Qantas Platinum One experiences?

[RichardMEL]

couple of comments:

1. The Briefing - have seen at least one other P1 who did not receive it
2. The fine print of the latest briefing referred to "The July Issue" and nothing the short timeframes for bookings of the offes it suggests to me they intend more frequent editions of this marketing tool(previous briefings were noted as Spring, Summer etc)
3. Poor treatment to ALH from the SST being suspicious of the member calling before having issues verifying the bonafides. I've never had that issue at all when calling (but I have called so rarely it's not funny).
4. Not surprised at the privacy cough wanting the 11 y.o. on the phone. it's like common sense goes out the window in the name of "privacy" and "we can only deal with the account holder" cough. very annoying
5. I requalified for P1 a month or so back. No "welcome back" phone call, but it seems consistent to me.. as this is my 5th year.. I received a call in my 2nd year and 4th year. Must be an evens thing... or I am just not valuable enough LOL (I don't really care either way tbh).. just another example of QF's "inconsistent consistency" at work

 

[ALH]

Very sad situation. I also assume she doesn't realise the P1 phone number is displayed on your FF profile as soon as you qualify?

Yep. That’s why I used that phone number.

 

[kermatu]

ALH - your story is very disturbing. Such poor behavior.

Your comment about not flying QF since then highlights another failing of the whole system too. How can QF not want to get in touch with someone who flies enough to be top tier one year and then stop flying / have no forward bookings with the airline altogether - just to find out why and try and entice them back?

 

[kermatu]

2. The fine print of the latest briefing referred to "The July Issue" and nothing the short timeframes for bookings of the offes it suggests to me they intend more frequent editions of this marketing tool(previous briefings were noted as Spring, Summer etc)

Good pickup. I hope that's the case. More frequent offers, even if modest, would be good.

4. Not surprised at the privacy cough wanting the 11 y.o. on the phone. it's like common sense goes out the window in the name of "privacy" and "we can only deal with the account holder" cough. very annoying

I'm surprised about an 11 year old - that seems crazy. I sort out travel and account management for a couple of elderly relatives and am able to do so via the P1 team and general call centres without any issue (though for certainly one of them he gave an authorization to QF that I can act on his behalf so that's recorded in his account).

5. I requalified for P1 a month or so back. No "welcome back" phone call, but it seems consistent to me.. as this is my 5th year.. I received a call in my 2nd year and 4th year. Must be an evens thing... or I am just not valuable enough LOL (I don't really care either way tbh).. just another example of QF's "inconsistent consistency" at work

A welcome back phone call itself is pointless -- but what a great opportunity to use a call to ask for some feedback or options to personalize your next membership year. Not how they roll, I s'pose. Did you get a new pack though?

 

[calmelb]

Given your age, have you considered moving your spend to a FFP which offers LTP? As a fellow AFFer in their 20s, albeit some years older than you, I'm hoping to get a good 40+ years out of LTG, which I should hit by 32 or 33 if I continue my current travel patterns

Right now at least I’m almost at LTG so I don’t want to move away yet. Aim to have it before 25 or so (quite scary). Plus at least at the moment all my flights are booked through QF and I fly them Domestically too. Maybe once I get LTG I’ll start finding a *Alliance program with LTG and get it with them. Best of both alliances

Even though QF sometimes are terrible (look above at the treatment of a newly qualified P1) I do enjoy flying on them and on the ground (in Melbourne int anyway) the staff are wonderful. Domestic lounge experiences haven’t been great given my age (things like do I have ID to prove that it’s my qantas card and not my dads)

 

[calmelb]

I dialed from my mobile which is the only phone number on my profile, introduced myself and quoted my own P1 QFF number.

I haven’t flown with Qantas since and have booked my trip to Europe next year on CX!

I could easily maintain P1 next year with trips I have planned, however, I think I’ve had enough!

After a pm from another BNE P1 member, it’s definately a “boys club” problem. My profile has Rugby as my main interest

I have sent an email.

I’ve seen the ‘boys’ club thing happen before. When travelling with my parents I’ve noticed there’s a distinct hierarchy of who the status belongs to. From my dad to me to my mum. It’s still one of the old things about this industry where the father goes off to work all day and the mother stays at home

 

[juddles]

I’ll start finding a *Alliance program with LTG and get it with them. Best of both alliances...

