Gift Voucher Booking nonsense

[Pushka]

Before starting a new thread on Gift Vouchers I did a search and the most recent one was over 2 years ago so.....

I tried redeeming a gift voucher purchased during a promo period and these were my search results the flight I wanted being QF697.




Only J class available? I decided I would check without logging in and lo and behold, while Red deals were gone there were certainly flex fares available. Same day, Friday 13th.



I do recall posting this a few months ago and was told here that this was because I had searched incorrectly. Or something. Anyone I was told it was my user error. But not today.

Shonky?

 

[RooFlyer]

There was an individual post in some thread about this the other day .... so seems to be not to be an isolated instance.

Edit: here

 

[Strategic Aviation]

There are some very recent comments in the DSC thread regarding flight options in the normal booking engine being absent from the gift voucher booking engine (including my own experience), or flight options being more expensive.

 

[Fil-Ski]

Could be something the ACCC could look into if the issue persists

 

[Pushka]

It really needs a new thread then. It’s deceptive practice. And seems to be on the rise.

 

[kpc]

I bought 2 x $300 Gift vouchers last night to get the 2× $50 back with the current Amex promo.....and immediately used them to book 2 red e deal flights. The Gift voucher flight search engine seemed the same as the normal flight search engine for my flights bet Syd and Adl...still haven't received the e tickets though.

 

[Hvr]

I've had this issue previously and when I rang QF they were happy to book at the lower price and waived the fee without asking.

 

[Pushka]

I bought 2 x $300 Gift vouchers last night to get the 2× $50 back with the current Amex promo.....and immediately used them to book 2 red e deal flights. The Gift voucher flight search engine seemed the same as the normal flight search engine for my flights bet Syd and Adl...still haven't received the e tickets though.

I think it’s inconsistent. I used vouchers last week just fine. But not this morning. Maybe deliberately inconsistent so difficult to prove anything.

 

[VPS]

That's the problem I had last week and was really peed off when they very magnanimously said I wouldn't be charged extra for not booking on line (Boo hiss)

 

[Pushka]

That's the problem I had last week and was really peed off when they very magnanimously said I wouldn't be charged extra for not booking on line (Boo hiss)

Yes. I remember now. Didn’t want this issue to get lost in the DSC thread as it seems to be happening more frequently now and is something that Qantas needs to fix, or if deliberate, be addressed by higher authorities.

 

[Noah Count]

It’s deceptive practice. And seems to be on the rise.

I am not sure I would totally agree and would suspect it is system related.

I took interest in this post for a couple of reasons firstly most of my bookings start as vouchers and secondly the flight you were after (QF697) is my weekly freedom bird to SA.

I did the same search assuming 13/4 (Friday) and got the same results as you posted, just in case it was not Apr I searched 13/7 (Friday) and got similar results. Now as these were both Fridays so I randomly searched Fridays MEL-ADL across other months and each search returned J, very limited discount but no flex. Out of curiosity I searched MEL-ADL on other days of the week and all fares appeared as normal e.g. mix across all classes. Tried a few other random legs, MEL-SYD, ADL-SYD, SYD-ADL on Fridays and other days and all these seemed to be normal. For the record, my booking tests were not exhaustive at best 5-10 minutes worth of effort.

I seriously doubt this is deliberate, the system gremlins seem to have come out to play.

 

[Mattg]

I've seen similar before, where I could see one price on the regular site and another price (around $60 higher) when trying to redeem the gift voucher. The problem at the time was that the lower fare was an "E" class fare and for some reason these weren't/aren't shown on the voucher page at all. (Not that you'd ordinarily know it was an E class fare because QF doesn't tell you the fare class on their website!)

At the time I just called up and was able to redeem the voucher while paying the lower fare.

 

[Pushka]

I am not sure I would totally agree and would suspect it is system related.

I took interest in this post for a couple of reasons firstly most of my bookings start as vouchers and secondly the flight you were after (QF697) is my weekly freedom bird to SA.

I did the same search assuming 13/4 (Friday) and got the same results as you posted, just in case it was not Apr I searched 13/7 (Friday) and got similar results. Now as these were both Fridays so I randomly searched Fridays MEL-ADL across other months and each search returned J, very limited discount but no flex. Out of curiosity I searched MEL-ADL on other days of the week and all fares appeared as normal e.g. mix across all classes. Tried a few other random legs, MEL-SYD, ADL-SYD, SYD-ADL on Fridays and other days and all these seemed to be normal. For the record, my booking tests were not exhaustive at best 5-10 minutes worth of effort.

