Qantas Promises to Fix Ongoing Reward Flight Ticketing Failures

[Anni]

I feel like I have just read a biography of our life for the past month! Preparing an email now for our RTW flights in Sept - Nov. We are still waiting for our tickets to be reticketed and have had several flights disappear, some reappear, and others vanish!!! Fingers crossed we get some satisfaction. Thanks for this post, it's sadly very accurate.

 

[Mr H]

This is good news if it works. I would like to get the $500 back that I have spent on calls to the Qantas OCCs to fix ticketing errors, but I would take a system fix instead of reimbursement.

Looking at what is proposed, I can see the team is looking for schedule changes by airlines. It would be good to get reassurance that changes initiated by the passenger (e.g. adding flights to a OWA - which involve repricing and payments) will also be handled by the escalations team.

Finally - the advice to monitor on the Qantas Manage My Booking website is terrible advice. That will just show the last correctly ticketed booking and will not show problems that would be visible on CMT.

 

[MaudedAnvers]

Over the past year or so, many Qantas Frequent Flyer members have lost their Classic Flight Reward bookings for travel on partner airlines due to Qantas' failure to get the bookings ticketed (or re-issued) on time.

This is something AFF has been in regular contact with Qantas about over recent months. The good news is that Qantas has now taken some concrete steps to fix this problem, which you can read about here:

Qantas Fixes Ongoing Reward Flight Ticketing Failures

Qantas is taking concrete steps to ensure Classic Flight Reward tickets are issued and re-issued correctly in the future.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

If you have a ticketing issue relating to a Classic Flight Reward booking, you'll be able to escalate this by emailing a dedicated support team from midday today.

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

This is an excellent article with optimistic news about much needed urgent changes at and by Qantas. As a former Platinum member now a Lifetime Gold flyer Qantas and its call centres have left such a bad taste and experience that I no longer choose to fly with them and prefer to use any other carrier including Star Alliance or other alliances and funnily enough I only got reimbursed yesterday for a cancelled award flight with Qantas which their agent had cancelled by mistake after 6 months in fact I had completely forgotten and sadly, if one is not Platinum or higher you really don't get anything, just as long the telephone queues and the call centres are Fiji, South Africa (not sure if they still use them) or the Philippines but never Hobart (where they understand you and where they know how to solve problems). Qantas is no longer an airline I am proud to support...

 

[1022]

I could have done with this last week. 2 calls to MNL to resolve an involuntary schedule change on UL as part of a OWA, both times didn't ticket and the flight in question dropped exactly one hour later. 2nd call to MNL was particularly bad. I restated the issue, argent was able to rebook on the desired flight but things got colourful when I insisted I hang on the line while it's escalated and ticked immediately because I knew the flight would drop off my itinerary if not done within an hour. The agent forgot to put me on hold while speaking to their supervisor in Tagalog. I put the phone on speakerphone and called my +1 into the room who happens to have decent level of understanding of the language. It was mostly garbled. But he chuckled when the agent exclaimed "but how would he know that?!?!" presumably in relation to ticketing deadlines. They (and by extension QF) clearly take us for fools. The agent came back on the line, refused to escalate to ticketing, saying it'll ticket within 24 hours. (Umm....I called you specifically because it needs to ticket within ONE hour!). Refused to escalate to a supervisor. Then refused to hang up at the end of the call meaning I wouldn't get the survey at the end. I didn't need my phone so I left it connected until they eventually came back on the line to see if I was there, and eventually hung up. Survey completed
An hour later when the flight inevitably dropped from my booking, I tried again and got Suva this time (I think). Miraculously it was an angel of a man who understood the issue, called back twice - as he promised - and got the flight ticketed. Maybe he had a shortcut to this new Helpdesk a few days early??
All that to say, this new team is going to have their work cut out for them. I suspect what we see here on AFF is just a fraction of those affected by QF's ticketing incompetence. I pity the average punter who doesn't know the system. I also pity this AFF cohort who, like me, have battled time and time again with poorly trained and ill-equiped staff to trey to hang on to our OWAs and other much valued trips.

 

[Phoenix-1]

Good effort from AFF. This has caused a lot of nightmares for a lot of people.

 

[Mr H]

All that to say, this new team is going to have their work cut out for them. I suspect what we see here on AFF is just a fraction of those affected by QF's ticketing incompetence.

It shouldn't be too bad. All this work has to happen anyway, but if it cuts out the wasted work of answering calls, long holds, seeking reinstatement of cancelled flights, trying to find alternative routes, etc. then it should help QF as well as us. It is really just a matter of allocating the right people to the right tasks.

 

[SydneySwan]

In country like Japan, the top management would have resigned.
Unfortunately, in Australia top management would hang on to their post. get a pay rise.

I have fixed it for you.

Qantas provides reassurance after emergency landing, saying Joyce will receive increased bonus

"Our first priority is the safety of Joyce’s paycheque"

www.theshovel.com.au

 

[FishFood]

Just sent an email off to resolve the problem I had earlier. Let’s see how it goes. Great timing

 

[nickfromeastryde]

Great to see, the stress of these award flights never really disappears until you have boarded your last flight home. In saying that, have added some flights to my upcoming OWA recently and have been pleasantly surprised by how good the Fiji call centre staff have been. All bar one have been well aware of the reticketing requirements and have ensured that the new e-ticket has been issued promptly.

