I booked 2 x MEL-LAX for $8,697 during the price error. I used the $25 pay-later option. The next day the "pay now" price jumped to $46,000!! This had to be paid by midnight today. I rang Qantas today and after a lot of checking with supervisors they offered to rebook us on J at the original error price or they could refund the $50 pre-payment.
But when it came down to the wire I didn't have the readies so have cancelled and got the 50 bucks back. You gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em
I think it's risky to do the pay-later option if any of these price errors happen again. It's better to buy the ticket(s) outright and then see how things pan out. The T&C's on the pay-later option make it a gamble.
This deal has brought me out of a 10 year AFF forum hiatus! I followed this on OzBargain and managed to snag two itineraries for 5 people to the states. So i was 1 of the ~300 customers and got 10 of the ~1000 tickets.
Our total came up to A$21,398.80 for SYD-LAX-DFW (in F then J USA Domestic) leaving 14th December, returning 2nd January. A subsequent booking priced the same trip at whopping A$147,875! The other itinerary was December 7th and returning December 31st, the rest of my family were asleep so booked two itineraries to see which fit better with us.
I found booking the flights you could pick the BPAY option as well as the reserve the price for $25. As this was booked on the Friday morning (23/8) the terms spelled out that you need to pay by midnight of the same day. In reality, my tickets were cancelled by QANTAS after midnight on the following Wednesday (28/8) so there was a little leeway, I imagine because of the delays with BPAY more than this one off mistake fare.
The BPAY way was also a safeguard if everything went belly up during the day and meant that I wasn't scrambling for credit on my cards and/or waiting with frozen cards for a refund.
Also despite all changes, the price I had to pay was still the same the whole time and we weren't contacted by QANTAS, presumably because the fare hadn't been paid/confirmed/ticketed.
Ultimately we chose not to go. $21k is still $21k. But it was fun while it lasted. I tried all sorts of combinations - Boston, New York, Dallas, Orlando, Miami, even tried a few Canadian locations and Hawaii, but found it was USA mainland only.
Hope those who followed through with their purchase have an awesome time!