Don’t lose heart keep fighting for your OWA

[Nitro6333]

I thought I would just add my story here for the benefit of others and encouragement to those going through the nightmare of cancelations due to ticketing problems.

I have 3 OWA's starting this December for our family: Syd-Hkg-Sin-Hel-Dus-Fco-Lhr-Aus-Iah-Lax-Sfo-Hkg-Syd all in J



The problems started on 11/9 with my booking A when AA made an involuntary change which affected all three bookings. I accepted the changes in MMB straight away. Bookings B and C were ticketed fine and new e-tickets received within hours. Booking A dropped off the cliff and ticket number vanished from the booking on CMT which resulted in CX auto cancelling 4 sectors within 12 hours of the change even though I made at least ten attempts to try and get the booking reticketed before the flights disappeared with no luck.



The constant phoning began in an effort to try and get the flights reinstated. As a bronze I wasn’t able to get through to Hobart so I was on the hamster wheel and literally made hundreds of calls to the O/S call enters with no luck with the reinstatement. At this stage I made several hundred attempts to email [email protected] with absolutely no response whatsoever so I gave up on that and just kept calling in hope I would win the lottery and get Hobart……..no luck.



Fast forward to 2/10 when AA decided to make another small involuntary time change to the same flights and I also accepted the changes in MMB. This resulted in booking C being reticketed fine but booking B dropped off the cliff this time and all 4 CX sectors were auto cancelled. This just added to the difficulty level when contacting the O/S centres having to constantly re explain what happened and can we please get the CX flights reinstated on bookings A and B. I was beginning to loose heart and starting to give in to the thought our Christmas plans were out the window!



As a last ditch effort whilst still phoning several times a day and being constantly lied to on the hamster wheel I decided to email some other executives at QF and finally won the lotto. I got a quick response from [email protected] personal assistant who assured me “I am terribly sorry to hear that about your ticketing issues and I have sent this onto our customer team for urgent investigation and action” great I thought and was expecting a call imminently!



Remembering this was during school holidays at the time the call took 7 days to come through. Finally Hobart called and how nice it was to finally hear that Aussie voice kind of like when you check in at LHR or LAX after a long trip overseas. S explained to me that my case had been bouncing around the Hobart office for a few days and was handed to her with the words “just fix this mess now” attached.



So as a result S explained we just weren’t getting the CX flights back and we would have to just replace them with QF flights. I was given the option of choosing the flights that suited us and they were booked and ticketed as full revenue flights on a separate ticket all paid for with the QF charge card.



On discussing the matter further with S I was told this was happening frequently and the charge card was getting a weekly hammering. The O/S operators that initially “lost the tickets” through processing errors were at fault for the sectors being canceld and it was happening way too much.



So sorry for the long post but I hope this helps others in my situation with some inspiration. Don’t lose heart keep fighting for your booking!

 

[antycbr]

I thought I would just add my story here for the benefit of others and encouragement to those going through the nightmare of cancelations due to ticketing problems.

I have 3 OWA's starting this December for our family: Syd-Hkg-Sin-Hel-Dus-Fco-Lhr-Aus-Iah-Lax-Sfo-Hkg-Syd all in J



The problems started on 11/9 with my booking A when AA made an involuntary change which affected all three bookings. I accepted the changes in MMB straight away. Bookings B and C were ticketed fine and new e-tickets received within hours. Booking A dropped off the cliff and ticket number vanished from the booking on CMT which resulted in CX auto cancelling 4 sectors within 12 hours of the change even though I made at least ten attempts to try and get the booking reticketed before the flights disappeared with no luck.



The constant phoning began in an effort to try and get the flights reinstated. As a bronze I wasn’t able to get through to Hobart so I was on the hamster wheel and literally made hundreds of calls to the O/S call enters with no luck with the reinstatement. At this stage I made several hundred attempts to email [email protected] with absolutely no response whatsoever so I gave up on that and just kept calling in hope I would win the lottery and get Hobart……..no luck.



Fast forward to 2/10 when AA decided to make another small involuntary time change to the same flights and I also accepted the changes in MMB. This resulted in booking C being reticketed fine but booking B dropped off the cliff this time and all 4 CX sectors were auto cancelled. This just added to the difficulty level when contacting the O/S centres having to constantly re explain what happened and can we please get the CX flights reinstated on bookings A and B. I was beginning to loose heart and starting to give in to the thought our Christmas plans were out the window!



