QF is Australia's second most distrusted brand

[p--and--t]

The truth is that if you already feel negative towards the brand, every interaction will start from that low watermark. Every negative interaction is amplified,

Spot on. People often don't act or think very rationally. Nothing like harbouring a grudge about some far distant occurrence in the past to make some people's day. Evident in lots of online commentary.

 

[RooFlyer]

Nothing like harbouring a grudge about some far distant occurrence in the past to make some people's day. Evident in lots of online commentary.

I guess you’re talking generally, but cripes, being misled or stuffed around by the Qantas call Centre needn't be in the far distance. How about today?

 

[33kft]

I guess you’re talking generally, but cripes, being misled or stuffed around by the Qantas call Centre needn't be in the far distance.

Let's be honest for a moment - where have you had a good call centre experience lately?

I am sure you have a good answer for that question but to be honest, I don't. I am not absolving Qantas of poor service but I'm certainly pointing out that it is near universal nowadays and I can't give you that as a Qantas-specific failing.

 

[Melburnian1]

Let's be honest for a moment - where have you had a good call centre experience lately?

I've had good call centre experiences with an energy retailer and (shock horror!) a bank in recent days.

 

[RooFlyer]

Let's be honest for a moment - where have you had a good call centre experience lately?

I take your point completely, but I would say I’ve had good call centre experiences with both Commonwealth Bank and NAB in the past week. Both have onshored their call centres and the interaction was clear and straightforward and positively resolved without a long wait time. I’ve actually commented here a couple of times how the banks have lifted their game immensely after being previously despised.

In the case of Qantas, it is a huge, customer facing and interacting business and is always going to be on a hiding to nothing while it maintains a poor call centre.

And it's hard enough to find a human to talk to to ask for help even at the airport.

 

[p--and--t]

I guess you’re talking generally, but cripes, being misled or stuffed around by the Qantas call Centre needn't be in the far distance. How about today?

And we should bang on relentlessly about QF and ignore the threads on AFF with genuine complaints about call centres for VA, SG, BA, MH, et al???

 

[RooFlyer]

And we should bang on relentlessly about QF and ignore the threads on AFF with genuine complaints about call centres for VA, SG, BA MH, et al???

absolutely not – participate in them or start new ones.. I’ve said and many others have said that the QR call cente is absolutely beyond abysmal. SQ not much better.

But in this case, it’s about trust and distrust of Australian companies and Australia’s biggest airline didn’t fare so well and that’s why we’re talking about it.

 

[33kft]

It's without doubt an area that they could improve, and it would win a lot of goodwill, but my 2024 viewpoint is that if I have had to call your call centre, you have likely already failed me.

I would give airlines some leeway in that the nature of travel involves a lot of point in time factors such as weather, late arrivals and connections and there will always need to be someone to handle irrops.

I'd rather they put call centre money towards a much better online booking management experience, although I think that due to the backend GDS systems being the way they are, it will probably never allow us to be fully in control.

 

[Brissy1]

sure, but Im not sure how that morphs into "distrusted"

Woolies is distrusted by my household in the "fresh food people" mantra because it is not fresh by any stretch of the imagination.

Im sure the people surveyed broaden the meaning of "distrusted" to include anything negative.
So someone who just does not like a brand because of pricing policy would tick yes for "distrusted".

I get your point people may tick "distrust" only because they "dislike", but not this time.
Distrust of Qantas was well earned - phantom flights, tricky expiring vouchers instead of refunds, bundle of rights not a ticket, illegal sacking. And the worst, talking legal action/defence of these policies.

 

[CaptJCool]

It's without doubt an area that they could improve, and it would win a lot of goodwill, but my 2024 viewpoint is that if I have had to call your call centre, you have likely already failed me.

I would give airlines some leeway in that the nature of travel involves a lot of point in time factors such as weather, late arrivals and connections and there will always need to be someone to handle irrops.

I'd rather they put call centre money towards a much better online booking management experience, although I think that due to the backend GDS systems being the way they are, it will probably never allow us to be fully in control.

