Qantas BAD refund policy

[siri]

It depends on the fare rules. This was a cancellation and a rebooking; if the fare rules don't specify that the fare value can be used to another ticket ( in the way that QF domestic rules do ), then it needs to be cancelled and refunded ( minus any cancellation fees if appropriate ) and a new ticket purchased

Dave

This ticket is NOT cancelled...All I asked was to add Tokyo and Qantas canceled it and re issued it. BTW, this is business class published fare..so it is not a cut price ticket.

I am quite disturbed by some compliant comments from some members here since I am a high value Qantas customer that travel almost every week internationaly and as some suggested, WHY NOT qantas charge the extra since all I was doing was adding a city that is next to Seoul any way.

Whole idea of paying through charge card is to add flexibility and electronic payments are fast and reliable EXCEPT for qantas.

 

[one9]

Remember under the trade practices act, a company (eg Qantas) do not have to provide a refund if you cancel the service (change of mind cancellation).

In the instance of a refundable ticket, Qantas is the one who offers a refund on the ticket and as such can set their own terms in relation to the actioning of the refund. As long as they provide any details that you should know to you before you purchase (eg. in the terms and conditions), then they can set the refund conditions as they see fit.

You as the customer should have fully read and understood the conditions before purchasing. And if you don't like the conditions, then no one is forcing you to buy the ticket in the first place.

 

[NM]

This ticket is NOT cancelled...All I asked was to add Tokyo and Qantas cancelled it and re issued it. BTW, this is business class published fare..so it is not a cut price ticket.

That may be true, but what were the fare rules for the originally purchased fare? Just because its a published business class fare does not mean the fare rules permit such route modifications. It may well be full refundable, but not be able to have the fare paid used towards a different ticket.

Many point-to-point one-way or return fares do not have provision in the rules for ticket re-issue. So the only option is for the ticket to be cancelled, refunded and a new ticket issued.

It seems that the fully refundable tickets must be refunded and there is generally no penalty to do so. This is the case with fares such as JRT or JOW.

NO PENALTIES. NORMAL REFUND PROCEDURES APPLY

So no comment about being able to use as credit towards a fare of equal or higher value.

Some restricted fare types (such as NLPXB) do not permit refunds, but do allow:

NOTE - AT ANY TIME THIS FARE MAY BE USED AS CREDIT TOWARD PAYMENT OF ANY FARE OF EQUAL OR HIGHER VALUE ASSESSED FROM POINT OF ORIGIN PROVIDED THE CONDITIONS OF THE NEW FARE HAVE BEEN MET. A FEE OF AUD100.00 APPLIES AT THE TIME OF EXCHANGE. IF THE UPGRADED TICKET IS SUBSEQUENTLY CANCELLED THE ORIGINAL REFUND PENALTY WILL BE RETAINED BY THE AIRLINE.

As much as it would be nice to have them apply the JRT fare paid as credit towards another ticket, they are in fact applying the fare rules as they are published. So we would need a change to the fare rules to have it applied differently.

I am not saying I like QF's policy (I have been caught twice with large value tickets to be cancelled and a new ticket purchased), but I can't complain when they are correctly applying the published fare rules for the fare I have purchased.

If you need the ability to re-issue a ticket using a different routing without the need to cancel, refund and re-purchase, then make sure you purchase a fare type that includes that provision.

 

[Dave Noble]

This ticket is NOT cancelled...All I asked was to add Tokyo and Qantas canceled it and re issued it. BTW, this is business class published fare..so it is not a cut price ticket.

I am quite disturbed by some compliant comments from some members here since I am a high value Qantas customer that travel almost every week internationaly and as some suggested, WHY NOT qantas charge the extra since all I was doing was adding a city that is next to Seoul any way.

Whole idea of paying through charge card is to add flexibility and electronic payments are fast and reliable EXCEPT for qantas.

You had a return ticket to 1 destination but you then decided that you wanted to go somewhere else. That is different to "adding Tokyo". You could have purchased a separate ticket from one of the points on your itinery to Tokyo separately which would have avoided having to cancel and rebook

You posted about the issue and have received replies regarding that it is normal procedure ( not just for QF but other airlines too) ; whether you are a "high value customer" or not, the fare rules apply uniformly. Perhaps you might find the IATA fares more useful to your need since they pretty much are based on the miles travelled and you may well have been just able to reroute the journey

Dave

 

[acampbel]

... whether you are a "high value customer" or not, the fare rules apply uniformly. ...

Yes Dave - the same rules should apply to everyone. I agree.

Yes Dave - somewhere buried in the fine print will be Ts & Cs about whether the particular airfare can be amended or needs to be cancelled. There could very well be good reasons for this ... I just don't know.

No Dave - you are burying the main point of the thread with pedantry. Siri's argument is that he wanted to add to an existing itinerary. Qantas deem that to be a cancellation and re-booking - which I think Siri doesn't really care about. Qantas immediately charged his Amex with the new airfare - which I'm sure Siri would agree is reasonable. Qantas did not immediately refund the previous airfare, and will in fact take many weeks (if not months) to reverse the transaction - this is what Siri finds unacceptable.

