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

 

[Captain Halliday]

Day of week	Tue
Time of call	1955AEST
Number used	13 13 13
Status	Platinum
Hold time	~5 mins
Call Centre (if known)	Suspect Fiji
Matter resolved	No
Details	Seeking U seat release and, if granted, to add flights to a Classic Flight Award (end goal being a One World Classic Flight Award). First told "This booking has already ticketed so we can't additional flights. I can make you a new booking". I suggested this wasn't quite right and after a four minute hold to check with the support team "oh yes, we can do that". Then the agent couldn't see the seats in I bucket that were showing on EF, so it was back to the hold music. for another five mins. Agent then said a request had been made for the seats and it would take 48 hours, but nothing is showing as requested in the PNR

 

[RooFlyer]

Apologies if my post above sounded a bit insensitive to those who have intolerably long waits and hang-ups etc. In an earlier post, I did say:

I regard 15 mins as a long wait time for Plat - I feel so sorry for those non Plat who have to suffer the indignities recounted above, page after page. Its utterly disgraceful - Qantas treats its customers with contempt.

 

[ronlon]

Apologies if my post above sounded a bit insensitive to those who have intolerably long waits and hang-ups etc. In an earlier post, I did say:

No need to apologise RooFlyer ! It is not your fault that Qantas deems that status deserves the ability to be able to speak to someone who knows how to handle terribly complex left field requests such as change a booking, calculate a fare/points/taxes difference, know the cancellation rules and know the difference between an upgrade and a new booking in a different class !

 

[Ade]

Day of week	Tuesday 31 May 2022
Time of call	11:10 am AEST
Number used	13 12 11
Status	Platinum
Hold time	Approx 3 mins before a human answered the call
Call Centre (if known)	Most likely AU or NZ (based off the accent)
Matter resolved	Yes
Details	Called to request 2x Y reward seats this weekend CBR-MEL & return. No seats shown on the website, the lovely agent was able to secure the seats by placing a request. Ticketing & payment done in under 5 mins. e-ticket was issued around 30 mins later.

 

[ronlon]

I had excellent service last night from a lady in Cape Town named Kauthar with the added bonus of the call answered within a few minutes. Once my request was dealt with I entered into chat mode and started with……” Cape Town call centre has been getting a bit of a hammering lately “. She did not flinch at all and was keen to hear of my experiences and said she was taking notes to share with supervisors and others in the team.

 

[Mr H]

I had excellent service last night from a lady in Cape Town named Kauthar ...

I am getting the sense that service at Cape Town has improved a lot in recent weeks. I delay my calls until the evening to get Cape Town rather than Fiji.

 

[Lynda2475]

Im on hold now, hoping to get HBA or NZ, as calling in the morning goes to Cape Town where you get no help and rude agressive staff who dont let you finsih your sentence and lie - like saying I would get my updated eticket in 24 hours, well past that and no eticket in sight.

Calls to SA tend to go stright through ime, so im hoping that having to hold means I will get somewhere better.

IME Ive only had Fiji unable to resolve once, but 100% fail with every call ever answered by Cape Town.

*** Edited to add that just had first ever sucess with Cape Town (maybe the better cape town agents work in evening). She was able to confirm it had been reticketed and sent me amadeus extract which showed a new ticket number, new issue date and the new flight number.

Day of week	Wed 1 June 2022
Time of call	8:20PM AEST
Number used	13 12 11
Status	Gold
Hold time	Approx 20 mins before a human answered the call
Call Centre (if known)	Cape Town (based ont he accent)
Matter resolved	Yes
Details	Follow up call to get new eticket issued for flight number chnage on my OWA itinerary initiated by AA on Sunday, after the incredibly rude and agressive agent on Monday lied about resolving it.

 

[RooFlyer]

Im on hold now, hoping to get HBA or NZ,

Calling at abt 8:30pm in the evening - do those call centres open that late? I thought a 7pm AEST close for Hobart.

I'm not sure getting the Amadeus printout means that an eTicket will arrive, if it goes into some long & distant ticketing queue. Hope like mine, it does arrive promptly.

 

[Lynda2475]

Calling at abt 8:30pm in the evening - do those call centres open that late?

Well thats when i got home from work, calling at 7:30am yielded worse results, i dont have luxury of being able to call between 8am and 8pm on weekdays because im either commuting or in meetings.

If PDF doesnt arrive by tonight will call yet again, i can only hope a meeting gets cancelled so maybe can call business hours tomorrow.

not sure getting the Amadeus printout means that an eTicket will arrive,

Well at least there is a ticket number which is more than yesterday. Annoying thing is i went through the history of changes /tickets for this OWA 3 have been mine (original booking, removal of CX flights, adding EDI/GLA) and 7 have been airline (QF time chnages, BA flight change, AA time chnages).

Two ticket issues, one where QF didnt process additional taxes on time, thankfully all flights restored after some panic and now this one. But interesting is that second last change which was AA time change for jfk-ord same flight number somehow changed my ord-dfw flight number, ticket reissued no drama but this is what this latest change is now trying to change back.

 

[dylarr]

Calling at abt 8:30pm in the evening - do those call centres open that late? I thought a 7pm AEST close for Hobart.

