Qantas Call Centre Long Wait Times

My understanding (from unofficial sources) is that there is a pool of priority phone numbers that airport staff give to passengers which rotates every few weeks.

I will attempt to publish the currently active number(s) in this post:

1300 304 318
1300 659 161
1300 025 396
1300 659 116

1300 024 715
1300 025 390
1300 659 115
1300 659 134
1300 659 502

 

[Scr77]

Called the USA number twice today. First time I didn’t enter FF# and waited 30 minutes before hanging up. Called straight back and entered bronze FF# and call was answered immediately. It was 3am east coast Oz time And call went to South Africa.

 

[Peasant]

This is all sounding very promising, long may it continue!

After the spate of frustrations all my upcoming travel is on VA and SQ, so I don't have a reason to test it out for myself, but let's hope the improvement is sustained and that lessons have been learned.

 

[am0985]

I don't understand how they fixed it to this degree so quickly. Assuming/hoping things hold.

I mean...good! But was it this hard to fix it much sooner than they did?

 

[encryptededdy]

I wonder if Qantas has stopped changing large blocks of flights every few days... I have quite a few domestic bookings for the next few months and I swear I was getting at least one change notification email a week, but they all stopped recently.

Also looking online I'm still seeing people complain about multi-hour hold times on social media from the past few days. Did everyone in this thread with impressively short hold times over the last few days all enter their QFF number? Based on the one experience by @Scr77 I wonder if Qantas has re-jiggled their phone system to put a lot of priority on frequent flyer calls (even if it's just bronze).

 

[Must...Fly!]

Maybe they offered unlimited overtime and considered the cost worthy of keeping themselves off the front pages? Combined with Easter so less callers and no one in scheduling or revenue actioning flight schedule changes?

 

[Scr77]

I wonder if a lot of people were calling about problems with Easter flights and now that has passed?

 

[SydneySwan]

Or maybe people have stopped booking Qantas flights .....................?

 

[TheInsider]

Or maybe people have stopped booking Qantas flights .....................?

Yeah, no....

 

[N860CR]

45 minute wait tonight before ringing and being disconnected by the agent upon answering. Alas, it was a short lived improvement.

 

[bookworm]

I just called through as bronze and got through instantaneously!

I can attest to same.
Called on Friday morning, immediate pickup.
As ticket was not issued after 24 hours, called again Saturday morning, immediate pickup again.
I nearly fell off my chair.

Whats more , flights were available!
I had been trying the entire week since last Monday, wait times were atrocious. Thee agents insisted those flights were not available, yet showed up on my side. Everyday they would tell me their system had live updates. When I asked how those flights were not being updated the whole week, I was told twice they would call back and never did. A third time I was placed on hold and cut off after a long wait.

On Thursday , after another long wait they picked up. They had given wrong flights the day before. Agent was about to end her shift and promised to call back the next morning. Surprise! Called back promptly. As mentioned above I had already called on Friday and they answered immedirately.

 

[justinbrett]

Called at 0930 this morning. No queue, was answered instantly.

 

[jeza]

There is a change.org petition circulating with a demand that QF improve its customer service, including the call centre debacle.

Demand better Customer Service response from Qantas​

The petition has been going for a few weeks, I signed in late March. Looked at it last week & it was in the lowish 2000's from memory so it's really taken off to get to over 17000 post Easter.

 

[love_the_life]

Called at 1pm yesterday - straight through. Checked which call centre it was - Suva. Agent seemed quite knowledgeable and tried to call ticketing to issue the eTicket but they were not answering. She emailed them and the ticket arrived this morning. I had to call again yesterday later just to check as I received another BPAY must be paid email (yeah have learnt the lesson - no BPAY in future) and that agent said she could see that they ticketing had been emailed. Pretty good service all round (except for the long wait for original ticketing). Changed the return flight on line as soon as I got the ticket and new eTicket arrived in my inbox a few minutes later.

 

[only4tehlulz]

Called at 1pm yesterday - straight through. Checked which call centre it was - Suva. Agent seemed quite knowledgeable and tried to call ticketing to issue the eTicket but they were not answering. She emailed them and the ticket arrived this morning. I had to call again yesterday later just to check as I received another BPAY must be paid email (yeah have learnt the lesson - no BPAY in future) and that agent said she could see that they ticketing had been emailed. Pretty good service all round (except for the long wait for original ticketing). Changed the return flight on line as soon as I got the ticket and new eTicket arrived in my inbox a few minutes later.

Out of curiosity @love_the_life when is your flight? I have been trying to get them to issue a ticket and (among their many replies) the answer I get is that the flights are further away and they are prioritising earlier tickets. This has been going on for more than a week - or three weeks depending on how we count

 

[dylarr]

Out of curiosity @love_the_life when is your flight? I have been trying to get them to issue a ticket and (among their many replies) the answer I get is that the flights are further away and they are prioritising earlier tickets. This has been going on for more than a week - or three weeks depending on how we count

Are you travelling on partner airlines or all QF? If partner airlines, tell the agent that you spoke to the other airline and they advised that your booking would be cancelled if not immediately ticketed and they should be able to prioritise it.

 

[AstroBBoy]

I was told by one consultant that they could not contact ticketing directly anymore, I told them that I was not blaming them personally but I needed to talk to their supervisor as I needed it sorted right now. They went to get the supervisor and magically they were able to contact ticketing for me.

 

[MooTime]

So am I correct in thinking that booking a Qantas Reward seat on another One World carrier, you have to call the contact centre, wait an hour or 3 on hold, push your case to have it ticketed right away or other carrier may cancel your ticket, even escalate it to a higher manager?

My goodness what a smooth process QF.

Didn't I read previously from the insider that the ticketing is 99% robotic process anyway.

 

[only4tehlulz]

Are you travelling on partner airlines or all QF? If partner airlines, tell the agent that you spoke to the other airline and they advised that your booking would be cancelled if not immediately ticketed and they should be able to prioritise it.

It is a QF booking (all QF flights) but combination of QF and EK flights

 

[Lynda2475]

So am I correct in thinking that booking a Qantas Reward seat on another One World carrier, you have to call the contact centre, wait an hour or 3 on hold, push your case to have it ticketed right away or other carrier may cancel your ticket, even escalate it to a higher manager?

Not typically, if its the initial booking and completed online ticketing pretty much happens right away. The complexity comes when you need to make a change to an existing booking that then needs to be reticketed.

 

[encryptededdy]

So am I correct in thinking that booking a Qantas Reward seat on another One World carrier, you have to call the contact centre, wait an hour or 3 on hold, push your case to have it ticketed right away or other carrier may cancel your ticket, even escalate it to a higher manager?

My goodness what a smooth process QF.

Didn't I read previously from the insider that the ticketing is 99% robotic process anyway.

It works most of the time, but will sometimes fail, even if it's a fresh booking (I've reported earlier they mis-charged the taxes causing the booking to not ticket, which is dumb because it's a brand new booking so I have no idea how their system miscalculated the taxes)