Does Qantas ban people who take them to tribunals/court from ever flying with them again? I have heard of this occurring before with other large companies. Basically they tag you as a troublemaker and prefer not to do business with you in the future. (In the US, they'll even confiscate all your frequent flyer miles while doing so, although I expect that might be difficult under Australian law.)
I sued British Airways and won a small quid. A few months later, I was travelling BA F on points out of SYD through to LHR and onwards (to ZRH, from memory). The journey started in PER and I wanted a BA boarding pass for the BA flights rather than a QF one. A few days before travel I got in touch with the bloke at BA in Sydney who had largely handled the matter (other than DLA Piper, the second largest law firm in the world, that did the leg work and behaved as lawyers do). He arranged for a colleague to bring a BA boarding pass to the QF lounge. On the LHR-ZRH flight, I was approached by the CSM: "Mr Danger, there's a message from the company to welcome you on board. If there's anything I can do to make your flight more enjoyable, please let me know."
I wouldn't put it past some airlines, particularly the Middle East ones, but my experience with BA only endeared me to the airline more.
I'm also trying to take Qantas to NCAT. The trouble is I am going off the phone calls I had with them, where they said they'd ticket something but never bothered, then were too late and I lost my seat.
There's no written evidence for the phone calls, the only written evidence I have is the original booking, the notification of the booking being changed and several emails ghosted by Stephanie Tully and Customer Care team.
I'm worried Qantas can just deny their agents did anything wrong (based on it just being my word during these phone calls), refund me and dust their hands off of responsibility, whereas it is their negligence of not booking on time that's resulted me having to spend $3000+ on alternative flights.
Any advice on how I can make this phone call evidence more solid? I can get phone records from my telco company, is that something you did? How much evidence do I need to provide NCAT in regards to phone conversations?
You will no doubt have records on your phone bill of when calls were made and the duration. A stat dec to accompany these records outlining the context of the call is likely to be far more than Qantas would be able to provide from an agent working at an offshore call centre.
I think they record the calls, so they can dig them up if required. Its worth a shot if the loss and damages is big enough. You would have to claim they didn’t meet the conditions of carriage or Australian Consumer Law. Its a drawn out process, so be prepared for the long haul. We got our conciliation meeting next week, so will see how it goes. Qantas is loath to pay compensation, so a court process maybe required to get them there.
I think they record the calls, so they can dig them up if required. Its worth a shot if the loss and damages is big enough. You would have to claim they didn’t meet the conditions of carriage or Australian Consumer Law. Its a drawn out process, so be prepared for the long haul. We got our conciliation meeting next week, so will see how it goes. Qantas is loath to pay compensation, so a court process maybe required to get them there.
Good luck mate. I know others have had Qantas call them as soon as they'd received the NCAT notification, and settled compensation before the meeting to avoid it going to hearing. Hopefully the same happens for you.
Very interested to see the outcome of this. I had Qantas fail to issue my reward tickets like many others. I think this might be a way for compensation.
After this is over it maybe an opportunity to do a "how to" summary for others guidance. The more people who initiate a claim with NCAT the more pressure that Qantas will have to deal with, potentially shifting the pendulum a tiny bit in favour of the customer and forcing Qantas to respond. Definitely more effective then the useless Airline Customer Advocate service that Qantas funds to stall the process.
Can I submit attachments with my NCAT Online application?
No, attachments cannot be submitted via NCAT Online. Any attachments relevant to your application must be posted or delivered to NCAT within five (5) working days after lodgement. Please include your application number when sending attachments. Your application number will be located at the top of your NCAT Online application form.
Just a thought - while there have been a few scenarios discussed in this thread, I'm worried that if someone is trying to bring a case to NCAT where their classic flight reward is cancelled and and Qantas fails to re-ticket an alternate flight, I suspect there could be some confusion over whose fault this is. Qantas would try to place the blame on the partner airline, when in fact many of these situations the partner airline is still holding a seat for a short period of time and the failure is on Qantas to re-ticket in time.
The problem for the petitioner here is that the details of how airline ticketing systems work, particularly the separate steps of booking vs ticketing, is fairly technical and not likely known to the magistrate. This might lead them to believe Qantas over the passenger, given that Qantas would have access to technical expertise on ticketing - it would be easy to write off the matter as a consumer not understanding how it works. NCAT will consider informal "expert" evidence (such as a letter) when appropriate, and I'm thinking this might be a situation where the petitioner could get someone, like a registered travel agent, to write a letter explaining what may have happened in order to back up the consumer. I know travel agents generally don't get involved in points booking, but there are a few that lurk on AFF - I'm wondering if this is something AFF members could help out by connecting a *CAT petitioner with an independent expert on ticketing to write a letter to explain what could have happened? (I realise the travel agent/expert in question wouldn't have access to the QF databases to know for sure, but they could at least explain a possible or likely scenario to help back up the petitioner.) Just a thought.
Fairly certain the traditional rules of evidence for courts don't apply to xCATs, so it is basically just up to the tribunal member to decide what they will accept and how much weight they give to it.
I live in NSW and Qantas is registered here, so I didn't have to deal with cross juridictional issues. With regards to the supporting documents I took mine into their office ( see below). Once I had a case number ( which you receive when you register it online ) I emailed them the ASIC search. They were quick in seting up the Conciliation meeting - two weeks from filing. We had to postpone as I had to be away fro work on the day, but got a meeting set up for two weeks later. Good luck with your claim and let us know how it goes.
Here is the physical and postal adress.
Consumer and Commercial Division
Level 14 Civic Tower, 66 Goulburn St, Sydney
Post: GPO Box 4005, Sydney NSW 2001 | DX 11638 Sydney Downtown
Cost of flights re-booked ( flew econmy, but original ticket was business )
Cost of reservations missed ( hotel, flights etc) due to cancellation and until we could get back to our orginal iteniary and we couldn't get our money back
Compensation for not flying business class as orginally booked ( claim is difference between economy and business)
Compensation for holiday days lost due to the cancellation
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