For airfares I dread ever having to phone the call centre
However, there was really no way around calling to get refunds during COVID as I had about 8 different buckets of fare types blah blah and some couldn’t be done any other way - several of them and all were correctly refunded
My recent experience with one of many reward tic where RJ had cancelled a flight and rebooked me on a flight 2 days AFTER the connecting flight (go figure how ridiculous this was) meant calling to ensure points and cash were correctly refunded was really the only reality. This was a good call centre experience

 

[33kft]

phantom flights

Absolutely not going to go on a rebuttal mission here but I think this is a great example of the sort of bad press that sparks an emotional response.

I was one of the people "impacted" by this, with the net outcome being that I was compensated some $700 by Qantas for an instance where I was delayed about 15 minutes on a domestic flight in 2022.

Clearly they did something wrong to attract the ACCC action and lose the case, but check out the thread on AFF to see a bunch of bewildered people getting money for what seemed like a minor flight delay at the time, especially in the context of 2022 and what flight schedules looked like directly after COVID.

What I think the other side of the coin here is that a lot of people now distrust Qantas and blame normal operational delays or cancellations on phantom flights based on a belief that this was common practice and not some sort of tactical consolidation approach primarily on domestic trunk routes post-covid, whereas the actually impacted pax in the vast majority of cases were quite unaware.

 

[SeaWolf]

Absolutely not going to go on a rebuttal mission here but I think this is a great example of the sort of bad press that sparks an emotional response.

I think the response comes more from how QF handled the legal side of it. Most people (myself included) were expecting their defence to be some variation of, "We didn't do it. There may have been an occasional admin error, but it wasn't systematic or deliberate". Instead, the defence was, "We did and we'd do it again! Here's a convoluted argument about why we think it's 'technically legal' and we should get away with it." The now infamous bundle-of-rights.

That's (one of many places) where the distrust comes from. They keep winding up in court (and losing) trying to arguing that they should be allowed to get away with highly questionable behaviour.

 

[kpc]

Finally QF win an award that is deserved...

 

[jb747]

It took a great deal of work, by a dedicated CEO, to achieve that.

 

[cove]

To think that bonuses are still being paid just shows us why the board of directors needs to be changed.

 

[CaptJCool]

And it’s this kind of profiteering that makes the brand untrustworthy
They don’t seem to be able to re-calibrate ahead of time to handle occasions like this
Friday 20th September

 

[p--and--t]

And it’s this kind of profiteering that makes the brand untrustworthy
They don’t seem to be able to re-calibrate ahead of time to handle occasions like this
Friday 20th September



View attachment 407649View attachment 407650View attachment 407651View attachment 407652

Oh so it's just QF the terrible bad guy and noone else is feasting at the same time????

 

[CaptJCool]

Oh so it's just QF the terrible bad guy and noone else is feasting at the same time????

View attachment 407655

Phew saved me the effort of looking them up
They can all do better when it comes to managing flights to one-Orf sporting events
They can adjust their algorithms but don’t

 

[p--and--t]

Phew saved me the effort of looking them up
They can all do better when it comes to managing flights to one-Orf sporting events
They can adjust their algorithms but don’t

I see it as no different to the hotel I stayed at in Vancouver in recent months normally under 250 a night except the weekend I stayed there (650) because there was a game on that weekend. Standard operating mode in the tourism / hospitality / airline industries. Not a reason to declare QF as "untrustworthy"

PS I don't like it either but they are all in the supply and demand capitalist system of working. Not much different to the price of bananas at the suoermarket

 

[CaptJCool]

I see it as no different to the hotel I stayed at in Vancouver in recent months normally under 250 a night except the weekend I stayed there (650) because there was a game on that weekend. Standard operating mode in the tourism / hospitality / airline industries. Not a reason to declare QF as "untrustworthy"

As much as it might be “standard operating procedure” that’s lazy policy and a sop to mega-profits

That’s not known to the boarder, occasional traveller population and so they will view the ticket price hikes as profiteering and think that untrustworthy, that they will resort to unreasonable prices when they “can get away with it”
What with a $2 billion profit it’s clearly too much to ask for them to re-jig ticket prices for big sporting events