I seriously doubt this is deliberate, the system gremlins seem to have come out to play.

But I think others are reporting similar issues with different dates/times/places.

 

[amaroo]

I've booked 6 GV in the past few weeks and hand't had this issue .... I've booked everything from Red E to Business. I'm only new to the GV capper, so maybe I'm still a cleanskin.

 

[Scr77]

I usually choose incompetence over conspiracy.

 

[RichardMEL]

It is absolutely a system issue.

You have to understand that the whole GV implementation was a "kludge" on top of Amadeus using PNR's as the basis of the GV to make it "work" more or less. It's also why there's the various limitations such as ex-Oz only (currency is hard), no multi -city trips (not too sure why this is so hard, I suspect lazy programming, but it may be some other limitation) and so on. Why certain fare types do not come up during some searches is odd.

I suspect it is also related to the limitations imposed on residual/credit vouchers(which are basically the same method employed to create them) and clearly QF doesn't see a reason to invest time and effort to resolve the issues given some pax may just accept the prices offered and thus QF gets extra yield without effort, or pax call and get it issued, in which case QF "lose" nothing.

I'd also say this is why the "old" booking interface still exists for voucher purchases rather than the updated interface (it has its pros and cons) because this is totally separate set of code to make it "work"

Most other airlines implement it in a far better way, but QF has had the same flawed system for years and years.

Having said that I've never actually experienced this particular "feature" of the system and have always found the fares offered I expected, but maybe I'm just lucky.

 

[Austman]

A guess. Was it a $500.00 gift voucher? If so, the old problem of having to redeem at least $500.00 (and therefore only flights above that value are listed) might have returned... In other words it's being treated as a credit voucher.

 

[Pushka]

It is absolutely a system issue.

You have to understand that the whole GV implementation was a "kludge" on top of Amadeus using PNR's as the basis of the GV to make it "work" more or less. It's also why there's the various limitations such as ex-Oz only (currency is hard), no multi -city trips (not too sure why this is so hard, I suspect lazy programming, but it may be some other limitation) and so on. Why certain fare types do not come up during some searches is odd.

I suspect it is also related to the limitations imposed on residual/credit vouchers(which are basically the same method employed to create them) and clearly QF doesn't see a reason to invest time and effort to resolve the issues given some pax may just accept the prices offered and thus QF gets extra yield without effort, or pax call and get it issued, in which case QF "lose" nothing.

I'd also say this is why the "old" booking interface still exists for voucher purchases rather than the updated interface (it has its pros and cons) because this is totally separate set of code to make it "work"

Most other airlines implement it in a far better way, but QF has had the same flawed system for years and years.

Having said that I've never actually experienced this particular "feature" of the system and have always found the fares offered I expected, but maybe I'm just lucky.

Indeed. Lucky. Or maybe I’m not. It just seemed to be reported more frequently of late.
Is it possible that some class levels aren’t uploaded to the GV system? On the good news side, DSC were provided today for another delayed booking I made, after just 2 days.

A guess. Was it a $500.00 gift voucher? If so, the old problem of having to redeem at least $500.00 (and therefore only flights above that value are listed) might have returned...

$50. I’m cheap. For making delayed bookings.

 

[coriander]

I often get more "interesting prices" if I search with the browser set to "Private" or "Incognito". Works for airlines but especially hotel bookings. We've had two laptops open side-by-side looking at same webpage, one regular, the other in Private/Incognito mode - incognito/private page has lower prices for a given stay. I suppose you could also clear cookies, but Private/Incognito doesn't interfere with your logins etc., whereas clearing cookies does.

 

[RichardMEL]

I often get more "interesting prices" if I search with the browser set to "Private" or "Incognito". Works for airlines but especially hotel bookings. We've had two laptops open side-by-side looking at same webpage, one regular, the other in Private/Incognito mode - incognito/private page has lower prices for a given stay. I suppose you could also clear cookies, but Private/Incognito doesn't interfere with your logins etc., whereas clearing cookies does.

Yes but are you referring to the process of booking with Gift Vouchers or just in general?

Absolutely the idea of prior searches being used to up pricing due to perceived interest or demand for an item/trip/hotel room etc has been around for awhile. If one could actually prove this was happening THAT is absolutely something to take to Fair Trading or the like, but I think that's a very different thing to the issues with GV's.