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

 

[encryptededdy]

Keep us updated.

Well, 24 hours later I haven't received a new e-ticket and requesting a new one on MMB just sends the old one, so I called up.

Got Hobart after only a few rings (I'm having very good luck with getting Hobart like 90% of the time these days...). Agent checked and let me know that it ticketed correctly, and manually sent me a new PDF e-ticket which was indeed correct. She didn't know why the tickets I requested on the website weren't showing the new flights (and also she could see that I had requested the itinerary in MMB multiple times).

I did have another query though. It turns out that since my booking was mix Red e-Deal + Classic Reward, it uses the most restrictive fare conditions which means that me changing my classic rewards sector resulted in me being hit with a $99 change fee. Now of course I realize the rules are the rules (and I'm usually on top of them...), but also the Fiji agent whom I initially talked to never mentioned this to me. In fact, they [the Fiji agent] told me that I would get a $1.62 refund as a result of a change (which I did, although it'd be good to mention the $99 fee in the same sentence...). I pleaded my case and luckily the [Hobart] agent was able to get permission from her supervisor to refund me the change fee (but this time only, I was told).

 

[Tiki]

We have BNE-AKL-RAR-AKL-BNE booked for Feb classic Y reward QF/JQ.
Jetstar changed the timings and the outbound now has a 10 minute connection in AKL. I tried to change it online but the page just reloads. All I want to do is change the first flight from a Tuesday flight QF 119 0905 1520 to a Monday flight QF 125 1820 0035 which would give us 15 hours in AKL but better than misconnecting.
I tried twice at around 02:00 BNE time, first got a hopeless agent in MNL who seemed very new at the job, thought it was a different kind of booking, not a classic award) then a Fiji lady who sounded half asleep. I hung up.
Very frustrating I can't just do this online as the seats are available in Y class awards. How do I get a competent agent?

 

[Tiki]

Third attempt got Mark in MNL who seemed more confident than the others. There was one problem, I can see 2 award seats on the Monday evening QF 125 available but he can only see availaibility on the QF 119. He put me on hold and talked to someone else then came back and still only had QF119. I am not thrilled because now we are stuck with having to get a hotel in AKL.

New e-ticket just arrived, that was pretty quick!

 

[cove]

Had to change a flight by a day and my call was done in about 20 minutes. I am Platinum with Qantas so that seemed to help.

 

[tdimdad]

Day of week	Thu 22 Sep 2022
Time of call	13:15 AEST
Number used	13 11 31 (entered FF number and PIN)
Status	Gold
Hold time	1 min
Call Centre (if known)	Fiji
Matter resolved	Yes
Details	Part 2 from post #3011. Had a euro nominated credit voucher and the rebooking had to be done via the call centre for ex-Australia trips. Booking was successful and completed in 20 mins. No change fee charged. The VoiP connection was pretty "noisy" which made it often hard to hear the agent well. We had three little moments during the call which caused an extra brain cell to be spent on either side (or both). 1) The agent couldn't first work on the voucher but then she said that she has to change user ID's in the system to access the voucher in full. That was done swiftly. 2) Initially she didn't find the desired return flight combo but managed to get to those a minute later and add them to the booking. 3) I didn't remember that the original booking had been on Y flex fares. I had scouted the new flights on Y saver fares which totalled close to the voucher value. The 503€ fare difference from the new flights threw me off first and the agent couldn't explain it before I realised what had happened. All good at the end.

 

[CaptainCurtis]

I have a (hopefully final) update. I spent 7 hours on the phone with the Cape Town team today, across 10 separate phone calls, trying to get my booking ticketed. They have charged me 3 times for the taxes/fees, and still did not have my booking ticketed.

Each time the phone went dead and my AMEX was charged without processing a refund for the prior charges, I fired off an email to [email protected] and [email protected] outlining the latest developments, highlighting the poor service delivery. There were probably about 8 emails I sent throughout the day.

Well, I just received (9PM) a phone call from a private number, a local representative from Qantas. The call started with "Stephanie Tully has requested I give you a call to resolve your booking issues". He apologised for the saga from today, asked about my desired itinerary and the amounts that had been charged to my card. He's currently working on the booking and the refund, and has promised a call-back this evening.

