Just lodged my first case with the ACA

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So, they have agreed to pay $704.10 + $118.37 rounded up?
No, just the $135. The $704.10 amount was a speculative amount I was going to include as well if they made me go to the hassle of involving the small claims tribunal. I was personally only out of pocket to the tune of $135. The $704.10 was an expense paid by my employer.
 
Here's what it looks like when you win an ACA case.
 

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No, just the $135. The $704.10 amount was a speculative amount I was going to include as well if they made me go to the hassle of involving the small claims tribunal. I was personally only out of pocket to the tune of $135. The $704.10 was an expense paid by my employer.

Incredible the amount of work Qantas put in to try to screw such a small amount of money out of a customer who had been seriously stuffed around by their failure to provide a service. A true reflection of their value for customers.
 
Incredible the amount of work Qantas put in to try to screw such a small amount of money out of a customer who had been seriously stuffed around by their failure to provide a service. A true reflection of their value for customers.

Can someone please tell me which airline doesn't stuff around customers?
 
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Can someone please tell me which airline doesn't stuff around customers?

Certainly not saying others don't, but the money Qantas put into ACA fees and staff wages to fight such a petty battle (in which they were totally in the wrong) is amazing. I'm sure other carriers would have performed equally poorly.
 
Certainly not saying others don't, but the money Qantas put into ACA fees and staff wages to fight such a petty battle (in which they were totally in the wrong) is amazing. I'm sure other carriers would have performed equally poorly.

It's precedent they are worried about. Look at a business like McDonald's, they will have a go at anyone even if they know they will loose. They don't want the floodgates open.

If you think it's only Qantas you are being a bit naive.
 
Incredible the amount of work Qantas put in to try to screw such a small amount of money out of a customer who had been seriously stuffed around by their failure to provide a service. A true reflection of their value for customers.
My thoughts too. Airlines however are not unfortunately alone in this behaviour. Almost all large companies do this now. They have all adopted the classic insurance company DDD policy. Deny, Defend, Delay as their SOP to any and all customer complaints. They will happily spend $100 to save $10. I think it's about not creating a precedent, not accepting any responsibility and a little bit of the full-time company lawyers on monthly retainer justifying their own existence and jobs.

In the age of social media, they know via means such as this one that their actions are going to be much more widely seen today than they ever were in the past and hence they don't want it to become widely known they're a push-over who caves at the first sign of a complaint being lodged. Otherwise, they reason, there is the risk of creating an avalanche of free money payouts from spurious claims left right and centre. This is why they will happily spend the time and money far excess of the value of the claim to defend it.

The classic line that's always included "as a gesture of goodwill" is legal council-speak for we accept no responsibility and don't acknowledge any wrong-doing on our behalf, but we'll pay you out anyway. This again is designed to prevent any precedents and the leaving of any cracks open for like-claims to follow up afterwards.

Their third defence is the most annoying and frustrating for me which is the delay tactic, designed to wear you down and make you give up through loss of fortitude. Hiding e-mail addresses, denying receipt of correspondence, not replying, constant staff changes so you never speak to the same customer service rep twice, having no working correspondence reference system so that each enquiry has to start again from first contact each time. Claiming forms and receipts and correspondence hasn't been submitted in a format they can open/read, demanding forms be submitted via their uploading portal system that doesn't actually exist, redirections to non-working and non-existant departments for complaint resolution etc. These are all the tactics employed to delay any resolution of the problem until the complainant either goes away of their own accord or it extends the dispute out to beyond the time limit where their self-imposed rules mean they will no longer look into it.

Just in this case about $135 I had to submit their completed claim form for payment back to them a total of four times and in doing so they even wanted to argue about the scanned signature on it, the format version of the PDF document it had been saved in and the fact I had added extra information on the form that wasn't required or contained completely within the perimeter of the box. All issues that might prevent or delay the form being processed apparently. Just more delaying tactics. Even then, I still get a response saying it's going to take them 10 working days to process an EFT. Something I can manage to do several of each day in a matter of a few minutes.

"A gesture of goodwill" ? :rolleyes:
Yep. This phrase is quickly becoming the most commonly heard line in customer/business relations these days. Every single dispute of any nature whatsoever is always resolved with the caveat "as a gesture of goodwill". It's used so often and so flippantly and with such disregard that it's virtually lost all meaning. It's the company legal council way of saying the judges decision is final and no further correspondence will be entered into… oh and by the way, we weren't at fault either.

It's precedent they are worried about. Look at a business like McDonald's, they will have a go at anyone even if they know they will loose. They don't want the floodgates open.

If you think it's only Qantas you are being a bit naive.
Exactly. It's definitely not just airlines. It's every large corporation doing this now. I've had the same arguments with banks, credit card providers, insurance companies and even government utility providers like Water Corporation, electricity retailers, DMV, local councils… they're all infected with the same disease these days and the more things get automated and pushed online with fewer and fewer real human staff to deal with them, the worse it's going to get. Companies simply don't want to deal with customers. They want their money, but nothing else. Customers are a pain in the ar5e they simply don't want and anything they can do to discourage the customer from contacting them about anything after the money has been handed over is a good thing to them.

