clearly, based on Alby’s explanation there are, and would always be, data matching issues. Issues that any IT project manager worth her/his salt would predict and plan for. And do test data runs?
There would have been months of planning before the Announcement and there were a few months post announcement and the opening of the scheme.
On another level – surely it’s just a case of linking a number (QF) with another number (Optus account number)? Cross matching names and addresses is overkill – esp. given the low value of the points (vs. say credit cards) Woolworths Points just match account numbers - no more is required.
My other key concern is how the problem was handled. As Alby points out the scale of the mismatch would have been reported. I guess –within the first few days of September – after registrations didn’t match, the scale of the problem would have been obvious.
The fact that after the scale of the problem was well known to QFF/ Optus IT staff , that remedies were not in place, and Customer service staff had no idea what to do to address complaints - is just plain poor management.

Based on this, and the complaints on other posts about so many restaurants not honouring QFF points - QFF management needs to tighten controls and protect their brand name.

cheers
Gary

 

[RosieGreenie]

I just now joined this forum for the sole purpose of seeking some help over a similar issue. Sorry if it's bad forum etiquette to revive a dead thread, but it seemed better than starting up a brand new one.

So I was an Optus customer for 2 years, as well as being a QFF member, and on the 13th of October last year I received the email from Qantas about linking the accounts for extra points. I did so immediately and immediately received an email reply:

...blah blah...
The accounts below have been added:

Account Number

Account Type

Account Status

[TABLE="width: 500"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 30"][/TD]
[TD]

xx_xx_xx_xx_xx

Added Account

Pending

xx_xx_xx_x

Added Prepaid Number

Pending

[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
If you have added any accounts that are now showing as pending validation, we may need to contact you within 14 days to validate them.

Optus never contacted me about validating. At the time I wasn't paying much attention to my FF points, and also very busy, and I forgot about following it up.

Fast forward to March this year, I moved to Canberra and (a) Optus couldn't supply any service to my new address so I had to find a new provider (I would have liked to stay on the deal I had), and (b) I started paying a bit more attention to my FF situation, and decided to figure out why I'd never received my points from Optus. I called them about it, but they claimed to have no record of my registration, and asked if I had an email about it. At the time I hadn't set up home internet and couldn't check. As soon as I got internet, I checked and found the above email. On the 28th of May I called Optus to figure out what had happened and to try and get my points. Every person I spoke to kept telling me that they had no record of my registration. I pointed out multiple times that I had the confirmation email and was happy to forward it to them, which was always met with confusion and fobbing me off to another department. At one point they fobbed me off to Qantas, who told me that, bizarrely, I had been "opted out" of the program on the 24th of October, 11 days after signing up.

I finally had a complaint lodged and waited for a response. On the 8th of June, I called to check on the progress of my complaint, and was told I would be contacted by a supervisor within 24 hours. This didn't happen, but to cut a long and frustrating story shorter, it wasn't until today that the supervisor/'customer relations executive' called to tell me that it was my own fault that my accounts hadn't been validated, and implied that Optus had a record of me being contacted for validation (highly unlikely since they repeatedly claimed earlier to not have any record of any of this issue). When I pointed this out she said she would get back to me, and that was a few hours ago.

Side note: After reading this thread it occurred to me that the first name my Optus account was billed to was a shortening of my full first name as registered with QFF (similar to Catherine/Cathy scenario), however Optus hasn't brought this up as a conflict so I'm not sure it's relevant.

It basically seems to me that Optus figures, hey, since I'm not a current or potential customer, it doesn't matter if they just try to bury the problem and send me on a pointless run-around. God knows how much time I've wasted dealing with them over this - but at a certain point, as someone earlier in the thread said, tenacity and stubbornness overrode the rational awareness that it's not going to be worth the effort.

Initially all I wanted to get out of this was the FF points I was owed, equal to the points I would have accumulated had Optus contacted me about validating my accounts. But after the lazy and inconsiderate way that Optus has treated me, and all of the time I've sunk into it, I'm now feeling like I deserve a bloody lot of bonus points, or a big credit to use in the future.

 

[GaryBne]

The FF points system, within Optus has been poorly planned, managed and implemented.

For example Optus Customer Service has really no idea and no training. The data matching issue seems huge, and where mismatches occur they don’t have the time/staff/incentive to fix it. They just drop you. It seems that no data testing was done and no one predicted that names may not match.

In fact – why match names at all? As an Optus Account holder if I want my points to go to QFF account number 12345 - that’s my prerogative. There is no name matching with Woolworths

Given that you seem to have good records ( dates etc) I suggest that you lay it all out in Chronological order and put a written complaint to the TIO Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman - TIO

This is the only way to fix your problem. Sadly. You will also be doing a service to the public: management may finally fix the problems for all.


... Thats how I fixed my problem in the end. Please come back and tell us how you went.

 

[NM]

So I was an Optus customer for 2 years, as well as being a QFF member, and on the 13th of October last year I received the email from Qantas about linking the accounts for extra points. I did so immediately and immediately received an email reply:

Hi RosieGreenie, and welcome to AFF. Since your issue is with Optus (rather than with Qantas), have you considered lodging a complaint with the Telecommunications Ombudsman? Not sure if they can get involved, but since it was an offer from the telco provider and you believe they have failed to deliver on that promise, it may be worth a try.

 

[whatmeworry]

It doesn't help that Optus recently fired a whole heap of backroom staff.

 

[RosieGreenie]

In fact – why match names at all? As an Optus Account holder if I want my points to go to QFF account number 12345 - that’s my prerogative. There is no name matching with Woolworths

Good point Gary.

I suggest that you lay it all out in Chronological order and put a written complaint to the TIO

Since your issue is with Optus (rather than with Qantas), have you considered lodging a complaint with the Telecommunications Ombudsman? Not sure if they can get involved, but since it was an offer from the telco provider and you believe they have failed to deliver on that promise, it may be worth a try.

I have considered that, but I thought I should give Optus a chance to fix the problem in a satisfactory way, now that it's been referred up the hierarchy, before writing to the Ombudsman. In the meantime, I googled some keywords to see if Optus had done this to any others (I guess it would strengthen my case), and came across this forum. I figured even if nobody here had any new ideas for me, it would be good to get it out in the public record for people to know about.

I will definitely report back once this progresses.

 

[Cynicor]

The word 'ombudsman' gets things moving amazingly quickly in the telecoms world. On Voda, you can probably get a free phone and free access for 12 months. I'm sure the ombudsman, or the threat of involvement, can help with your points matter.