A good outcome, yes, but entirely unsatisfactory that I only get my issue sorted after 7 hours because I had the audacity to email the CCO directly. Apologies for my barrage of negativity today, but it's simply not good enough. I have outlayed thousands of dollars for non-refundable upfront payments on this trip as the booking is during a peak period (F1 weekend), I don't need the stress and uncertainty about whether I have a valid ticket.

I've said it before on this forum, and I'll say it again, while Qantas continues to treat its customers with sheer comtempt, I will have no shame in continuing to email their ELT directly, until their call centres are equipped to handle my queries within a satisfactory timeframe.

I’m at SYD for the first flight on this booking to ADL. I wasn’t able to check in online, so went to the service desk. Apparently my ticket is “suspended”. The saga continues. I was assured my ticket had been finalised, and indeed had the ticket in my inbox confirming as much.

 

[sudoer]

I’m at SYD for the first flight on this booking to ADL. I wasn’t able to check in online, so went to the service desk. Apparently my ticket is “suspended”. The saga continues. I was assured my ticket had been finalised, and indeed had the ticket in my inbox confirming as much.

Interested to hear the outcome - what a debacle.

 

[CaptainCurtis]

Interested to hear the outcome - what a debacle.

Being made to repay the taxes (for a fifth time), otherwise they will not reissue the ticket. The service desk not being able to look after these issues themselves simply doesn’t work. Four out of 8 service staff are on the phone to the ticketing/reservations team.

 

[dandandan]

Well, 24 hours later I haven't received a new e-ticket and requesting a new one on MMB just sends the old one, so I called up.

Got Hobart after only a few rings (I'm having very good luck with getting Hobart like 90% of the time these days...). Agent checked and let me know that it ticketed correctly, and manually sent me a new PDF e-ticket which was indeed correct. She didn't know why the tickets I requested on the website weren't showing the new flights (and also she could see that I had requested the itinerary in MMB multiple times).

I did have another query though. It turns out that since my booking was mix Red e-Deal + Classic Reward, it uses the most restrictive fare conditions which means that me changing my classic rewards sector resulted in me being hit with a $99 change fee. Now of course I realize the rules are the rules (and I'm usually on top of them...), but also the Fiji agent whom I initially talked to never mentioned this to me. In fact, they [the Fiji agent] told me that I would get a $1.62 refund as a result of a change (which I did, although it'd be good to mention the $99 fee in the same sentence...). I pleaded my case and luckily the [Hobart] agent was able to get permission from her supervisor to refund me the change fee (but this time only, I was told).

Does anyone know the Hobart call centre operating hours? attempt to re-contact Qantas about their change and change they later date they gave me wasn't very helpful via South African call centre.

 

[encryptededdy]

Does anyone know the Hobart call centre operating hours? attempt to re-contact Qantas about their change and change they later date they gave me wasn't very helpful via South African call centre.

Someone else can correct me but I think it is approx 7am to 7pm all days except public holidays?

 

[dylarr]

Does anyone know the Hobart call centre operating hours? attempt to re-contact Qantas about their change and change they later date they gave me wasn't very helpful via South African call centre.

Someone else can correct me but I think it is approx 7am to 7pm all days except public holidays?

Hobart is 7am - 11pm, 7 days a week. They work public holidays as well. The other Qantas operated contact centre, Auckland, is 24x7.

The Mindpeal operated centres in Suva and Cape Town will gladly take your call at any hour of the day, 24x7.

Unsure of the hours of the newer Manila site, which is also run by a different operator.

 

[dandandan]

Hobart is 7am - 11pm, 7 days a week. They work public holidays as well. The other Qantas operated contact centre, Auckland, is 24x7.

The Mindpeal operated centres in Suva and Cape Town will gladly take your call at any hour of the day, 24x7.

Unsure of the hours of the newer Manila site, which is also run by a different operator.

I found they left a number to call in the email body, where it says to contact our dedicated Qantas team. When I rang that it said, thank you for contacting the Qantas VIP service team enter your QFF number and when it did, it says only eligible Qantas customers have access to the VIP service team! First two calls to 13 13 13 have had no luck in changing my flight data, I will keep trying I suppose.

 

[dylarr]

I found they left a number to call in the email body, where it says to contact our dedicated Qantas team. When I rang that it said, thank you for contacting the Qantas VIP service team enter your QFF number and when it did, it says only eligible Qantas customers have access to the VIP service team! First two calls to 13 13 13 have had no luck in changing my flight data, I will keep trying I suppose.

