Qantas wins Shonky Award ... again

[Vic]

Unsurprisingly, QF has 'hit back' at Choice by nit-picking a few of the claims (saying their data is out of date for flight delays, hold times, etc), but not actually looking at the bigger picture issues.

Seems like from the top down they just want to have petty arguments rather than dealing with real problems.

Yeah, i heard that one the radio this morning. It is an annual award for 2022. So if the data is for 2022 it's not out of date. Pretty pathetic excuse by Qantas.

I love this quote:

“Our customers have redeemed more than $1 billion in COVID-related flight credits," she said.

Right, so you've been holding onto over a billion dollars of customers money. How much interest did Qantas earn on the cash in the bank? What's the spoilage?

 

[MARTINE]

Ready for a case study in Harvard Business Review
… what not to do as a business.

Have to say blaming the customers when flying resumed and now nitpicking the basis upon which this award was rightfully awarded just reinforces how truly out of touch they are.

Love ‘Spirit of Disappointment’

 

[HSB44]

The Qantas pr team pointed out the hard times during covid and the reduction in call centre waiting times because that is their 'customer' narrative to shareholders. Qantas management and Choice have picked different time-scales and methods of calculating on time performance so not surprisingly they picked at that point.

The main thing is that Qantas only cares what the shareholders think. They don't care what we think and they don't care about genuine customer service. They just care about the shareholders and their short term kpi metrics.

As long as they have the upperhand in a duopoly at the a-- end of the world, they won't feel motivated to change their ways . The pollies all have platinum so they have no incentive to speak out.

The fight with Qatar definitely hurts them, but it's not serious enough to rethink the approach to frequent flyer retention. If Emirates decided to ditch them then they would have a serious issue... But that looks less likely for now.

The Qantas points brand has probably been flogged to the point of oversaturation, but I'm sure they will think of creative ways to keep it going.

AJ and his team have done the heavy lifting in suppressing the unions, so they see it as their victory spoils to milk all they can get.

All airlines have their strengths, weaknesses, and trade off's. Qantas have picked theirs and it won't change course in a hurry unless there is another massive covid like event to shake things up

 

[HSB44]

Right, so you've been holding onto over a billion dollars of customers money. How much interest did Qantas earn on the cash in the bank? What's the spoilage?

Take that one step further -
They made a billion dollars in profit, they are holding onto $1 billion of Australian public's money locked up, and theyve been significantly bailed out by taxpayers. Surely someone in Government should pressure them to provide better customer service outcomes and provide more flexibility for those customers who had cancelled flights. Or at least push them to improve their refund turnaround times.

 

[UP4014]

Ok wrong direction but QF is coming first in this race.

Hopefully some embarrassment might help get things fixed. Probably not but I’m hoping.

 

[dajop]

Ready for a case study in Harvard Business Review
… what not to do as a business who is the dominant player in a duopoly.

Have to say blaming the customers when flying resumed and now nitpicking the basis upon which this award was rightfully awarded just reinforces how truly out of touch with customers they are can be, but still operate a very profitable business (when there isn't a pandemic on).

Love ‘Spirit of Disappointment’

Corrected this for you.

 

[Jason2000]

Corrected this for you.

I agree short term it's been very profitable and I've certainly done okay purchasing Qantas shares during Covid however I do have concerns about the long term cost of this behaviour.

Personally as someone who is almost 100% loyal to Qantas admittedly I'm only a peasant gold member I've had jack of every single interaction with their call centre being an exercise in sticking pencils in my eye with every single request "not available on my end sir" I'm done dealing with them wherever possible.

I work in a commercial team at large ASX, my colleagues manage tens of millions spend on airline travel, they've certainly been making noises that they're looking forward to channelling spend off to other carriers as soon as they can and are receiving lots of complaints. Yes there are multiple chairman's lounge holders that will protect some spend but it only goes so far before they look awkwardly compromised then they back away and tell Qantas what they want to hear despite singing a different tune internally.

Whoever is in charge of customer experience and the call centres should hang their head in shame. So many leading Australian brands have massively increased their customer experience and brought call centres back onshore yet somehow Qantas seems to have gone backwards I never thought I'd see the day when speaking with Telstra is more pleasant than Qantas. 95% of the time the experience is 0/10 they can basically do nothing except give lip service.

 

[HSB44]

Whoever is in charge of customer experience and the call centres should hang their head in shame. So many leading Australian brands have massively increased their customer experience and brought call centres back onshore yet somehow Qantas seems to have gone backwards I never thought I'd see the day when speaking with Telstra is more pleasant than Qantas.

