Does Qantas deliberately make life difficult or are they just hopeless?

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ferntree

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Honestly, every interaction I have had with Qantas this year has turned into a three act drama, when they all should have been (and once upon a time would have been) so simple.

This is the latest ongoing saga.
  1. Back in July used points to book flights for Apr 7 from Hobart to Perth via Adelaide.
  2. Itinerary received.
  3. In October email advised of changes - Adelaide flight cancelled, we would now be travelling via MEL. Nothing unreasonable about this. The email advised that updated itinerary would be sent.
  4. Fast forward to today. Still no revised itinerary received. Went to My Bookings, the correct itinerary was shown. Clicked the link to resend itinerary.
  5. About 15 minutes later email from Qantas arrives ... with itinerary attached ... which of course was the original itinerary via ADL.
  6. Phoned 13 12 11. Explained all this to agent and asked if she could fix this and send me the correct itinerary. I'm not being pedantic here - I have Qantas induced paranoia of turning up at airport and no ticketing done!
  7. She says she is not authorised to do this (???????????) and puts me thru to another agent.
  8. Explain situation again to second agent. She says hold on, after about three minutes comes back, all done, will send correct revised itinerary. I thank her and hang up.
  9. 5 minutes later itinerary arrives in my email.
  10. Have you guessed correctly? Yes, that's right. It was yet again the original one via ADL on flights that do not and will not exist.
 
ferntree said:
Have you guessed correctly? Yes, that's right. It was yet again the original one via ADL on flights that do not and will not exist.
Click to expand...
This has been an issue with Qantas for years. The resend on MMB generally only sends the original e-ticket.

You can plug the PNR into www.CheckMyTrip.com and it would show you the new ticket number if it exists.
 
No joy ... I got automated reply that that email is for reward bookings with partner airlines only.
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Quickstatus said:
Im not match fit either, but does a change in itinerary sometimes cause a change in the PNR code?
Click to expand...

Thanks, but the code hasn't changed at all.
 
I guess the best thing to do is to retreat, lick my wounds, and have another go tomorrow.

But honestly, apart from the inconvenience they cause passengers, it would help themselves to get these things right first time ...
 
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To answer the question in the title of this thread...

I have basically come to the conclusion that Qantas does not value the time of its customers.

I don't think Qantas deliberately goes out of its way to make things hard. But if Qantas can save money by making something that should take a customer 5 minutes to do, take 3 hours to do, they seem to consider that to be a success because Qantas saved money. And that's a problem.
 
ferntree said:
  • In October email advised of changes - Adelaide flight cancelled, we would now be travelling via MEL. Nothing unreasonable about this. The email advised that updated itinerary would be sent.
  • Fast forward to today. Still no revised itinerary received. Went to My Bookings, the correct itinerary was shown. Clicked the link to resend itinerary.
  • itinerary attached ... which of course was the original itinerary via ADL.
  • It was yet again the original one via ADL on flights that do not and will not exist.
Click to expand...
The changes have not been ticketed. Hence as others have mentioned, the resend itinerary function will only send the original ticket.
You need to call up again and make sure you ask for the itinerary to be ticketed. If the operator lets you wait on the line while they do this, then take that option. It may be a long wait.

ferntree said:
  • She says she is not authorised to do this (???????????) and puts me thru to another agent.
Click to expand...
The front line call center staff that deal with customers cannot ticket itineraries, so yes she wouldn't have been able to do this. They can put the itinerary into a queue to be ticketed and/or call up the ticketing desk to get this done.
If you stress enough that you want the ticketing to be completed now, then they may sometimes put you on hold while they do this.


To note - QF can do this right. I had a domestic award flight change notification last week.
  • 10am - Received "Important changes to your flight" email from QF.
  • 12:30pm same day - Received updated e-ticket.
Not sure what causes the system to trip up sometimes
 
kpro said:
The changes have not been ticketed. Hence as others have mentioned, the resend itinerary function will only send the original ticket.
Click to expand...
No, that resend function seems to mainly send the original e-ticket. It is rare that it sends a revision - it is unreliable enough that I have given up using it
 
serfty said:
No, that resend function seems to mainly send the original e-ticket. It is rare that it sends a revision - it is unreliable enough that I have given up using it
Click to expand...
Several other OW websites have a “email e-Ticket” function, whilst they won’t resend the actual QF e-Ticket they usually provide some summary email that should help determine if a new ticket number has been issued?
 
djkelly69 said:
The Finnair order e-ticket page generally will send you the most up-to-date OW e-ticket receipt as well if you want something more than CMT to rely on.
Click to expand...

I wish Finnair would take over Qantas, or at least show them how to run an airline properly. They are my airline of choice when travelling to/from/thru Europe and have nothing but praise for them.
 
ferntree said:
I wish Finnair would take over Qantas,
Click to expand...
Pros and cons.

On their intra Europe flights I think they are quite Jetstar-ish with inflight food for purchase. Likely the realities of intra Europe travel?

Also AY is majority owned by State of Finland.
Do we want governments owning QF?

But I agree, it appears to be a well run airline. Appears safe as well. It's last crash was in 1963 while QF last crash was in 1951

And HEL is a great little hub to transit through.
 
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There are things QF do do deliberately (see "Simpler and Fairer" for example) and there are things they do to themselves to make things worse (poorly managed outsourcing of call centers, poor training and lack of authority to do things etc) and then there are the own goals they kick to make things even worse. Yes. definitely.

But to the thread question I think it's very much more towards the "Hopeless" end. I say that in conjunction with the above because of things like poor investment in IT and infrastrructure and what I believe is poor (now) legacy systems on top of Amadeus etc causing many of the issues (the "flight credit" kludge being a prime example for years). If they could get the back end and interfaces right then so much of the problems many have would evaporate overnight - the ticketing issues, the problems finding and getting partner rewards, all the rest of them that we all know all too well.

The thing is when one CAN get on to the right people with QF (and I admit and understand this is limited to mostly high status holders) such as HBA, things work and are done (eg: Just yesterday I had to make a last minute change to a rewards flight and it was done in mere minutes properly and ticketed promptly etc and with no issues and a (phone) smile). The way it should happen for everyone of course. This goes back to poor outsourcing and ability - both training and tools - to make it happen.

We do hear from folks like @TheInsider that things may be changing in this regard (for the better or worse, I'm unclear tbh) but again if everyone could get onto someone could could sort the issue the first time, first call etc.. again.. so much frustration would be reduced - so even if he website functionality issues are just too big a hurdle, agents CAN fix things properly. Utopia perhaps. Last night though I called AA as I had to change flights in conjunction with the earlier change. I had a flight credit that I couldn't use online for reasons, while it took a few minutes, the agent was able to book my new flight without issues and it ticketed while I was on the phone with her - exactly what anyone would expect - and I was calling the general number with no status or anything priority. Again, this should be what is the norm.. for some at QF though it's not (but yes, ticketing an AA flight with an AA credit is different to booking partner rewards, but I'm just using an example).

So anyway I think it's not deliberate per se but a consequence of lack of proper investment (both dollars and desire) in things like IT, customer service agents and their tools etc for years and it's ever more coming home to roost.
 

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