Out of interest, does anyone know of a star alliance airline that offers this? I am with Avianca and they have such a thing, but one of the many requirements is reaching 60 years of age

("Cenit" program - 1,000,000 qualifying miles flown, 15 years active membership, and 60 years of age)

 

[Matt_01]

Although I have been critical of the program the other day I did get a surprise, post may be a bit long and as @RichardMEL has no issues with dissertations I will post one , no offence intended. What I thought was pretty simple booking may not have been.

It all begins with a quick and not a well thought through plan to go to Harbin and Sapporo for the ice festivals next year. In Mid Feb this year I booked J rewards for MrsM and Miss MissM all on QF except the internal China flight which was MU. All seemed normal, ticket issued, email received, fees and taxes paid.

My flights, revenue, were booked within 1-2 days of their booking. I will not go through all the details however my booking took few calls to reservations/ SST and around 10 weeks to ticket. When my flight was ticketed I was informed by reservations that the only way it could be ticketed was for the PVG-HRB sector to be on a MU flight no, rather than the codeshare it also had to be in Y not J, apparently something to do with the QF-MU agreement. Of course I enquired why the reward flights ticketed and the revenue would not. I was feed some waffle which seemed to make sense but I did not believe, annoying yes, but more important to be on the same flights as MrsM and MissM so Y it was agreed, ticket now issued.

In mid June I received an update from QF via I assumed it was flight time changes or worse. However no changes or cancellations, better still I am in J on the MU flight, good I thought we are now all in the same cabin.

A couple of days back I received another email update for the reward flights, the only thing I noticed was that the MU sector now had allocated seating and all selected QF seating had changed. A day later I received a call from SST and this is the when things became interesting.

Apparently the reward bookings had been had been confirmed and issued by QF but the reward PVG-HRB flight and not been confirmed from MU. I was advised that there are a few glitches in ITS when it comes to QF and MU code shares that are being worked through. I work in IT and ‘being worked through’ means we know it's broken and will fix manually and not tell the customer. The agent informed me that behind the scenes SST had been following up with MU to ensure reward flights were ticketed correctly. She then went on to explain that a new booking had been created (a new PNR, I did not notice that) and issued correctly and the seating that I assumed was done by MU was requested by SST to ensure we were seated together.

When I read on this site how people get stranded, run into flight issues, are confirmed on flights that don’t exist, blame carriers, I normally assume that they are just novices and are venting as they most likely did not do the appropriate checks. I now have a bit more empathy for these travellers.

I am only assuming and questioning if I was a NB, PS etc would QF have followed through with this level of diligence, I suggest not. As I had a ticket I would have assumed that everything was in order and maybe on arrival in PVG may have run into issues. Just speculation.

So does P1 have value, in my opinion it does and anything that SST does to make MrsM, MissM or My travel easier it is ok in my book. The P1 team and their response make problems go away during travel is one thing, this proactive approach to deal with problem before they may arise is big plus.

Invites to events, domestic upgrades, personal greetings and the odd G&T or wine from J are all nice but dealing with problems or potential problems are far more valuable.

I may be less critical of the program moving forward.

 

[juddles]

........ post may be a bit long and as @RichardMEL has no issues with dissertations I will post one , .....

Actually Matt, I love long posts. A frustration for me when relaxing cruising AFF is the need to constantly scroll down through lots of short posts - compounded at this moment with a mouse whose scroll button I have broken (due to AFF). So now to scroll down I have to either put down my bourbon or my cigarette - not happy.

Long, thought out, well structured posts are always a pleasure to read.

 

[RichardMEL]

Actually Matt, I love long posts. A frustration for me when relaxing cruising AFF is the need to constantly scroll down through lots of short posts - compounded at this moment with a mouse whose scroll button I have broken (due to AFF). So now to scroll down I have to either put down my bourbon or my cigarette - not happy.

Long, thought out, well structured posts are always a pleasure to read.

so my posts don't qualify under these criteria!!!

(so this is a short response !)

 

[RichardMEL]

Out of interest, does anyone know of a star alliance airline that offers this? I am with Avianca and they have such a thing, but one of the many requirements is reaching 60 years of age

("Cenit" program - 1,000,000 qualifying miles flown, 15 years active membership, and 60 years of age)

United provides this at their 1m mile point (like AA) for Life UA Gold (what used to be called Premier Executive) level. at 2m miles it's Life Plat, and 3m it's life 1K I believe. All of these confer *G status. I am inching there and should make it in 2-3 years at my current rate (then I can ditch them lol).

