Are other airlines also as bad as Qantas?

[Flying mermaid]

reply today - they are always very nice aren't they....

Dear Flying Mermaid

Thank you for your email.

We have located the booking reference for your daughter and son-in-law: xx_xx_

We apologise for the recent change to our scheduled services from Canberra to Melbourne. Please forward your requests for investigation and consideration to our Customer Care department upon completion of the journey. We have looked at options via Sydney, Brisbane and Perth on the day of travel without success.

Operating a worldwide timetable means that despite our best planning, we are occasionally forced to change our schedules for a variety of reasons, mostly operational, a situation encountered by all airlines. As a change to schedule forms part of our conditions of carriage to which passengers are bound at the time of ticket purchase, we are unable to guarantee this will not occur on any reservation.

These changes certainly challenge our planning and we know they can be very disruptive to our customers, so we commit to informing our customers as soon as we are aware of any impending change. You may find the link useful:
Qantas | Book airfares on Australia Pacific's Best Airline

Thank you for your time and patience.

Regards
The Qantas Team

Didn't actually answer my request for compensation - maybe that happens after the flight if you have the energy to do it....

(not actually a son-in-law, but we are expecting a ring on her finger soon )

 

[BAM1748]

QF don't do the downgrade well at all and need a rocket over it. Pathetic that this same issue comes up here every 2 or 3 months so it must be a problem and QF/Red Roo choose to do nothing. :evil:

 

[love_the_life]

Makes you almost (but not quite) feel sorry for QF having to juggle all those factors and deal with passengers as well. They just palm off complaints with smarmy words and hope the passengers just give up.

 

[dajop]

So basically they're saying this wasn't a downgrade, it was a change of schedule (to a later flight..... much much later), and because you didn't accept the change of schedule, it was your choice to go in economy so we owe you nothing.

 

[Flying mermaid]

So basically they're saying this wasn't a downgrade, it was a change of schedule (to a later flight..... much much later), and because you didn't accept the change of schedule, it was your choice to go in economy so we owe you nothing.

I think it was more "our job is to sort out your flights and we can't do it. If you want to fight about compensation do it with another area after the event". Not sure what the link is about - just seems to take me to the main page.

I will wait and see what happens when Miss FM comes back - any more problems with her flights or downgrades and I will definitely chase further. As a family we are sitting close to 50,000 status credits. Certainly 3 of us will be flying with other airlines in future. Not sure about Master FM and Dr FM - with lifetime QC and flying economy, it makes sense for them to stick with Qantas at the moment. However I will certainly encourage them to look elsewhere once they have the money to pay for J.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

reply today - they are always very nice aren't they....

Dear Flying Mermaid

Thank you for your email.

We have located the booking reference for your daughter and son-in-law: xx_xx_

We apologise for the recent change to our scheduled services from Canberra to Melbourne. Please forward your requests for investigation and consideration to our Customer Care department upon completion of the journey. We have looked at options via Sydney, Brisbane and Perth on the day of travel without success.

Operating a worldwide timetable means that despite our best planning, we are occasionally forced to change our schedules for a variety of reasons, mostly operational, a situation encountered by all airlines. As a change to schedule forms part of our conditions of carriage to which passengers are bound at the time of ticket purchase, we are unable to guarantee this will not occur on any reservation.

These changes certainly challenge our planning and we know they can be very disruptive to our customers, so we commit to informing our customers as soon as we are aware of any impending change. You may find the link useful:
Qantas | Book airfares on Australia Pacific's Best Airline

Thank you for your time and patience.

Regards
The Qantas Team

Didn't actually answer my request for compensation - maybe that happens after the flight if you have the energy to do it....

(not actually a son-in-law, but we are expecting a ring on her finger soon )

With regard to the text in bold - yeah - a situation encountered by all airlines, but let's conveniently leave out all the ones covered by EU261!

QF can have their operational difficulties AND offer compensation.

Makes you almost (but not quite) feel sorry for QF having to juggle all those factors and deal with passengers as well.

I think the 'Ready for Takeoff' series (Channel 9) highlighted that. Not so much focus on the USA bound passengers delayed for 5+ hours in the airport before enduring another 14+ hours to the USA. I think we were supposed to sympathise instead with the poor airport manager was happy to be finally going home to a hot bath and glass of wine.

 

[dajop]

QF can have their operational difficulties AND offer compensation.

I can understand why airlines are difficult to extract compensation from for schedule changes, sometimes stuff happens. And there are plenty of gold diggers out there.

But where those changes result in a totally different and much cheaper product being delivered to the consumer, it's not really compensation at all ... it a refund for the services paid for but not received. That is totally different to compensation. The trouble is the way they calculate the refund is based on a high fare in economy class - certainly not the lowest or even the average fare paid.

 

[Flying mermaid]

The problem lies with our regulators. At the end of the day Qantas has become a company who is going to try and squeeze out as much profit as possible. This is as it should be (probably). Other jurisdictions have accepted they need to force airlines to do the right thing, Australian regulators seem happy to ignore it. Australia is a small country and very incestuous at higher levels - I am sure plenty of opportunity for lobbying and putting their point of view.

 

[JohnK]

What a really poor attitude towards your customers. Actually arrogant attitude would be closer to the mark.

We can downgrade you from business to economy and it's tough luck. And we don't have to offer you any compensation.