Qantas have the capacity to refund the original amount immediately, but choose not to. As mentioned before this may have something to do with discouraging disruptive consumer behaviour, but the primary reason is to hang on to Siri's money for as long as possible - regardless of any financial hardship or penalty this imposes.

Qantas are not by any means alone in this sort of behaviour - but that does not make it "good policy" unless you are a Qantas bean counter.

I personally have about a 2-week "fuse" for these sorts of shenanigans, after which I will happily resort to ANY non-violent behaviour to achieve satisfaction.


Cheers,

Andrew

.

 

[one9]

... As mentioned before this may have something to do with discouraging disruptive consumer behaviour, but the primary reason is to hang on to Siri's money for as long as possible - regardless of any financial hardship or penalty this imposes....


.

Whilst I think you can speculate on the reason for the delay in refunding, I do not think you have the authority to state the primary reason. No one knows this for sure unless you are part of Qantas management.

In the organisation I work for, we take around two weeks to refund. The main reason for this is to ensure appropriate safeguards are followed. It is very difficult for employees to steal money by charging credit cards. Because all the money goes into the companies bank accounts. But with refunds, more safeguards need to be put in place. In our organisation, often the manager will skim through pending refunds and ask the employee who entered the refund request for more information. Every two weeks, the employee in accounts will go through and process the refunds. This saves time, as she does them in batches. Usually three different staff will have looked at the refund before it is processed: the employee who entered the refund request, a manager or supervisor and the accounts person.

Many businesses have been defrauded with credit card refunding. If Qantas gave consultants authority to refund credit cards, they could refund fares that are non refundable, they may be able to change the credit card numbers to refund to their friends credit cards etc.

 

[SeatBackForward]

If Qantas gave consultants authority to refund credit cards, they could ...

Isn't outsourcing wonderful :~

 

[Yada Yada]

Many businesses have been defrauded with credit card refunding. If Qantas gave consultants authority to refund credit cards, they could refund fares that are non refundable, they may be able to change the credit card numbers to refund to their friends credit cards etc.

I tend to agree with Andrew - Qantas make people wait because they choose to and because they can. It would not be difficult to put procedures in place to make it possible to provide refunds quickly and easily. They just don't want to.

 

[Dave Noble]

Yes Dave - the same rules should apply to everyone. I agree.

Yes Dave - somewhere buried in the fine print will be Ts & Cs about whether the particular airfare can be amended or needs to be cancelled. There could very well be good reasons for this ... I just don't know.

No Dave - you are burying the main point of the thread with pedantry. Siri's argument is that he wanted to add to an existing itinerary. Qantas deem that to be a cancellation and re-booking - which I think Siri doesn't really care about. Qantas immediately charged his Amex with the new airfare - which I'm sure Siri would agree is reasonable. Qantas did not immediately refund the previous airfare, and will in fact take many weeks (if not months) to reverse the transaction - this is what Siri finds unacceptable.

Qantas have the capacity to refund the original amount immediately, but choose not to. As mentioned before this may have something to do with discouraging disruptive consumer behaviour, but the primary reason is to hang on to Siri's money for as long as possible - regardless of any financial hardship or penalty this imposes.

Qantas are not by any means alone in this sort of behaviour - but that does not make it "good policy" unless you are a Qantas bean counter.

I personally have about a 2-week "fuse" for these sorts of shenanigans, after which I will happily resort to ANY non-violent behaviour to achieve satisfaction.


Cheers,

Andrew

.

As pointed out, you have no knowledge about what procedures QF will go through processing the refund and are not in a position to declare their reasoning for the delay

How have you jumped from "it has taken a week and no refund" to "it will take many weeks ( and possibly months )" . Based on my experience with QF, I would expect that it will turn up in the next week , so around 2 weeks to be processed. Given that the new charges will not be due to be paid yet, I still fail to see the major issue. If it extended to the point where the person would be out of pocket by another 10K rather than 2K , I would agree that it was bad.

It isn't buried in the small print about cancelling/applying fares, it is quite clearly stated in the fare rules under PENALTY ; most refundable fares say "Normal refund procedures" which does require cancelling if the destination is changing. It is an exception for the penalty to allow the fare credit to be applied to another fare for international fares. Also, many QF fares have routing restrictions so going to Tokyo may well have not been in the permitted routing. Without knowing the fare basis, it is supposition

If he had purchased the fully flexible IATA fare, he may well have just been able to change his routing to include Tokyo without any issue and possibly had to pay an excess mileage surcharge for the additional miles travelled if it exceeded the MPM

Dave

 

[markis10]

Rules are rules, however customer service is another thing. A credit from a ticket refund can easily be used as a form of payment for another ticket, the only difference is a different record locator, with cheap fares the same record locator is used for the new issue.

How hard can it be, and you dont need to worry about safeguards etc if the ticket is in the same name as the original issue?

Constructive criticism is an art rarely practiced, yet very valuable to the smart business, and some of these posts should be taken with that spirit in mind!

