pay.com.au reward seat search service is poor

[random111]

Hey All
Not sure if the right place but posting to help others

I signed up to premium subscription with pay.com.au - the 20bps discount was appealing given the volume of my spend ($100k+ per month) but having affordable access to reward seat support was even more appealing

I'm looking at a few trips over next 12 months, engaged the pay.com.au team to help me with one trip. Their service has been so poor I'm now definitely not continuing my subscription next quarter and just wearing the extra fees for using amex on business expenses.

They have been very difficult to contact and their response is very slow when they do manage to get something back to me and I have feedback / question. For context I provided a very detailed trip plan which included a fair amount of flexibility on routing, stopovers and dates on the flights, it felt like they then spent 5 minutes conducting a search and came back with QFF classic plus tickets for PE / Business class, requiring 700k+ points per person. Despite giving them feedback on two occasions, they simply get coming back with QFF classic plus options - honestly the time I spent writing down our plans and giving them our thoughts on flexbility was way more than they spent searching.

I've subscriped to seats.aero and found at least 6+ options with a stopover that would see whole family (2A,3C) fly in PE the whole way. Yes its not a direct route and yes its not business but we are getting min 4 rewards seats + 1 cash and spending less on the entire route than one QFF class plus ticket. I was expecting some creativity and 'outside the box' suggestions from the supposed experts, what I got back was the laziest, most thoughtless and least appealing options possible!!

Hope this helps!!

 

[flyguy77]

I'm not surprised at all.

They are selling 'a dream' of flying Business/First Class and making (lots) of money in the process via the excessive fees people are paying for points that can rarely be used to fly when/where you want.

Sounds like they couldn't be bothered to help much with getting results once they have got your money.

 

[random111]

I'm not surprised at all.

They are selling 'a dream' of flying Business/First Class and making (lots) of money in the process via the excessive fees people are paying for points that can rarely be used to fly when/where you want.

Sounds like they couldn't be bothered to help much with getting results once they have got your money.

Well what their selling works and is totally plausible if someone invests the hours and effort to unlock it - they simply weren't willing to do that

Like I said, we found plenty of options that would mean we get at least 4 PE reward seats and 1 cash for a family holiday - ~1.5 cents per Amex point value and a cost of ~1.1cents post tax - decent ROI to me and thats PE

No ROI if comparing to buying 5 tix in economy but hey i've reached that stage in life where we can splurge a little on some creature comforts, at least this softens the cost!