Interesting — the VIP service team is only available to Platinum 1, Chairman's Lounge and Lifetime Platinum members. It's interesting they would have sent you this number in an e-mail knowing that you wouldn't be able to call it.

 

[dylarr]

Day of week	Sat 24 Sep 2022
Time of call	Cycled through 5 Mindpearl agents between 10:00pm-10:20pm, HUACA to get through to Hobart/Auckland from 10:20pm-10:40pm.
Number used	13 13 13
Status	Platinum
Hold time	0~2 mins for each call
Call Centre (if known)	Fiji and Cape Town
Matter resolved	No
Details	Called about an involuntary schedule change that has resulted in a negative -10min INT-DOM connection. Asked to move the connecting sector to the next scheduled flight which is selling on Qantas.com with revenue and reward seats available. Connected to 5 different Mindpearl agents in Suva and Cape Town who said there was no availability on the next scheduled flight and offered another flight two days later. Even after explaining this was an involuntary change and I was trying to help by fixing a misconnect, none of the agents would budge. Realising nobody at Mindpearl was going to be capable of fixing the issue, I spent the next 20 mins HUACA just cycling through agents until somebody at HBA/AKL would pick up the phone. No luck and getting close to 11pm when HBA goes offline so I'll try again tomorrow. About a third of the calls I made were not connected successfully, after being on hold I would hear the rings when being connected to an agent but would hear nothing for a bit then would be put through to the survey. Also one of the call centres is playing loud music in the background with lots of shouting tonight. So much so that one of the agents apologised for all the noise. Qantas "getting back to its best"

 

[encryptededdy]

Asked to move the connecting sector to the next scheduled flight which is selling on Qantas.com with revenue and reward seats available. Connected to 5 different Mindpearl agents in Suva and Cape Town who said there was no availability on the next scheduled flight and offered another flight two days later.

I just don't understand how this happens. If the flight only had cash seats avaliable then maybe the agent didn't know how to convert one to award for an involuntary schedule change, but if it does have award seats then why can they not see it, yet see one two days later?

I guess the most likely explination is whatever interface the Mindpearl agents use to access the booking seems to have a weird set of limitations, especially around award bookings that Hobart/Auckland don't have since they use a different interface.

 

[dylarr]

I just don't understand how this happens. If the flight only had cash seats avaliable then maybe the agent didn't know how to convert one to award for an involuntary schedule change, but if it does have award seats then why can they not see it, yet see one two days later?

I guess the most likely explination is whatever interface the Mindpearl agents use to access the booking seems to have a weird set of limitations, especially around award bookings that Hobart/Auckland don't have since they use a different interface.

If I get through to Hobart or Auckland tomorrow I'll ask and post back any insights.

My understanding is HBA and AKL actually moved to the same software that was being used in the outsourced centres recently... so they all should be using the same interface now (ARD Web).

 

[djkelly69]

Called about an involuntary schedule change that has resulted in a negative -10min INT-DOM connection.

Is this an Int-Dom connection in Aus? If so, there has been a number of suggestions here that QF is somehow (and for an unknown reason) blocking same day Int-Dom connections in their system.

 

[dylarr]

Is this an Int-Dom connection in Aus? If so, there has been a number of suggestions here that QF is somehow (and for an unknown reason) blocking same day Int-Dom connections in their system.

Very interesting - I didn't know this was becoming an issue. I don't think this would be the cause of what I'm experiencing as the connecting flight I'm trying to move to is the following day.

 

[Danger]

I had a similar experience to dylarr yesterday. Five calls over the course of an hour were all answered by Cape Town or Suva. Each time, I just hung up without saying anything. The first agent, however, called me back and left a message! Stranger still, I then received a further seven call backs over the course of 90 minutes.

 

[dandandan]

I had a similar experience to dylarr yesterday. Five calls over the course of an hour were all answered by Cape Town or Suva. Each time, I just hung up without saying anything. The first agent, however, called me back and left a message! Stranger still, I then received a further seven call backs over the course of 90 minutes.

I got through to Hobart this morning and sorted date change to a day earlier, after being rebooked a day later than the original booking. Easy, quick and great service.