As a last ditch effort whilst still phoning several times a day and being constantly lied to on the hamster wheel I decided to email some other executives at QF and finally won the lotto. I got a quick response from [email protected] personal assistant who assured me “I am terribly sorry to hear that about your ticketing issues and I have sent this onto our customer team for urgent investigation and action” great I thought and was expecting a call imminently!



Remembering this was during school holidays at the time the call took 7 days to come through. Finally Hobart called and how nice it was to finally hear that Aussie voice kind of like when you check in at LHR or LAX after a long trip overseas. S explained to me that my case had been bouncing around the Hobart office for a few days and was handed to her with the words “just fix this mess now” attached.



So as a result S explained we just weren’t getting the CX flights back and we would have to just replace them with QF flights. I was given the option of choosing the flights that suited us and they were booked and ticketed as full revenue flights on a separate ticket all paid for with the QF charge card.



On discussing the matter further with S I was told this was happening frequently and the charge card was getting a weekly hammering. The O/S operators that initially “lost the tickets” through processing errors were at fault for the sectors being canceld and it was happening way too much.



So sorry for the long post but I hope this helps others in my situation with some inspiration. Don’t lose heart keep fighting for your booking!

Sounds like people need to read the annual report and contact each and every senior officer at QF until you get a response. Guess you could extend that to the board of directors too…

 

[CaptainCurtis]

Sounds very familiar to my experience. Glad you finally have it sorted, and fingers crossed there aren't any further changes before your flights.

Just an FYI, Tully's email is just '.com'. No '.au' at the end.

Post automatically merged: Oct 14, 2022

Sounds like people need to read the annual report and contact each and every senior officer at QF until you get a response. Guess you could extend that to the board of directors too…

Completely agree, we should start a thread that lists exec/board emails in one central place.

 

[RooFlyer]

Sounds like people need to read the annual report and contact each and every senior officer at QF until you get a response. Guess you could extend that to the board of directors too…

Good idea!! Years ago in Sydney I had continuing (months) issues with Australia Post. After trying every reasonable avenue, multiple times, I finally wrote letters to every Board member (their main work places, per the Annual Report, marked 'Private') just simply stating what was going on and a question "Please tell me how I can stop this happening".

I soon got a phone call from a very sheepish very senior manager of AP in NSW who came in to my work place with a colleague with a very full apology. Issue was fixed.

 

[Nitro6333]

Sounds very familiar to my experience. Glad you finally have it sorted, and fingers crossed there aren't any further changes before your flights.

Just an FYI, Tully's email is just '.com'. No '.au' at the end.

Post automatically merged: Oct 14, 2022

Completely agree, we should start a thread that lists exec/board emails in one central place.

Yes that was a typo i was sending to .com only

 

[tradingup]

I thought I would just add my story here for the benefit of others and encouragement to those going through the nightmare of cancelations due to ticketing problems.

I have 3 OWA's starting this December for our family: Syd-Hkg-Sin-Hel-Dus-Fco-Lhr-Aus-Iah-Lax-Sfo-Hkg-Syd all in J



The problems started on 11/9 with my booking A when AA made an involuntary change which affected all three bookings. I accepted the changes in MMB straight away. Bookings B and C were ticketed fine and new e-tickets received within hours. Booking A dropped off the cliff and ticket number vanished from the booking on CMT which resulted in CX auto cancelling 4 sectors within 12 hours of the change even though I made at least ten attempts to try and get the booking reticketed before the flights disappeared with no luck.



The constant phoning began in an effort to try and get the flights reinstated. As a bronze I wasn’t able to get through to Hobart so I was on the hamster wheel and literally made hundreds of calls to the O/S call enters with no luck with the reinstatement. At this stage I made several hundred attempts to email [email protected] with absolutely no response whatsoever so I gave up on that and just kept calling in hope I would win the lottery and get Hobart……..no luck.



Fast forward to 2/10 when AA decided to make another small involuntary time change to the same flights and I also accepted the changes in MMB. This resulted in booking C being reticketed fine but booking B dropped off the cliff this time and all 4 CX sectors were auto cancelled. This just added to the difficulty level when contacting the O/S centres having to constantly re explain what happened and can we please get the CX flights reinstated on bookings A and B. I was beginning to loose heart and starting to give in to the thought our Christmas plans were out the window!



