QF domestic 28-day advance purchase Business Class - not worth the pain

[prozac]

Well done for making a stand Max. I am of the view that company culture filters down from the top which is the reason I now fly other airlines.

 

[Vic]

Gotta love the headline for the gazette story on this thread. "How to lose a customer"... lol PMSL.
Qantas haven't lost a customer, the OP is flying with Jetstar and pay way more while doing so.
So bad customer service has made the OP turn to the low cost airline owned by Qantas, that has low operating costs and makes lots of money selling add ons, and pay extra to buy the add-ons. They've transferred the loyal customer to the part of the business that has a higher margin and lower service standards.

Seems like a win for Qantas,

 

[waratahbay]

Max. I had similar multiple experiences with Qantas even when I was a Platinum FF. Like you, I eventually gave up and went to Virgin where they status matched me on request and over the years since I have never looked back. The Virgin business product is now very, very good. Direct flights to LAX and HKG are great, and SIA is terrific for most international travel. I've had to travel overseas with Qantas recently in F and was disappointed by the curt service and the lacklustre food.

@Vic Not sure what you mean. The OP went and bought a business class ticket on Virgin.

 

[CaptJCool]

Max. . I've had to travel overseas with Qantas recently in F .....

Have to?
Wow
Seems like Max instead of
just buying MAX Bundles could
Get Smart and
find a way to “have to travel F”

Thank you 99

 

[blaz]

My limited experience is that some staff do not have the ability to waive the rules, while others do. I once asked to change to an earlier flight while holding a red e deal ticket, and not only received the earlier flight, but was bumped up to business !! ...while other times, I simply get told that as much as they would like to help me, they can't. But the truth is, a quick phone call to a more senior staff member, and your Gold lifetime status will provide a better outcome.

 

[MichaelD]

arriving at Melbourne airport some 5 hours earlier than planned...I paid $650 for this ticket

I think the keys to the issue lie in the 5 hours ahead + the deep discount fare.

That is the scenario the airlines have been cracking down on;
- buy the cheapest fare of the day in the desired class, usually a very late flight
- turn up many hours early with the expectation of flying earlier

I personally have never had an issue with arriving an hour or so early with no luggage, asking nicely at check-in or in the lounge and being put on a flight up to an hour earlier. My status: LTG, currently only WP, paid Business ticket (usually D).

Having said that, I have migrated towards Virgin as well.
Qantas have upped and upped their pricing and lowered their service delivery to the point where Virgin now offers a superior product for the price...with one exception: service recovery. Qantas remain better at service recovery than Virgin.

 

[Chief Wiggum]

A key root-cause here appears to be the ongoing issue with QF not displaying the fare-type(bucket) when booking online. Would love to know the internal QF reasoning behind that decision.

 

[Max Samuels]

Gotta love the headline for the gazette story on this thread. "How to lose a customer"... lol PMSL.
Qantas haven't lost a customer, the OP is flying with Jetstar and pay way more while doing so.
So bad customer service has made the OP turn to the low cost airline owned by Qantas, that has low operating costs and makes lots of money selling add ons, and pay extra to buy the add-ons. They've transferred the loyal customer to the part of the business that has a higher margin and lower service standards.

Seems like a win for Qantas,

While it is true I said I would look at flying Jetstar, I am flying more VA than previously. Since I originally posted this story I have flown QF nil, VA 3x, and actually no JQ yet as I have postponed all those flights for various reasons. However IMO Qantas is still losing out because I have sent almost $2k in VA's direction, and the reason I would choose JQ is only when it is cheaper than VA. Whereas previously I would pretty much book QF 100% of time. I have booked no new QF flights - I still have a few that I need to fly though coz they are already booked

 

[**TBA**]

A key root-cause here appears to be the ongoing issue with QF not displaying the fare-type(bucket) when booking online. Would love to know the internal QF reasoning behind that decision.

I don't understand how seeing the fare bucket makes a difference.. the monetary outcome is exactly the same.

For example.
Bought I Class fare $650 + Fare Difference at airport to J Fare $500 = $1150
Bought J Fare on website = $1150

What benefit is there to buy a more expensive fare outright or for QF to have it available on the website?

Sounds like a poor customer service experience though for sure

 

[love_the_life]

Gotta love the headline for the gazette story on this thread. "How to lose a customer"... lol PMSL.
Qantas haven't lost a customer, the OP is flying with Jetstar and pay way more while doing so.
So bad customer service has made the OP turn to the low cost airline owned by Qantas, that has low operating costs and makes lots of money selling add ons, and pay extra to buy the add-ons. They've transferred the loyal customer to the part of the business that has a higher margin and lower service standards.

Seems like a win for Qantas,

Well not quite correct. As a result of the rude customer service the OP has tried VA and liked it so is likely to send more their way.

