Qantas Club Lifetime Membership Benefits Removal

[Blackie67]

Hello folks,

I am hoping someone can help me. I purchase a Qantas Club Lifetime Membership around 2001. At the time, the benefits included priority baggage. The last three times I have travelled domestically and internationally I did not get priority baggage. When I contacted the airline about this, I was informed that my membership did not include priority baggage. I tried to have the matter escalated and was met with stony silence of course. I persevered and was eventually told to 'contact frequent flyer'. I have to say the corporate customer is the worst I have ever experienced. I took the matter to the Airline Customer Advocate. They made contact and I received a reply, which was an image on two lines from a document:

'...it's always been a condition of membership that Qantas could change the benefits:
9. Termination
9.1 Qantas expressly reserves the right to terminate or materially alter any Benefits, or any aspect of
the operation, of The Qantas Club at any time, without notice
By using the card and /or PIN members the customer agreed to be bound by these Terms and
Conditions, so we do not agree with her statement that we are 'unable by law to remove or modify
any benefits'.'

Under law of contract, when you take out a lifetime contract and pay for that contract up front, parties to the contract cannot vary that contract without mutual consent. I have never received a single piece of correspondence from Qantas telling me they were removing benefits from my membership. In reading through other comments in this forum, it seems as they no longer offer the Lifetime Club Membership category they simply omitted it from their systems and their database.

I am hoping someone has a copy of the original contract for Lifetime Club Membership or can guide me to a copy of if dated 2001. I remain unconvinced that they have the legal right to remove benefits from the Lifetime category. Have others experienced this? By joining together we may make greater inroads.

Hopeful

Leharna

 

[encryptededdy]

Had a couple of standup arguments with them in the recent past where they tried to refuse my wife entry and i pointed out the word lifetime on my card

This is surprising as Qantas Club membership has always allowed 1 guest, even now.

 

[CaptJCool]

This is surprising as Qantas Club membership has always allowed 1 guest, even now.

i did look this up because with the Lifetime Gold, it mentioned I had been given Lifetime Qantas Club, so yes, you can take 1 guest

its a pity, that your guest can't be someone who isn't flying

 

[muppet]

This is surprising as Qantas Club membership has always allowed 1 guest, even now.

I’m not sure always, I think we used to get a booklet of 10 single use guest vouchers. The new system is much more generous allowing a guest on every trip.

But either way, guesting privileges at the time of the OP’s visit is completely unrelated to their lifetime QC membership as free guest rules would have been whichever applied at the time.

 

[Flying Fox]

I had the foresight to buy QC Life membership as a 30 year old in 1996, just wondering how many other people did similar?

Almost.

I bought LT Ansett Golden Wing access at 22 for $2500 (IIRC).

It was a good plan but I backed the wrong airline.

 

[equus]

The new system is much more generous allowing a guest on every trip.

Only if you only want to bring in one person, and do it every time. If you only needed to guest very occasionally, and wanted to bring in 4 people at once for the same flight, the old system was more convenient.

 

[p--and--t]

Almost.

I bought LT Ansett Golden Wing access at 22 for $2500 (IIRC).

It was a good plan but I backed the wrong airline.

I loved GW and miss some of the great staff working there.

Luckily I never had to pay for membership as it was given for free by sales rep as I and members of my team were flying so much with them (and I controlled the teams travel budget).

I had the foresight to buy QC Life membership as a 30 year old in 1996, just wondering how many other people did similar?

I did buy lifetime QC for my partner and I nearly 27years ago and that was a bargain given the deeply discounted rate offered to me at the time.