I believe this is a large reason why there is often physical violence when the human parties actually come together in person these days and why disputes escalate so quickly. By the time human face to face contact is eventually established, the complainant has already been riled up to such a level of frustration and annoyance over many months arguing with computers and faceless drone employees with no vested interest in actually finding a solution, they're already right on the verge of pulling out a gun and shooting someone. That's when you see what appears to be the totally irrational and OTT reaction to a dispute over what amounts to a truly trivial amount of money in the greater scheme of things. If the company involved had simply resolved the dispute in the first instance with a calm face to face human exchange involving some empathy and understanding, then no-one would have got shot and the company would have gained a lot of positive PR. Sadly though, this is never the path taken these days because people are too expensive to employ and computers don't yet do empathy or understanding. They do rules.
 
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Here is a great example of a case I was involved with as an expert witness.

Lady in her seventies is at a park with Childrens and adult rides. Lady falls off a ride with her grandkids on board as well and seriously breaks leg resulting in 4 months hospital and rods in leg at St Vincent's in Sydney.

Lawyer contacts insurance company suggesting $100k will cover it. Insurance company responds with $10k offer.

Lady and lawyer decline and say we will see you in court. The insurance company on the day before court offer $200k which is again declined. They come back with $275k plus reimbursement of all Medicals to Medicare and St Vincent's which is accepted.

Lady and legal team were happy with $100k but due to the arrogance of the insurers it cost them 4 times that.
 
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Here is a great example of a case I was involved with as an expert witness.

Lady in her seventies is at a park with Childrens and adult rides. Lady falls off a ride with her grandkids on board as well and serviously breaks leg resulting in 4 months hospital and rods in leg at St Vincent's in Sydney.

Lawyer contacts insurance company suggesting $100k will cover it. Insurance company responds with $10k offer.

Lady and lawyer decline and say we will see you in court. The insurance company on the day before court offer $200k which is again declined.
Great story. I've found this a lot in the battles I've taken on too. They won't ever make a serious offer until you're right on the precipice of starting legal action. Right to the point where it's almost too late to back out. ie. everyone has already taken time off and travelled to the mediation room. You really do have to be prepared to get that serious and take it that far. Just the threat is not good enough, you have to be prepared to put real tangible effort where your mouth is.


They come back with $275k plus reimbursement of all Medicals to Medicare and St Vincent's which is accepted.

Lady and legal team were happy with $100k but due to the arrogance of the insurers it cost them 4 times that.
Unfortunately the insurance company won't have learned anything from the experience at all. They'll justify their actions to themselves in the post-case review by saying the potential worst case pay out they could have been up for was $1mil, and therefore the resultant payout of only $400K was actually a 'win' for them.
This is how it'll be declared in their end of financial report of liabilities and incidentals that gets reported to their shareholders. You can make anything look like a victory if you compare it to the worst case possible scenario instead of what was the closest possible alternative resolution. Especially when you have carte blanche to make up whatever your overpaid actuaries are instructed to report as being the value of the worst case scenario.

Trust me, the insurance company will not be viewing that case as a loss for them and as a result they'll repeat exactly what they did that time again to the next victim of their indifference.
 
No surnames or direct contact details of course because no Australian company actually wants their customers to be able to contact the same person twice to follow up a complaint.
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Legoman, many of us can relate to this!

Governments' excuse is that it's for their staff security that no one gives surnames. Borderline acceptable, but they know all your and my details.

Private sector: not acceptable.

On work related matters, I have always given my full name to anyone requesting it. That ought be the standard everywhere.
 
Calling someone feral due to tattoos and piercings is where you lose credibility sorry. If this is the tone you are taking with QF, I am not honestly surprised that they are making it hard for you.

I don't agree.

Legoman writes extremely well. Clearly he's articulate.

He has behaved reasonably in the circumstances and on top of that has written some fascinating posts.
 
No wonder they wouldn't payout what you're asking. You're receipt isn't itemised. It could be for anything. It is up to YOU to get an itemised receipt. That is YOUR responsibility and legal right from the premises. Qantas are fully within the rights to not cough up if you can't provide itemised receipts.

Heaps of businesses in Australia decline to give itemised receipts. Another subset only accept cash (markets is one location where this remains common) or offer a 'discount' if one pays in cash (tradesmen who engage in tax avoidance.)

Port Hedland, to which I've only been once and not by air, is hardly Watson's Bay or Collins St.
 
I don't agree.

Legoman writes extremely well. Clearly he's articulate.

He has behaved reasonably in the circumstances and on top of that has written some fascinating posts.

His behaviour in the circumstances is a separate issue to the comments here. I’ll state it again that tattoos and piercings doesn’t make one a feral, their actions do that. Pity you persist with the stereotypes
 
No, just the $135.
I think I would have done the same out of principle and for 'stick it to em'' factor, but you do have to wonder after all the effort and time put in, if it was actually worth it.
 
I think I would have done the same out of principle and for 'stick it to em'' factor, but you do have to wonder after all the effort and time put in, if it was actually worth it.

I bet there would be shareholders who would also possibly be wondering if the time and efforts expended by the airline was a suitable use of company resources, given that this particular case was a "lay down misere" and an expeditious alternative would have cost the airline an order of magnitude less than their expenses fighting such a futile and trivial battle.
 
I bet there would be shareholders who would also possibly be wondering if the time and efforts expended by the airline was a suitable use of company resources, given that this particular case was a "lay down misere" and an expeditious alternative would have cost the airline an order of magnitude less than their expenses fighting such a futile and trivial battle.

Agree, but like many medium and larger sized businesses in the 21st century, many if not all airlines work on the assumption that most of us won't bother complaining. Where one has a clear case and is not suffering 'entitlement mentality', it's important to complain to the carrier and then (if relevant) to the ACA.

If we don't do this individually to companies, it sends them a very strong message that we tolerate being ripped off.
 
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