 

[Renato1]

When service people don't treat me in a respectful manner, I ask to speak to whoever is in charge, explain what happened, and ask why they have a twit working there.

I try to both improve the organisation and to humiliate the person that has treated me with condescension.
Regards,
Renato

 

[Thomasa]

I don’t post often but thought I would share with you a recent Qantas horror story. So awful that it has actually made me seriously consider “divorcing” my relationship with the airline…

As a QF Plat member who arranges all of his own travel directly through Qantas, and checks-in online etc., I rarely have any interaction with airport/lounge staff. So imagine my surprise last Friday when, arriving at Melbourne airport some 5 hours earlier than planned, I was denied an earlier flight to Brisbane. In Business Class, no less, on a paid ticket. I was totally confused as I knew there were seats available on the next flight (and the next one and the next one….). The really rude customer “service” guy in the lounge told me (almost verbatim) “you’ve bought the cheapest business class ticket and the next flight with that fare class (I) isn’t until Saturday morning”. I paid $650 for this ticket – which apparently is a 28-day advance ticket, but which is also fully refundable. He told me that I could go downstairs to ticketing, and pay an extra $500 to upgrade to a full J class in order to get the next flight. Or – and this is the best part – cancel my ticket and get a full refund, buy a new Flex fare in economy (for about $550) and then use 7,500 frequent flyer points to upgrade to business class. I cannot begin to tell you how confused this whole conversation left me. He then went on to say that “if you want flexible fares you have to choose the more expensive one” – and here we get to the real issue. As everyone knows, when you book a paid domestic flight on qantas.com, it shows you 3 fares: Red e-deal, Flex, and Business - and there are fare rules for those 3 categories. It doesn’t allow further drilling down into the various fare buckets contained within those fares – to prove to myself that I wasn’t imagining things, I even reconfirmed this was the case by making a new dummy booking – one-way MEL-BNE in business class on June 13 is currently $650. There is no option to pay more.

I usually buy a Flex, and it is usually around $500/$600. Sometimes it is higher, but I have never been denied an earlier flight with a Flex – and I highly doubt that every time I have changed a Flex ticket the exact fare class has been conveniently available. I asked to speak to a manger and was told “you can but it won’t make a difference”. The attitude just blew me away.

Of course there will be people who say “the rules are the rules”, but we all know QF can be a bit inconsistent with how they apply them. But from a process point of view, Qantas has a real problem here where their own sales portal doesn’t allow someone to buy a full-fare ticket even if they wanted to. One is merely presented with a price, at a point in time, for each of the 3 (Red e-deal, Flex, Business). Once again, a fully refundable ticket (incl no-show!) gives one the impression that it is also flexible! However the thing that gets me the angriest is the way they talked to me. So rude. Didn’t care. Really dismissive. The guys just stared at me with a blank “computer says no” face. And here I was thinking that as a “valued” customer they would take me seriously! Wow did I learn a lesson that day.

Anyway, after I was humiliated enough I headed outside to ticketing, cancelled my ticket, walked across to Virgin, and purchased a one-way business class ticket for $799 - sure it cost me $150 more in the end but there was a point I needed to make.

In my opinion, Qantas loses in this situation in 2 ways. Firstly, they lost $650 in revenue for no real reason. But more importantly, they enabled (or forced) a normally very loyal customer to experience the competition – and I loved it! Not only was VA’s price about $500 cheaper, the product was much better. They offer booze before take-off (don’t know why QF doesn’t do that?), the cabin is smaller and more intimate, the food was great, the staff really friendly, but best of all – there was no terrible tacky safety demo video (am I the only one that finds the QF demo video exhausting to listen to?)

I am LTG with Qantas, and to be perfectly frank, the oneworld Sapphire benefits that provides with other airlines is more attractive to me than Qantas itself. I am seriously considering abandoning my annual marathon to maintain Platinum, switching to VA for domestic, and flying CX/JL/MH etc. when going overseas. It’s amazing how cheap fares are on those carriers as long you don’t care about the status credits!

The way I am feeling at the moment I couldn’t care if I never stepped inside the Red Rat again.
#sadface

My preference, too, is Virgin for Business. Much more intimate, has its own toilet sequestered from Economy, and food is noticeable better than Qantas Business. As well, as a Platinum member, I do not pay for the excellent, roomy, Economy X seats at the front. And these seats, like Business, have overhead lockers reserved especially for them. Here is a company that really rewards their very frequent flyers.

 

[Berlin]

I think it's their worst video for many years.

Couldn't agree more but it's a good source of laughter too: My partner and me, we travel SO much lately, we have it all as a running gag that we pull up from time to time.

Our favorite is probably also the "Double shot please. Your aircraft does great coffee too". But we're also partial to a random "Ooooh, I dropped my phone!" and whenever anyone jumps into a pool, we straight away shake our heads and say "Aussies!"

 

[Max Samuels]

What benefit is there to buy a more expensive fare outright or for QF to have it available on the website?