The sooner government authorities can get onto this sham the better. Consumers need to be protected. As mentioned what's stopping a car dealer delivering you a Yaris when you purchased a Mercedes?

 

[aussiel]

Yes any corporate will push the boundaries until they get stung. This could be in the form of media attention (probably not going to get much sympathy from the masses on this one), court rulings or shareholder discontent. Unfortunately, the only one of the aforementioned that is even remotely possible would be a court ruling.

 

[qantas21]

Makes you almost (but not quite) feel sorry for QF having to juggle all those factors and deal with passengers as well. They just palm off complaints with smarmy words and hope the passengers just give up.

I can confirm the above regularly occurs with complaints after receiving the token "I am sorry that this response cannot be more favourable and trust it confirms our position on this issue." I have fell victim to this token line not once, not twice but three times after:

1) Being mistakenly double charged ($4000) by QF and incurring bank charges
2) Being downgraded HND-SYD and
3) Being stranded in Vanuatu after QF pulled code share mid travel.

After 'several internal investigations' the customer care agents thought "2000 QF POINTS COMPLIMENTS OF CUSTOMER CARE" was sufficient on occasion 1 & 2 with nothing on occasion 3.

It seems as though seeking the bare minimum of fare difference is out of the question from QF perspective. Red Roo has been informed of the above and confirmed her position through QF customer care. The team also advised me to save time and simply contact customer care directly as ALL complaints end up in the same QF customer care basket. I'm thinking my last resort is a CC charge back for occasion 2.

In light of above, I would like to extend my retrospective apologies to all the DYKWIA AFF contributors who I originally thought were bat cough crazy. My run of QF luck has finally ended with a catastrophic dynamite boom.

 

[theevilmuppet]

Two questions if I may:

1. When were the fares purchased?
2. Were they purchased with a credit card?

Whilst a "reversal" isn't possible (reversals can only occur during the same settlement period the original transaction was in), a transaction dispute (also called a chargeback) will get you plenty of attention quite quickly. Given this immediately costs the airline funds and the costs continue to mount as long as the dispute is open, the process often works wonders.

Unfortunately the vast majority of responses one gets from going through the standard customer service channels are canned and/or from people who see their performance measured in terms of turn-around times and/or handling time. Sometimes you'll need to be worryingly boolean and direct to get the attention of someone who has the ability to understand what is required of your question or complaint, let alone have it appropriately handled.

 

[cherft]

Pity we don't have any heavy hitting consumer protection organisations in Australia. ACCC? Perhaps Business Class purchasers are considered too affluent for them to support? AFF? Not enough numbers to take any action? 9ACA? QF too big a sponsor to consider upsetting?
Sadly, I have all but deserted QF and have recently been travelling EK and SQ. I had a foul trip to LAX that has soured my regard for QF permanently.

 

[rsellens]

Last July flying J from LHR I arrived in MEL to be geeted with news that my connection to HBA had been cancelled and I was to be transferred to JQ. My answer was no way, I would happy to wait for the next QF flight. It turned out that was also cancelled and I was told that I would have to go on the next JQ flight, sitting in the middle seat. I dug my heels in and said NO WAY, could they transfer me to VA. I was told that they had an agreement with VA to transfer Y passengers but not J. I advised them I would wait until they had another QF to HBA. 10 minutes later they had arranged a transfer to VA. The only problem then was that it cost me a cab fare home as I did not get my limo and also received no points or status credits.

As a follow up to this I was once again travelling MEL-HBA recently and once again had the flight cancelled though well in advance this time and I could rearrange things. These 2 episodes have highlighted the fact that since QF have downgraded their service to Hobart to Qantaslink 717s, if there is a problem they do not have the capacity to replace unserviceable aircraft.

 

[tofidog]

Well people have motivated me enough to email Qantas tomorrow and I will report back. Thanks for support guys I was feeling very unhappy earlier - probably silly to get so cranky over it!

Not silly at all!

 

[prozac]

Just typical of any Australian airline really Flying mermaid. There is so little competition that they don't give a tinkers cuss about those who fly. Think how much easier it would be to operate an airline if they didn't have to carry those pesky, complaining passengers.

 

[opusman]

The thing I've taken away from this thread is, whenever booking premium class travel, take a screenshot showing the economy class prices on the same date/flight, to have some documentary proof should arguing for an equitable refund become necessary.

 

[zoomzoom]

Just another reason to move on from QF, we grew up with them, but they are arrogant, so complacent they will do just about anything to long suffering customers. Its not about the customer its all about the executives KPI's.

 

[thehound]

Have people attempted credit card reversals in the past regarding these issues?

I had a massive fight with Expedia regarding a hotel in the Middle East who stuck me in a regular room rather than the suite I'd paid for (as they were full). Expedia's final statement was that "the hotel advises you requested the other room on arrival" and dug their feet in.

I disputed the charge with Westpac, got a full refund and never heard another word (which will be my new first course of action)

Would it be worth trying this with Qantas?

The difficulty with this course of action in the OP's circumstances are that the downgrade was only for part of the journey. I think it's hard to request a chargeback when the majority of the flights were as purchased. I'm not sure how chargebacks work - can one request a partial chargeback?

 

[coco50]

I wonder if there is a case to be made to ASIC or a state consumer tribunal. The customer has paid for a product which the business has not given them.