...umm... they (she) actually got promoted... to run Jetstar.
Shows you where the priorities lie.

 

[Quickstatus]

If not QF then who?

 

[ellen10]

"We conducted a mystery shop of airline call centre wait times in September 2022, and found that people needing to get in touch with Qantas by phone would wait 21 minutes on average for their call to be answered, and up to 50 minutes." Choice quote.

But we all on AFF know the real truth about the call centres, its not the time waiting in the call centre queue, that is creating the most angst, its the call centres having no idea how to add flights, fix problems etc. and totally destroying many bookings and creating so much stress.

Maybe everyone should start complaining to Choice about these awful call centre situations and they could document it. The interview with the lady from Choice said that the most daily complaints they received, were about Qantas, out of any other business and it is still happening right now. Not as Qantas say "old data"

 

[drron]

...umm... they (she) actually got promoted... to run Jetstar.
Shows you where the priorities lie.

But maybe she was sent there to bring JQ down to QF's level.

 

[HSB44]

But maybe she was sent there to bring JQ down to QF's level.

Maybe it's a cunning plot by Bain to drive the value down so they can take over QF and JQ cheaply ....

 

[MARTINE]

Having no plans to use the ‘National Carrier’ ever again I emptied the dregs of my points piggy bank and got a $100 HOME GIFT CARD.
It (purportedly) could be redeemed at companies I frequent ie JBHI FI / Good Guys. Had lots of gift cards (other than this one) to put towards a large purchase.
At the checkout and - oooops - all the gift cards not assoc with QF went through but not theirs.
Ok - this one has to be activated before use online so did that wasting much time online.
So went to use it online with one of their participating brand and got to checkout - refused.

So went back to check with the HOME GIFTCARD website which informed me that those with cards such as mine are the ‘older’ style which can only be redeemed in store!!!

I will see what the next instalment shows when I take my activated card in store. In the meantime I get endless junk mail from the activation process.

I assume the work experience kid who stuffed the gift card into my envelope had found it down a couch where it had been since before QANTAS privatised .

 

[dandandan]

I agree short term it's been very profitable and I've certainly done okay purchasing Qantas shares during Covid however I do have concerns about the long term cost of this behaviour.

Personally as someone who is almost 100% loyal to Qantas admittedly I'm only a peasant gold member I've had jack of every single interaction with their call centre being an exercise in sticking pencils in my eye with every single request "not available on my end sir" I'm done dealing with them wherever possible.

I work in a commercial team at large ASX, my colleagues manage tens of millions spend on airline travel, they've certainly been making noises that they're looking forward to channelling spend off to other carriers as soon as they can and are receiving lots of complaints. Yes there are multiple chairman's lounge holders that will protect some spend but it only goes so far before they look awkwardly compromised then they back away and tell Qantas what they want to hear despite singing a different tune internally.

Whoever is in charge of customer experience and the call centres should hang their head in shame. So many leading Australian brands have massively increased their customer experience and brought call centres back onshore yet somehow Qantas seems to have gone backwards I never thought I'd see the day when speaking with Telstra is more pleasant than Qantas. 95% of the time the experience is 0/10 they can basically do nothing except give lip service.

I have heard from another CEO that as soon as some of that spend gets directed to another airline, that Chairman's soon gets revoked for all.

 

[tdimdad]

But maybe she was sent there to bring JQ down to QF's level.

Can't have the low-cost arm outshine their premium carrier in service and competence...

 

[antycbr]

I have heard from another CEO that as soon as some of that spend gets directed to another airline, that Chairman's soon gets revoked for all.

Time for there to be an inquiry (maybe by our forthcoming corruption commission) about the appropriateness of the gift of CL and Beyond lounge memberships to politicians and senior public servants.

 

[kpc]

Time for there to be an inquiry (maybe by our forthcoming corruption commission) about the appropriateness of the gift of CL and Beyond lounge memberships to politicians and senior public servants.

I have always maintained that CL membership is an outright bribe and needs to be banned

 

[MARTINE]

Time for there to be an inquiry (maybe by our forthcoming corruption commission) about the appropriateness of the gift of CL and Beyond lounge memberships to politicians and senior public servants.

Excellent point @antycbr

Plus how they got away with that title for so long when senior public servants are rewriting the English language.

 

[MARTINE]

I do hope they house the award in their Longreach museum In a special glass cabinet (lest any protesters glue their hands to it …)

 

[tdimdad]

I do hope they house the award in their Longreach museum In a special glass cabinet (lest any protesters glue their hands to it …)

Why not Mascot HQ, on top of the engine?