As a last ditch effort whilst still phoning several times a day and being constantly lied to on the hamster wheel I decided to email some other executives at QF and finally won the lotto. I got a quick response from [email protected] personal assistant who assured me “I am terribly sorry to hear that about your ticketing issues and I have sent this onto our customer team for urgent investigation and action” great I thought and was expecting a call imminently!



Remembering this was during school holidays at the time the call took 7 days to come through. Finally Hobart called and how nice it was to finally hear that Aussie voice kind of like when you check in at LHR or LAX after a long trip overseas. S explained to me that my case had been bouncing around the Hobart office for a few days and was handed to her with the words “just fix this mess now” attached.



So as a result S explained we just weren’t getting the CX flights back and we would have to just replace them with QF flights. I was given the option of choosing the flights that suited us and they were booked and ticketed as full revenue flights on a separate ticket all paid for with the QF charge card.



On discussing the matter further with S I was told this was happening frequently and the charge card was getting a weekly hammering. The O/S operators that initially “lost the tickets” through processing errors were at fault for the sectors being canceld and it was happening way too much.



So sorry for the long post but I hope this helps others in my situation with some inspiration. Don’t lose heart keep fighting for your booking!

Thank you!

My Qatar operated QFF rewards booking for 30 October in business class Vienna-Canberra was cancelled .
Unfortunately for me I was already in Europe, before it was announced. Both Qantas and Qatar claim the other is responsible to confirm a flight home. Qantas call centres give a different answer every day and after two weeks, I am no closer to a re-ticket home.
I had also emailed Stephanie Tully and received no response. Really hoping for a better outcome from my email to Andrew David.

 

[tdimdad]

Now, one of the questions is whether the charge card purchases exceed the value of equipping the call centres to do their job right? Hopefully QF monitors that and takes appropriate action.

What we can do at the grassroots is to keep pushing for the reinstatement of lost flights so that the card balance keeps ballooning past the point where it triggers corrective action in the call centres.

 

[Pushka]

Thank you!

My Qatar operated QFF rewards booking for 30 October in business class Vienna-Canberra was cancelled .
Unfortunately for me I was already in Europe, before it was announced. Both Qantas and Qatar claim the other is responsible to confirm a flight home. Qantas call centres give a different answer every day and after two weeks, I am no closer to a re-ticket home.
I had also emailed Stephanie Tully and received no response. Really hoping for a better outcome from my email to Andrew David.

It’s a Qantas issue to fix. Similar happened to us with Jetstar award booking through Qantas. Jetstar cancelled but said it was a Qantas issue to rebook. Which they did a couple of days later.

 

[Anna]

We would all like the call centres to do a better job. But maybe senior management would see a better solution as being to get rid of the ability to book these complex awards that are so hard to fix when things get changed or go wrong. An enhancement, to use another word.

 

[Nitro6333]

We would all like the call centres to do a better job. But maybe senior management would see a better solution as being to get rid of the ability to book these complex awards that are so hard to fix when things get changed or go wrong. An enhancement, to use another word.

Or just "enhance" the call centres by training the staff. A lot of them you get have been there less than 6 months (I ask when I call).

 

[JohnK]

Or just "enhance" the call centres by training the staff. A lot of them you get have been there less than 6 months (I ask when I call).

Call centres usually have a high staff turnover.

The local call centres used to be very good but even then you can have high staff turnover.

I've come to realise the biggest problem in the past few months have been very complex partner awards.

 

[jpp42]

We would all like the call centres to do a better job. But maybe senior management would see a better solution as being to get rid of the ability to book these complex awards that are so hard to fix when things get changed or go wrong. An enhancement, to use another word.

I was wondering about this. It seems the Qantas OWA is pretty generous compared to that offered by other OneWorld airlines. Qantas being generous on anything seems like an aberration, so it seems eventually this will be enhanced. This would be especially the case if someone starts doing the sums on how much Qantas is spending on converting revenue seats due to escalations when people get their reward seats cancelled for ticketing reasons as we've seen is so common lately.

 

[djkelly69]

It seems the Qantas OWA is pretty generous compared to that offered by other OneWorld airlines.

Not sure if CX has made any changes recently, but from memory theirs had similar pricing (although more distance based). I think they are probably the main 'competitor' for QF in the OWA space.

You could also argue being able to use QFF points for OWAs (particularly in J) kind of holds up the valuation of QFF points in general.