 

[Mr H]

Great to see, the stress of these award flights never really disappears until you have boarded your last flight home. In saying that, have added some flights to my upcoming OWA recently and have been pleasantly surprised by how good the Fiji call centre staff have been. All bar one have been well aware of the reticketing requirements and have ensured that the new e-ticket has been issued promptly.

Even yesterday, trying to fix auto-cancelled flights, I had one agent who did not even understand how to do a points booking.

 

[stm1sydney]

What Qantas commits/promises to do and what it actually does are two completely different things. We all know that. I can't believe AFF actually fell for it (see article headline).

 

[Mr H]

What Qantas commits/promises to do and what it actually does are two completely different things. We all know that. I can't believe AFF actually fell for it (see article headline).

In fairness, part of my concern had been that QF did not even realise there was a systemic problem. The fact they have acknowledged that is huge. Their approach to fixing it sounds reasonable, subject to a couple of tweaks. E.g. there is no reason to prioritise people whose flights are soonest - auto-cancelling does not take account of proximity of flights. And will they have the ability to price and collect payment for flight changes - because incorrectly priced changes have been one of the barriers to ticketing?

 

[1022]

In fairness, part of my concern had been that QF did not even realise there was a systemic problem. The fact they have acknowledged that is huge. Their approach to fixing it sounds reasonable, subject to a couple of tweaks. E.g. there is no reason to prioritise people whose flights are soonest - auto-cancelling does not take account of proximity of flights. And will they have the ability to price and collect payment for flight changes - because incorrectly priced changes have been one of the barriers to ticketing?

I was going to chime in on those two points exactly. Part of my drama last week was that the call centre refused to escalate my particular issue because I'm not flying until later in the year. I've also had past issues with tax recalculations on award booking which again fall into a black hole if the flight isn't imminent.

 

[RealtimeY]

there is no reason to prioritise people whose flights are soonest

My Reward Booking has disappeared and I'm supposed to fly tomorrow morning

 

[RichardMEL]

Definitely a "wait and see" situation but definitely seems some real effort is being made, or will be, to resolve/deal with these issues - which is real acknowledgement that they exist. This is a good thing.

As usual huge grain of salt at this stage between what is promised and what is actually delivered and only time will tell. Jury will be out until actual problems are resolved and in a timely manner and people see real successes.

Further though, of course, the entire underlying causes need to be resolved - and properly - not just a band aid - if things in the back end were fixed such that re-tocketing and so on happens as it's supposed to, and bookings are not dumped to a manual/far queue for one dumb reason or another which then cause the TTL issue (a broad summary to be sure) which results in cancelled sectors, then there would be no need for dedicated teams of troubleshooters and so on. This is the big ticket (no pun intended) item for me. We know QF's back end has many issues and it's most likely NOT a simple thing to resolve, but I certainly hope these things are some sort of priority on the list.

Anyway if there's substance to the promise then this is a positive step and I'm willing to accept it as a move for the better. We shall see.

Good luck to all with such problems getting properly sorted out!

 

[brucead]

Great work by AFF.

Small point to make. For all the extremely delayed acknowledgment of their failings by Qantas, no-one is highlighting that this has been a problem of their own making.

It is NOT the result of the pandemic or any other "black swan"...it is entirely the result of the decisions they made in response to the Covid disruption, which simply worsened an already pathetic "customer service" culture in Qantas....and it started with the terrible way they treated callers to their call centres...BEFORE the pandemic.

And if you want proof?. just compare it to how Virgin responded to all the Covid cancellations, the ease with which their Virgin Travel Bank worked, and how promptly they were able to respond to phone calls. As a lifetime Qantas Gold Member, I am now using Virgin for all my bookings.

There is a deep cultural problem with Qantas, which is driven from the top, and at its core is their focus on shareholder returns as the No.1 priority, which trickles down to higher Executive Salaries. Sad that such a proud airline has been reduced to this.

 

[Youfah Mizzum]

There is a deep cultural problem with Qantas, which is driven from the top, and at its core is their focus on shareholder returns as the No.1 priority

I tend to agree @brucead.
I just don't get why they can't get it through their heads that excellent customer service will reflect in greater revenue too.

 

[maia200]

Lets wait and see how long this will take. It's been too long in coming.

 

[Mr H]

Small point to make. For all the extremely delayed acknowledgment of their failings by Qantas, no-one is highlighting that this has been a problem of their own making.

QF has acknowledged that this is a sytemic problem and that it is almost always their own fault. That is a pretty big move IMO. There is no point in anyone labouring the fact; the question now is whether the fix will work.

I reckon that OWAs, if they work as they are intended, are pretty much the pinnacle of what FF awards can be. I just want the system fixed and I'm prepared to draw a line under the systemic failings up to this point. Oh, and getting QR redemptions back would fix a big gap in the network - while I don't love QR, they do fly to interesting places and Qatar.

 

[Oubline]

Thank you Matt for this update!

I am actually shocked something is (apparently) being done. These issues previously caused me a great deal of stress and wasted time on the phone, in the leadup to our last 318k J award trip.

I'd given up on the concept of the 318k award and stopped actively collecting QFF points. I really thought Qantas didn't care at all.

I'm optimistic now - all that I ever needed was a way to get through to someone trained and empowered when things go wrong. If this solution provides that then it will be a 1000% improvement.