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

 

[Jousams]

I think you're right about these posts be fake (maybe even bots). There is no way a human could withstand hours of holding music without going crazy. Seems we may have found a few robots on AFF .

picked up at 3:07 for me. It dawned on me that I spent more time on hold trying to get this flight ticketed than I will on the actual flight… to YVR….

And yeah, I think I’m crazy now.

 

[get me outta here]

Yet again QF has downgraded me by changing the flight Canberra Sydney Canberra. I don’t know why QF keeps putting these flights on the schedule and then cancelling them and yes, I know they’ve been doing it for years.
Every time they cancel, they downgrade me even though there are J flights available on the next flight.
So now I have to phone in. To get what I paid J points for.

EDIT, and after 2 hours the phone rang as if a real person was going to speak and then they cut me off. Beaudy.

 

[jfl]

Suspect the 1300 025 396 number gets treated as a platinum caller - so how long you'd have to wait before the call's picked up ties to how long the wait is for a normal platinum member. That said, I'd still pick this number over the Fiji/SA number any day.

Definitely worth waiting for the AU number to pick up, even though it takes longer... that is, if youi value your booking staying intact!

 

[dylarr]

Looking at the Customer Care Feedback Form, I noticed specific complaint category for Contact Centre, and the sub categories for Staff Assistance etc.

Customer care feedback form | Qantas AU

Use this form to give Qantas feedback on your experience with Flights, Baggage, Check-in, Before you travel, Qantas Frequent Flyer and more.

www.qantas.com

I know I'm wasting my time but I've started to submit very specific feedback for negative calls (be it due to wait times, wrong advice, etc).

These support categories have routed requests to the right departments previously (i.e. when Qantas was trying to fix priority boarding, the priority boarding category was going through to the team who were actively seeking and responding to feedback). Since this is the official place to contact QF, hopefully if they are get enough detailed feedback here to drive some change (ahahah), but again... probably a complete waste of time.

 

[RichardMEL]

https://www.qantas.com/au/en/book-a-trip/flights/payment-options.html#multiple-forms-payment

I split a payment online over the weekend, I used a Travel Credit , clicked a box that said split payment, and then chose credit card for the balance.

yes, that feature seems to be unique to travel passes when the value of the pass is < the value of the booking so you need to be able to pay the rest. I've never seen an option in a vanilla booking without a TP for a split payment (but then again I've never had to do it myself).

 

[ambrosia]

3 hours 11 mins on hold. Victoria (in AU) helped sort it out in about 6 mins.
Good luck to all those still holding. No more "music" for me.
(I just used 131313 and put in my WP#.)

 

[Mattg]

Has anyone been put through to the AKL call centre recently? Is it even still operating?

I’ve seen a lot of posts here about the Fiji, South Africa and Hobart call centres, but none about Auckland lately.

 

[Pablo]

Stupid question probably - I'm in Thailand and trying to call these numbers. keep getting a call busy sound. I've put +61 in front of it when calling from my Optus number. Should that work or does it not work when calling from overseas? I've gotten sick of the 2 hour wait when calling the 02 8222 2405 number I found.

 

[Mr H]

Has anyone been put through to the AKL call centre recently? Is it even still operating?

I’ve seen a lot of posts here about the Fiji, South Africa and Hobart call centres, but none about Auckland lately.

Yes - AKL twice in recent days and they were very helpful.

 

[Berlin]

Stupid question probably - I'm in Thailand and trying to call these numbers. keep getting a call busy sound. I've put +61 in front of it when calling from my Optus number. Should that work or does it not work when calling from overseas? I've gotten sick of the 2 hour wait when calling the 02 8222 2405 number I found.

Try calling via Skype or something similar. This workaround has always worked for me when calling from outside Australia.

 

[sudoer]

Has anyone been put through to the AKL call centre recently? Is it even still operating?

I’ve seen a lot of posts here about the Fiji, South Africa and Hobart call centres, but none about Auckland lately.

Yes, usually early (7am) on weekdays I get Auckland.

 

[DC3]

Has anyone been put through to the AKL call centre recently? Is it even still operating?

I’ve seen a lot of posts here about the Fiji, South Africa and Hobart call centres, but none about Auckland lately.

Probably no reported delays in getting through to Auckland. Or, just getting good service, so no angst to post about.

(“Qantas Call Centre Long Wait Times” thread).

 

[Mattg]

Good to know AKL is still around. I haven’t encountered too many issues with them.

 

[ScotchNavajo]

Day of week	Sunday
Time of call	11:31am AEST
Number used	1300 659 116
Status	Gold
Hold time	2 mins
Call Centre (if known)	South Africa
Matter resolved	Yes / maybe
Details	Needed to use multiple flight credits to make a booking. Spent a looooooong time on hold while she sorted it out, but she did seem to get it done - although while the booking is now showing up in my account, the flight credits are also showing as valid and I'm unable to access Manage or Seat Selection - just get an error message each time.

Update to this:

Day of week	Monday
Time of call	5:23pm AEDT
Number used	13 12 11
Status	Gold
Hold time	~1 min - offered automated callback. Callback received after 2 hours
Call Centre (if known)	Not sure - maybe Fiji?
Matter resolved	Yes
Details	Explained I hadn't received my ticket for the booking made the previous day and that I was unable to access Manage or Seat Selection. Another looooooong wait on hold until he came back and explained that the second flight credit I was using to make the payment had not been processed and so the flight was not confirmed. I gave him the credit reference again and he issued the ticket and resolved the issue.