Well, on the surface, none - if you are the purchaser and aware of the potential cost difference at the airport. But consider a situation where an assistant or some other travel organiser is told by their boss, Mr. Business, to "book me on a flight to Sydney on June 10th at 5pm - in Business Class!". He/she logs on to website, chooses the business class fare, and pays it. End of story.

Jump forward to June 10.... Mr. Business has finished his important business much earlier than expected, and gets to the airport early. Imagine his surprise when he is told to fork out another $1000 (this is possible) to change flights! His poor assistant is certainly in for an earful - and really, it is not his/her fault. As discussed, there is NO way to know what the potential change cost will be when booking the ticket. Unless they use a travel agent (which Qantas discourages) you do not have the ability to choose a specific fare bucket (even Qantas Business Rewards portal does not ) . Because the actual price of full J seems to be a made up amount with no correlation to reality, the delta could be huge. If was booking travel on behalf of Mr. Business, I would like to be able to make an informed decision about what I am buying for him....

 

[Vic]

@Vic Not sure what you mean. The OP went and bought a business class ticket on Virgin.

Well not quite correct. As a result of the rude customer service the OP has tried VA and liked it so is likely to send more their way.

I'm referring to the below, not going to fly with qantas so booked jetstar...
It was at the end of a very long post, so perhaps missed.
I'm comfortable with my interpretation of the below comment.

.... still really dirty with them, and determined not to fly them for a while, the other day I booked Jetstar flight from BNE to MEL (VA was waaaaaaaaay to expensive).

In any case, Virgin domestic business is consistently better than Qantas, so the OP is on a winner there

 

[Melburnian1]

So Qantas would rather have an empty business class seat and forcing you to take up a later flight occupying a seat? I would like to hear what revenue management has to say about this.

Agree. When passengers turn up early, they're doing an airline a favour if there are multiple scheduled flights that day, because if one is moved 'forward' to the earlier flight, it may be possible for the airline to sell the vacated seat for later in the day.

 

[Melburnian1]

If one uses ITA Matrix, it shows fare buckets and lots of alternative fares, so that may be one way to resolve the dilemma. Perhaps you then need to book through a good travel agent despite as you say QF discouraging this,. showing him or her the ITA Matrix printout.

 

[RooFlyer]

Still flying jetstar is the same as flying qantas.

Not according to this experience ... Loyalty is a one way affair - goodbye QFF

 

[Nank]

On the note of poor customer service, I do understand where you are coming from mate, though I am surprised at the refusal to change flights as we've done that multiple times without any issue even in Y (though that bit about the far class could make it hard I guess).

I have had an irate staff member in the MEL QF Club lounge tear stripes off me in front of everybody as loudly as possible for taking a photo of a Qlink B717 parked for the night because it was supposedly a "security issue". Now as a pilot myself I know that this is utter BS, and the only sort of restriction that could be imposed is company policy, which has never given me any trouble either, even when filming onboard aircraft, walking across the apron to/from said aircraft or in many other parts of various airports in Australia and across the rest of the world for my YouTube channel. Aside from that I am also an ASIC holder so I reckon out of all the people sitting in that lounge, when it comes to security I was probably the top of the ladder along with the other staff. Though this was humiliating for me I was too tired to argue and didn't want to stir up any more fuss than I already had, so I gritted my teeth and moved away. Had the rude old hag caught me on a better day though I could have easily shredded her and her career if I wanted to (perks of having friends in the industry ;D), and to be honest if it ever happens again I think I will.

I work my cough off both in my own business and also just in life in general, and I know its tough sometimes but that is certainly NOT the way to treat customers. I know there are people on here and widely around other places too who like to proudly advertise their status with different carriers and how "loyal" they are, but to be honest I don't think even that should have any influence when it comes to how staff interact with passengers.

Whether you pay $50 for a ticket or $500 you still deserve to be treated with respect, friendliness and general care. If your staff aren't doing that, regardless of "status", "loyalty" or anything else there's a problem and those staff members shouldn't be there anymore. As to never flying QF again I think that's a bit of an overreaction.

If it is indeed just because you've found that VA has a far better product than QF then so be it (though when it comes to economy I will definitely stick with QF thanks), but I see people all the time online especially with LCCs who take 1 flight, something tiny goes wrong (minor delay, not realising what a LCC really means etc.) and then there they are all over instagram, facebook and so on absolutely slamming these airlines with their "never flying them again" rubbish, and I hope that this isn't the case with your experience too. Sure poor customer service isn't nice, and it definitely shouldn't have to be tolerated, but I'd need to have quite a few more reasons than that to not fly on an airline again.

Anyhow I hope you enjoy VA J, and if you want the nicest seats when you go JQ get the exit row over the wings. Best seats

 

[Beano]

AHH, the joys of business class travel! !! I should be so lucky, whatever the experience.