I am the first to put their hand up and say "no" to change - if it is just for the sake of change. But I actually wish QF would start all over again from scratch.
IMHO the beauty of internet sites for any business should be two-fold - ease of use for the buyer of a product (not having to call and wait, not having to deal with call centre staff whose base language is different, seeing easily all options, etc, etc), and economics for the seller - having their product purchasable by everyone easily and at a very low cost to the seller (by removing expensive humans out of the procedure). IE it should be a win-win thing.
I know QF are not the only airline with painful sites, but I think they have lost their focus on these two concepts. The current format is lengthy, involves far more "real estate" for add-ons and other annoying cough, and the basics (simply buying a goddam ticket!!) are buried and need actual concentration and persistence for the purchaser to wade through.
I think it is almost pointless (or too hard) to describe the detailed frustrations and difficulties. There are so many. They need to start again from scratch. It amazes me on so many airline sites how it is not actually intuitive or easy to simply get to a screen where you can try to search for and buy a ticket!!??
I do not use phones or other devices with "apps" - am simply a pc user - but I understand that those poor fellows suffer a whole another world of pain. But even on a PC..... Oh my lord.....
I want to buy a flight from A to B. If I have a bit of flexibility and tick the "flexible dates" box (if you notice it - it is miniscule and easy to miss), then sure enough there is a row that shows other dates and different minimum prices. But if you play with this - ie try to select different dates, then the system appears to get lost. If you are not very careful you will end up with flights on a different date. I have learnt through sheer experience (and more pain) that if a better price is shown for another day, you need to do a new search with that different date to get reliable info.
Even if you just want flights on a specific date, you can not easily see the options - the flights are displayed in such a lengthy format that you have to scroll through interminable pages to view what is essentially just a few options. Then you have to select a leg - which throws out an even longer page of info. Something that should be as simple as clicking on a couple of boxes on a single page is drawn out to that screen, that if printed on paper, would be about two metres long!
If you are trying to view award bookings it is worse, or at least a different pain.
I only look for premium award flights. Why not let me select that option at the start, or simply do it automatically!!! WTF make me tick the options for premium flights and re-do the search every single bloody time?? And if I do a search using the "just points" option search engine, it only shows availabilty for the flights, not their cost? To see cost (and with QF this is a huge variable, both in points and co-payments), you have to tick each flight selected then go all the way to the "bottom" to see what it will cost. Yet if you search via cash or points, simply hovering over the awards options will instantly show you the cost?
I would love if QF came up with a site that was not so drowned in excessive cough. Where the key things are buried in waffle or obscenely excessive screen space, or diluted with so much tiresome attempts to upsell or advertise.
At least they are not as bad as some though - with Avianca, when you buy a ticket, the first option is to input your frequent flyer number and if you do so it auto-fills all your details. But then the second question after that process is them asking you if you are a member of a frequent flyer program and if so to input your FF number