 

[Yada Yada]

Rules are rules, however customer service is another thing. A credit from a ticket refund can easily be used as a form of payment for another ticket, the only difference is a different record locator, with cheap fares the same record locator is used for the new issue.

How hard can it be, and you dont need to worry about safeguards etc if the ticket is in the same name as the original issue?

Constructive criticism is an art rarely practiced, yet very valuable to the smart business, and some of these posts should be taken with that spirit in mind!

I think you've hit the nail right on the head, markis10.

 

[Dave Noble]

Rules are rules, however customer service is another thing. A credit from a ticket refund can easily be used as a form of payment for another ticket, the only difference is a different record locator, with cheap fares the same record locator is used for the new issue.

How hard can it be, and you dont need to worry about safeguards etc if the ticket is in the same name as the original issue?

Well, if the fare rules do not allow it, they do not allow it. The same procedures apply regardless of where purchased, whether with QF or if it had been done with BA or AA or EK etc. Maybe some travel agencies might take the risk and just take payment for the difference on the expectation of the refund coming through.

Dave

 

[serfty]

Every (and I mean every) time I have cancelled a booking I was advised by the Qantas Agent that the refund would take up to six weeks.

Most times, it takes 4-6 weeks once or twice it happened at about 1-2 weeks a couple of times 6-7 weeks and once 3 months!

Lessons here. Don't ring up until the 6 weeks has passed as the Agent can simply quote the "6 week rule", ring up at 6 1/2 weeks and you'll likely get more action.

For the 3 month Issue, I rang at 7 weeks and was told the refund had not been submitted in the first place; it still took several calls to get action. This type of thing would be an exception.

As to this 6 week thing being fair, IMO it's rather moot. This is simply what Qantas do! (I believe it's for the "discouraging disruptive consumer behaviour" reasons previously posted.)

So if you choose to use Qantas and cancel refundable bookings then be, 1), aware of this policy, & 2) prepared to deal with it.

 

[GDSman]

Not sure if this has been covered. The 'standard' industry refund process has always been 6-8 weeks. This is deemed as reasonable time for finance processing of transactions caught up in the unwieldy Bank Settlement Plan (BSP) clearing house. In truth it is more down to the highly manual nature of many refunds where checks have to be made against all carriers on the itinerary, pro-rations calculated, ticket T&Cs checked for different penalty clauses etc. Much of this function is outsourced by carriers to offshore data processing companies too which can add time. Not everything above applies to every ticket but manual T&C checking does - the system that airlines house their fares in, ATPCo, has not fully automated this particular category.
In practice, some tickets are simple, have few dependencies and should be processed more quickly, others are by their complexity a nightmare. None of this excuses carriers from good customer service or from prioritising premium fares or FF members, but it is the nature of the beast.

 

[JohnK]

I agree with Siri on this one. I cannot see any reason why Qantas cannot process the refund right away. If they are making a change then why not simply process both transactions at the same time? Seems lazy to me.

There is no administrative reason why money cannot be refunded immediately, unless off course QF or any other airline wishes to invest the money longer on the short term money market.

 

[one9]

There is no administrative reason why money cannot be refunded immediately, unless off course QF or any other airline wishes to invest the money longer on the short term money market.

Unless you know internal details of the Qantas billing system, then I doubt you can make such claim.

To be fair to Qantas, sometimes they don't charge your credit card until well after you have taken your flight. (I presume they may pre-authorise the funds). I have had flights charged around 3 weeks or more after my flight.

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

I have had QF refunds processed extremely quickly (as in under 24 hours).

 

[JohnK]

Unless you know internal details of the Qantas billing system, then I doubt you can make such claim.

A billing system is a billing system. I can't remember how many I have personally designed, programmed and/or supported.

I have had refunds from QF processed within 24 hours. All you have to do is ask nicely. It can be done and should be done most of the time.

Irrelevant to the refund issue but I am also paying interest from the time the charge has been made. You see I am one of these people that does not have an interest free period with credit card to avoid and I pay no yearly fee.

 

[Yada Yada]

Unless you know internal details of the Qantas billing system, then I doubt you can make such claim.

Actually I think he can. If QF can process a debit within minutes then they can also process a credit just as quickly. All it takes is implementation of a reliable system and procedures. We can only assume that QF don't want to change their current system. The reasons are probably dubious at best and provide bad customer service.

To be fair to Qantas, sometimes they don't charge your credit card until well after you have taken your flight. (I presume they may pre-authorise the funds). I have had flights charged around 3 weeks or more after my flight.

Really? I've never seen that happen for any ticket I've purchased.

 

[one9]

Really? I've never seen that happen for any ticket I've purchased.

My last ticket with Qantas was an award ticket for a return flight to Jakarta leaving on 15th July and returing 17th July.

The charge was billed to my Amex card on 24th July.

I remember a few years ago a Qantas flight was not charged until 2 months after the flight.

However usually it seems they charge before the flight.

As GDSman has pointed out there are many third parties involved once your ticket has been booked, such as the Bank Settlement Plan (BSP) clearing house. Proper process and agreements between parties with necessary safeguards do not always allow things to be instant.