Hobart is 7am-11pm, Auckland is 24 hrs.

 

[Mr H]

If PDF doesnt arrive by tonight will call yet again, i can only hope a meeting gets cancelled so maybe can call business hours tomorrow. Well at least there is a ticket number which is more than yesterday.

If you have a ticket number then all is good. You can view the ticket through an Amadeus portal (IIRC the ba.com one is your portal of choice). If you really want the QF PDF - which is decorative at best - then I would click on the MMB section of the website to send the PDF rather than brave the call centre queue. In my experience it can take a few days for the PDFs to reflect changes to the booking.

 

[Lynda2475]

then I would click on the MMB section of the website to send the PDF

I have done this but sends the older ticket number so far.

Have been into QF, BA and AA sites (needed to use BA and AA to select seats on the domestic flights), interestingly these partner site both required slightly different APIS than QF does. So I had to add details on both sites, as without doing so they warned no OLCI would be allowed.

Might explain why last time I flew LHR-JFK on BA I got the dreaded SSSS extra screening, as I had only completed APIS on QF, never occurred to me that extra info would be required by BA.

 

[sudoer]

Have been into QF, BA and AA sites

Try the AY site - specifically this page: Order your e-ticket receipt

 

[Mr H]

I have done this but sends the older ticket number so far.

Have been into QF, BA and AA sites (needed to use BA and AA to select seats on the domestic flights), interestingly these partner site both required slightly different APIS than QF does. So I had to add details on both sites, as without doing so they warned no OLCI would be allowed.

Might explain why last time I flew LHR-JFK on BA I got the dreaded SSSS extra screening, as I had only completed APIS on QF, never occurred to me that extra info would be required by BA.

I thought SSSS was for troublemakers.

 

[Lynda2475]

I thought SSSS was for troublemakers.

Not exclusively, there is a quota for extra screening per flight so it can also be triggered by one-way fares, unusual routing (which was my initial assumption as most Aussies fly direct to the US not via UK). Everyone else being screened was non-white and male (racial profiling for sure); I didn't have any issues for any of the onward US flights nor when flying direct since. So i think incomplete APIS may have been a partial cause as I couldn't check in online. Anyway going off topic, but i will always double check the website for each airline going forward to avoid in future.

 

[Lynda2475]

Edited to add that just had first ever sucess with Cape Town

Spoke way too soon, no sucess the proper e-ticket never arrived. Called again yesterday early arvo yet another Capetown agent who lied and said you only ever get an e-ticket the first time a ticket is issued and changes are only ever visible in the app.

I was firm and said this is not correct and that I had received new e-tickets for the 8 previous chnages on this PNR. Then she said Id already received it, and I was like no i havent and the website doenst have this new eticket for me to download, i.e. still sending the old one. She said Id called multiple times re this and should stop as I have the ticket, I said if I actually had the ticket i wouldnt be calling time and time again, and given Ive been booking flights directly online with QF for almost 20 years, Im know what is supposed to happen.

She put me on hold but I had to hang up as I need to host a meeting. A while later e-tickets come through BUT of course these were the old ones from April with the wrong flight number and old eticket number yet again, which says to me the change is still stuck in a QF ticketing queue somewhere and this agent like the first was super rude and condescending and wouldnt listen when I asked her to have the ticketing people check the queue wasnt stuck.

Because you cant email them, I cant send back what I received to prove it is incorrect, so painful.

100% failure rate with every call to Capetown ever. 66% sucess rate with Fiji. 100% sucess rate with AUs/NZ.

QF please fix your IT systems and ditch mind pearl for onshore agents who understand the rules of the product and who are willing to accept that customers are not stupid and are capable of determing when information sent is out of date.

 

[TheInsider]

Not exclusively, there is a quota for extra screening per flight so it can also be triggered by one-way fares, unusual routing (which was my initial assumption as most Aussies fly direct to the US not via UK). Everyone else being screened was non-white and male (racial profiling for sure); I didn't have any issues for any of the onward US flights nor when flying direct since. So i think incomplete APIS may have been a partial cause as I couldn't check in online. Anyway going off topic, but i will always double check the website for each airline going forward to avoid in future.

Lol, there is no quota for a flight.
Some have 2, some have 20.

 

[DC3]

Calling at abt 8:30pm in the evening - do those call centres open that late? I thought a 7pm AEST close for Hobart.

Hobart until 11.00pm, seven days, and Auckland (and Cape Town) are open 24/7, as far as I know.

Edit: Just noticed that someone beat me to it.

 

[Mr H]

Spoke way too soon, no sucess the proper e-ticket never arrived. Called again yesterday early arvo yet another Capetown agent who lied and said you only ever get an e-ticket the first time a ticket is issued and changes are only ever visible in the app.

Has your flight been ticketed? Check on an Amadeus portal - but I think you said previously you had a flight number for your new sectors. So in that case all is good.

 

[encryptededdy]

In my experience if it was manually ticketed, for some reason the generated PDF won't reflect the new ticket numbers. Check on CheckMyTrip or a manage my booking portal that shows eticket numbers to see.

Usually if it's manually ticketed you should have an email from [email protected], but perhaps that went missing somewhere.