 

[Danger]

Not just music. I'm pretty sure I could ace booking wheelchair assistance online if I needed it. The nice lady on holding has told me how to do it about 30 times now.

I couldn't agree more. Who's the moron at Qantas who thinks that repeating, what, three or four messages, over and over and over again in the course of what are routinely multi-hour hold times is not going to infuriate passengers even more? Play some orchestral (calming) music and pipe in every 5-10 minutes with another empty apology about the wait time. Then shut the hell up.

Looking at the Customer Care Feedback Form, I noticed specific complaint category for Contact Centre, and the sub categories for Staff Assistance etc.

Customer care feedback form | Qantas AU

Use this form to give Qantas feedback on your experience with Flights, Baggage, Check-in, Before you travel, Qantas Frequent Flyer and more.

www.qantas.com

I know I'm wasting my time but I've started to submit very specific feedback for negative calls (be it due to wait times, wrong advice, etc).

These support categories have routed requests to the right departments previously (i.e. when Qantas was trying to fix priority boarding, the priority boarding category was going through to the team who were actively seeking and responding to feedback). Since this is the official place to contact QF, hopefully if they are get enough detailed feedback here to drive some change (ahahah), but again... probably a complete waste of time.

We all really need to do this. And I think we should start here by naming the agents – good and bad. We're only talking first names so the only people who are going to be able to make any link are those at Qantas who are exactly the people who should be connecting the dots. These days, I never begin a call with any remotely big business without (a) recording and (b) getting the person's name the moment the call is connected.

I'll start. The Qantas gems, for me, are Jess, Jude, Martin, Angie and Vicki (all in HBA, I believe). Avoid Wendy and Arnya (also HBA, I think). Offshore, Rose and Seini are useless.

 

[N860CR]

I couldn't agree more. Who's the moron at Qantas who thinks that repeating, what, three or four messages, over and over and over again in the course of what are routinely multi-hour hold times is not going to infuriate passengers even more? Play some orchestral (calming) music and pipe in every 5-10 minutes with another empty apology about the wait time. Then shut the hell up.



We all really need to do this. And I think we should start here by naming the agents – good and bad. We're only talking first names so the only people who are going to be able to make any link are those at Qantas who are exactly the people who should be connecting the dots. These days, I never begin a call with any remotely big business without (a) recording and (b) getting the person's name the moment the call is connected.

I'll start. The Qantas gems, for me, are Jess, Jude, Martin, Angie and Vicki (all in HBA, I believe). Avoid Wendy and Arnya (also HBA, I think). Offshore, Rose and Seini are useless.

Problem is that customer care has seemingly left the building. Last time I spoke to a fairly helpful agent in Australia they admitted that “you’ll be lucky to get a response from customer care in 6 months, if at all”.

Probably best to use the ACA. Questionable results, but qantas have to pay for the service. If they have thousands of ACA complaints, something will change. An ignored complaint to customer care won’t do much.

 

[sudoer]

Avoid Wendy and Arnya (also HBA, I think)

I had a great experience with Arnya/Anya just yesterday following a disaster of a call with another agent prior.

Also throwing Jarrod's name into the ring for outstanding service and willingness to log a technical fault with the internal QF helpdesk about an error he was getting when trying to book a partner classic award for me recently. It took a bit of persistence on my part with regular call backs, but the fault being logged did result in the root issue being fixed.

I'm sure the vast majority of agents would have just given the usual "phantom availability" or "it's a problem on the partner's end" instead of taking the more difficult route to get the issue fixed.

 

[henrus]

Has anyone been put through to the AKL call centre recently? Is it even still operating?

The Social media team is based in Auckland and they still seem to be posting (less often) although I wonder if Omicron is impacting NZ operations.

 

[Steamrollersam]

Couldn’t book a multi-city itinerary using my flight credit so had to ring last night to take advantage of sale fares. Called 131211 just after midnight and was quoted 30-60 minute wait as Plat. Put the call on speaker 20 minutes in as I snoozed, and I woke up to a voice (Kiwi accent?!) 2 hrs and 45 minutes in. Lady had to be told what flights I was after as she couldn’t see the cheaper business sale flights ADL-HND SIN-ADL from her end. Lots of typing on the keyboard , consulting someone else, more typing, dead silence for long stretches, until we finally got to the desired outcome and I’ve been ticketed the flights I wanted. All up the call took 3 hours and 29 minutes before the call dropped out, but by that time my CC for additional charges had been charged. Got confirmation email 7 am.

it seems I may have spoken too soon. I got the booking confirmation email about my October flights and they show up on "My Bookings" and have even got seats allocated on the international legs. However when I click on "Manage" it does either of two things. One is it says I have a flight credit for the amount of the flights (redeemed flight credit plus $700+ I paid on Saturday for fare difference). Two is a "generic error" message. What gives?

 

[clifford]

We all really need to do this. And I think we should start here by naming the agents – good and bad. We're only talking first names so the only people who are going to be able to make any link are those at Qantas who are exactly the people who should be connecting the dots. These days, I never begin a call with any remotely big business without (a) recording and (b) getting the person's name the moment the call is connected.

I'll start. The Qantas gems, for me, are Jess, Jude, Martin, Angie and Vicki (all in HBA, I believe). Avoid Wendy and Arnya (also HBA, I think). Offshore, Rose and Seini are useless.

Really, I don't think you should be doing this in respect of Aust agents (don't care about the others).

Everyone can have a bad (or good) day, so reporting people who you haven't connected with well may not be a good indication of their worth.