Had a partner flight cancelled today (April, Sydney to Tokyo, JL52, Classic Reward in Business). Got an email from Qantas to use the website or call 1300 659 115 to resolve this.
Of course the website was no help (in fact, the Change button was disabled) and didn't offer any alternatives, so I took a quick look at the alternatives available and got on the phone. Qantas has a flight available on the same day on the same route, so I wanted to book onto that flight. However, there were no Classic Reward seats available on that flight.
So I got on the phone to 1300 659 115 and the call was picked up in 5 minutes or so which is pretty good, but the agent was confused with what I wanted to do. I had to specifically tell them the alternate flight I wanted to change to (although this should've been plainly obvious as the only workable alternate flight, given it's the same route on the same day, operated by QF). After a further 15 minutes on hold, and to my absolute surprise, they just said yep we can book you on that no problem! At no point was it ever mentioned to me that there was no Classic Reward seats left on the Qantas flight, although I had assumed that maybe they could rebook me anyway since it was due to a flight cancellation.
Unfortunately after telling the agent I was OK with these flights, I waited another 30 minutes on hold only to have them tell me that actually they can't book me onto the QF flight since it was JAL who cancelled the flight.
Now, I don't actually know what my rights are in this instance. Partner flight cancellations has been discussed in-depth on this forum before (
cancelled CX award booking made with QF points), and iirc there was no conclusion.
I told the agent that I understand, that's fine, let's just process a refund for the award flight. I specifically asked for my Points and Taxes to be refunded immediately in this instance, so that I could try and use them to book an alternative option. They told me that they can't do instant refund of taxes and fees (afaik that's a lie, they can put it in the priority queue, but whatever), but they could refund my points instantly.
So, back on hold I go, waiting for them to refund my points
It took another 30 minutes or so for them to process this, but in the end I did actually get my points back immediately, so there you go.
I'm not sure what call center I was talking to, but it was probably Fiji. I'm reasonably confident that if I got through to Hobart or Auckland this call would've taken 15 minutes max, instead of the over 1 hour+ this took (note, that's 1 hour of an agent's time since I didn't wait at all on hold in the beginning).
I will note that as soon as I called, the automated voice said "Thank you for calling Qantas regarding a recent flight change or cancellation". I'm not sure if this plays for everyone, but if it doesn't, then I can only assume they've updated their systems a bit to only let callers with known issues skip the line
