Qantas ruined our rewards booking 2 weeks before flying

[shuuy]

Makes me want to read the exclusion section of qantas travel insurance PDS.

... I don't know of any travel insurance policy that will reimburse business or first class fares if you're still travelling? (they may for cancellations, etc)?

 

[DrGear]

Well it’s been two days and I’ve received no reply from the email I sent, no response on Twitter or FB and I’m basically resigned to the fact we will have to pull a bunch of money out to pay for my fiancées flights and one of us gets J while the other gets economy.

I am honestly completely worn down by this whole debacle and am beyond furious that despite my best efforts, things are getting ruined by their incompetence.

 

[Guvner]

Don't let them win. Keep pushing.

 

[I love to travel]

Well it’s been two days and I’ve received no reply from the email I sent, no response on Twitter or FB and I’m basically resigned to the fact we will have to pull a bunch of money out to pay for my fiancées flights and one of us gets J while the other gets economy.

I am honestly completely worn down by this whole debacle and am beyond furious that despite my best efforts, things are getting ruined by their incompetence.

Ring again

 

[tdimdad]

Give the rewards team something like five workdays. The clock is ticking but in their eyes this is not an urgent one yet (travel is still nearly 3 weeks away). If you have a way to do it, perhaps you can buy flexible and fully refundable tickets to Tokyo. If the QF team does their magic before your trip, you'll cancel the cash tickets and enjoy your CR tickets.

 

[DrGear]

Give the rewards team something like five workdays. The clock is ticking but in their eyes this is not an urgent one yet (travel is still nearly 3 weeks away). If you have a way to do it, perhaps you can buy flexible and fully refundable tickets to Tokyo. If the QF team does their magic before your trip, you'll cancel the cash tickets and enjoy your CR tickets.

wish I could but with how bad business has been recently, I don't have the spare cash to be able to do so. The worst part is there's 300K points being held up because of their screw up so I can't even try to use them on the limited rewards seats that are showing as available.

 

[half-hour]

The rewards complaints email account should really have a triage service where a customer service agents emails the customer to confirm that someone is looking into their problem.

Without that the customer has no idea whether anybody has even read their email.

 

[MelbFlyer]

Well it’s been two days and I’ve received no reply from the email I sent

Not sure if it'll help your case but it did with mine, I added the below in the email subject in my follow-up and I got a prompt response:

"***QANTAS TEAM - PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE***"

 

[TomVexille]

Unfortunately another example of why the outsourced call centres are completely incompetent and that QF management continue to show utter contempt for their customers by refusing to improve service.

 

[dajop]

QF management continue to show utter contempt for their customers by refusing to improve service.

Oh come on, they're now providing Pyjamas on day flights in business class, that's improving service. Far more important to the people who matter than competent call centres.

 

[wxxnxs]

I don't know how Qantas booking system exactly works. But I feel sorry for the OP.

My understanding is the initial booking was a return trip and both legs are in the same PNR, and OP would like to change only one leg to a different date and keep the rest unchanged. This could trigger the whole mess, as most Airlines rewards bookings do not allow partials change within one PNR, unless the whole trip get rebooked. In this case, I guess the agent never (or not able to) split the booking, instead, canceled the whole booking straight way. The agent should be more acknowledged for the solution, really should suggest to create a new booking first before amend any existing one.

 

[elanshin]

I don't know how Qantas booking system exactly works. But I feel sorry for the OP.

My understanding is the initial booking was a return trip and both legs are in the same PNR, and OP would like to change only one leg to a different date and keep the rest unchanged. This could trigger the whole mess, as most Airlines rewards bookings do not allow partials change within one PNR, unless the whole trip get rebooked. In this case, I guess the agent never (or not able to) split the booking, instead, canceled the whole booking straight way. The agent should be more acknowledged for the solution, really should suggest to create a new booking first before amend any existing one.

Actually the more likely scenario is the first agent did everything asked and shot everything off to ticketing to get reticketed (they do not do ticketing afaik).

The ticketing side of QF may have been a tad slow and given the timing CI just took back the inventory while it was in limbo thus suddenly there was no seat to ticket. It's a fairly common phenomenon with partner airlines from the sounds of things thus everyone harps on about getting things reticketed ASAP.

 

[DrGear]

Not sure if it'll help your case but it did with mine, I added the below in the email subject in my follow-up and I got a prompt response:

"***QANTAS TEAM - PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE***"

I’ll give it a try, haven’t really got anything else to lose given the call center have once again been useless.

 

[knightfall88]

can you borrow points from someone to do a booking? If it was me, I would not have any expectation that Qantas will resolve any of this.

 

[DrGear]

can you borrow points from someone to do a booking? If it was me, I would not have any expectation that Qantas will resolve any of this.

I don’t know anyone with points. I’m not exactly someone from the corporate world or someone who has family who are well to do. I just had a stack of points from having a Qantas Business Rewards Amex.

 

[justinbrett]

(they do not do ticketing afaik).

Actually I was told Cape Town does its own ticketing now, and they have their own ticketing “support” section. I put that in quotes as they were not very helpful for a problem I had, that I had to keep trying to get someone from Hobart to answer.

 

[DrGear]

So things have now gotten even worse. The escalation team has no replied to either email I sent, and after yet another call to the call center I’ve been told the only option is they can refund me but they can’t get her onto any flights. The refund will take forever and go past the date we are meant to fly. I’ve begged them to escalate this and for me to speak to someone else, to find me another flight and all they keep saying is they will refund me.

This whole situation has broken me.

 

[DrGear]

Finally got passed up to a manager and got given yet another story and got fobbed off and told that I have to wait. The staff I was dealing with kept muting the call but didn’t do a very good job of it and I could hear their conversation and them laughing at me. So that’s nice.

I asked them if they can’t sort out her flight on CI, to book us with Qantas only to be told that they won’t do that as the booking was originally for CI. They wouldn’t escalate to anyone else and just told me I either have to wait, or get a refund and the points will take time to reach me again.

We’re set to lose thousands of dollars now because it’s too late for us to get alternative flights for her as we can’t afford the premium, they’re holding 300K of my points so I can’t use them, and we’ve past the cancellation window for most all of our accommodation including a ryokan that cost us $3300 for two nights.

I wish I never got this stupid Qantas Amex card, it’s resulted in nothing good.

 

[MelbFlyer]

As a last ditch effort, maybe try to reach out directly to the CCO of Qantas as per this post -

Qantas rage - meager 10k 'goodwill' points for my troubles

It may help, good luck with getting it sorted. I couldn't imagine what I'd do had this happened to my trip last year.

 

[encryptededdy]

I know this isn't the most helpful, but there is a lot of award space from Sydney (I assume that's where you are?) to Hong Kong in the coming weeks. Worst case, can you get them to book you on that and then organise yourself HKG-TPE-TYO?