Incidently a few years back when UA and CO combined programs they did a one off recalculation that included Star Alliance flying as qualifying miles for the lifetime status which gave me a brilliant boost towards the goal I must admit. Since then it's been basically UA metal only base (not inc bonuses, so just flown) miles that qualify, so I've slowed down as there's only so much UA service I can handle in a year

anyway so yes there is Life *G. I think maybe LH may also have a life level, but I'm not 100% on that. There may evn be some other smaller members that confer lifetime status, but I'm not aware of them. Maybe someone else knows.

 

[RichardMEL]

Matrt, great story and example of proactive SST intevention to assist which is fantastic to hear about and I'm glad it's worked out for you FINALLY after pain.

I think we hilight here the issues, mostly poor or inconsistent, we have with P1 (and QF in general) but when I think about it truly, I reckon 95% or more of my QF flights and interactions go boringly smoothly and as such the SST and all that hasn't been required. That doesn't mean they have no value, it means QF, in general, do a pretty good job at their core thing (taking us from A to B).

We (collectively) often want to do more unusual things, use partners and stuff and probably uncover more "glitches" than the average Joesephine. Of course, there shouldn't BE any of these "gotchyas" but well.. we all know how many there are.. some get fixed.. most don't and we work with them when we know about them.

Your story is a great example of where the status has paid off n terms of service. For me, it's been getting a F seat released with short notice and zero trouble.

And really, when my biggest P1 concern right now is having to deal with Sendle before the end of the year, it's probably going OK.. even though I agree with everyone that P1 could offer so much more in terms of tangible benefits (a la GGL).


(and no offence taken, I had a giggle )

 

[RichardMEL]

Just occured to me.. You know what would be awesome (so would never happen!) si that say a customer was P1 for x years, say 8 or 10 or something, or amassed x SC's over however many years (say 20,000 or whatever) that QF could confer LTP or something like that.

OK I'll go back to my corner now

 

[kermatu]

Just occured to me.. You know what would be awesome (so would never happen!) si that say a customer was P1 for x years, say 8 or 10 or something, or amassed x SC's over however many years (say 20,000 or whatever) that QF could confer LTP or something like that.

OK I'll go back to my corner now

I made this suggestion upthread and in the P1 survey back in February:

- Multiple years as a P1 recognised through a lifetime platinum status. I said 10 years would be a fair number.

 

[Ivan Neville]

Just occured to me.. You know what would be awesome (so would never happen!) si that say a customer was P1 for x years, say 8 or 10 or something, or amassed x SC's over however many years (say 20,000 or whatever) that QF could confer LTP or something like that.

OK I'll go back to my corner now

I have just clicked past 95k lifetime SCs and they haven't offered me anything

 

[kermatu]

I have just clicked past 95k lifetime SCs and they haven't offered me anything

Pfft. Get back to us when you hit 200,000.

 

[GoldCanyon340]

Pfft. Get back to us when you hit 200,000.

Yep. You might get a free lounge pass at 200k!

 

[GoldCanyon340]

Another SST anecdote. I’m in London now after departing SYD at the weekend. Got my call from the F host as usual but forgot to ask about delaying my chauffeur drive pick up in London so I could visit the ArrivAAls Lounge (was having lunch at the time with Mrs 340). Rocked up at SYD F front desk the next day and asked about changing the time to be told that wasn’t possible, but of course I know it is.

In my opinion that’s not acceptable for a no status F pax, let alone an F/P1.

Sat down in the restaurant (great confit duck leg by the way), emailed the SST and within 10 minutes they’ve called back to say “no problem, we’ll contact the car operator and confirm with you by email by the time you reach Singapore.”

Of course it all went smoothly after that and had a call from the driver while in the ‘fast track’ immigration line at T3.

You can’t fault service recovery like that.

 

[juddles]

As much as we can often knock Qantas and even P1, the day I lose it I will hurt.

 

[Matt_01]

..... but when I think about it truly, I reckon 95% or more of my QF flights and interactions go boringly smoothly and as such the SST and all that hasn't been required......

We (collectively) often want to do more unusual things, use partners and stuff and probably uncover more "glitches" than the average Joesephine.

Tend to agree with Richard on the trouble free flights and honestly the amount to times I have had serious disruptions is minimal and only occasionally need to ring SST. In saying that what I may consider minimal may be vastly different to the once, twice or quarterly year traveller.

“Collectively” yes we may go to many different places, code shares etc. I must be missing out, most of my travel are to the usual business locations across Asia, US and EU/UK and generally boring point to point with QF, EK (pretty bullet proof) with a healthy mix of VA and SQ.