Frequent Flyer Friend

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danielh

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Anyone use the Frequent Flyer Friend program? Anyone pay for it yet?

There is a 7 day free trial but I'm hesitant to use it now as I will probably need it later this year when I start to book my RTW trip for 2007.

I'm curious as to how it treats the internal AA flights in the USA as the current Qantas FF online system only lets you see flights such as Los Angeles to New York but not destinations like Las Vegas or San Francisco.

I think the operators can see those sort of destinations (which means using the operator to book the RTW flight might be the optimal way).

The concept of the FFFriend sounds great though but is it as slow as using the internet manually? I don't suppose it does a regular suck of all available flights and puts it into a database that is accessed by the software for fater availability searches?

Oh well, I hope to hear from someone soon.

Regards
Daniel
 
The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of finding reward seat availability. Using their expert knowledge and specialised tools, they'll help you book a great trip that maximises the value for your points.

AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements

I tried it for the full 7 day trial period and couldn't get it to work once!
 
I did get it to work however it won't help you out for internal USA flights or any that you can't pick via the QANTAS website. It's main feature is that it keeps checking to see if the flights are available so you don't need to go to the QANTAS website.

No way around having to call QANTAS for these flights and cost you the 2,500 points. :(
 
odoherty said:
I tried it for the full 7 day trial period and couldn't get it to work once!

I'm sorry to hear you couldn't get Frequent Flyer Friend (FFF) to work. FFF has had hundreds of downloads since it was launched last week, with very few support queries.

The purpose of the 7 day trial period is to get FFF to work properly on your machine before committing you to purchase a license.

In future, any problems should be forwarded to our Support Team via the Support Page or emailing [email protected]. We usually respond within the hour.

Thank you.
 
The two main problems that I had were that it told me my details were correct, despite the fact that I double checked, triple checked and still didn't work.
The other problem was that I kept getting the "Waiting for next Qantas login" message, and it never connected.
 
I wonder how QF are viewing this product? As it uses SSL pretending to be you looking for flights it may significantly increase loads on the QF web site hardware.

If they are ok with it then, fine.

If not how would they prevent it's use? They could change the way the web-based award booking engine is accessed so that a new version of the FFF product would need to be released.

There is another way that would be a lot more difficult for FFF to counteract that is used more and more these days. A random pin would be generated for each booking session request. This would be delivered to the Frequent Flyer as an 'encrypted' image file, readable as an image, but not quite formatted correctly so that OCR software would have a hard time accurately analysing it. This pin would then need to be manually input by the user before the booking process could proceed.

Note that the $65 fee is once off and there are no recurring fees.
 
I'd be very surprised if FFF results in a "significant" increase load on the Qantas website.

Firstly, there are over 4 million members of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program. Most of these members have internet access and are actually encouraged to use the Qantas website rather than calling the service desk – as evidenced in the recent changes where booking online is free, but booking by phone attracts a fee. So you would assume that the Qantas website has adequate capacity to deal with such a load.

Secondly, FFF was designed specifically to prevent an excessive demand on the airline's system. For example, automatic searches cannot be scheduled more frequently than once every 12 hours. And the "Check Now" option restricts the number of ad-hoc searches you can make in any given period. We believe this is a responsible compromise - providing a useful service to members but capping demand on the airline's systems.

Thirdly and most importantly, FFF is tool which is incredibly useful to Qantas customers. One would expect customer satisfaction to be important to Qantas, so they should welcome any product which their customers find useful and of benefit in helping make the most of their program.

Using 'encrypted' images to restrict internet access is usually used in situations where something is offered (such as free Hotmail accounts) which has a direct impact on system resources. I've never seen it being used by a company to hinder it's customers from accessing their website. Its use would inconvenience (and possibly be problematic) for all the millions of users of their website, not just the few who use FFF... And anyway, there is no guarantee that we can't come up with a solution which bypasses the image :wink:
 
Hi

After booking a flight for my mate and I, we have decided to try and upgrade ourselves from Economy to Business. Unfortunately I have just discovered that on our particular flight, there is only 1 upgrade seat available.
Does the Frequent Flyer Friend show the number of available award and upgrade seats on a particular flight, or does it simply state that there is availability?
I am wishing to know this before I attempt to download the trial on my computer, as I really hate computers and am very much computer dumb! :cry:

Cheers
Daniel
 
scibo10 said:
Does the Frequent Flyer Friend show the number of available award and upgrade seats on a particular flight, or does it simply state that there is availability?
It just shows that there is FF award seats available for the particular date and route selected. I would like to see the ability to select class of travel and even number of seats. Given how it works, the only way for number of seats would be to tell it how many you are looking for and let it search based on that. So it can't return the actual number, but could return whether or not your selected number of seats are available on the selected date. But that will require an upgrade from the supplier of the tool.
 
NM

Thanks for your response.
Yes, your suggestion would definitely do the trick. Let's hope such an update will be made available soon.

Daniel
 
A new Version 2 of FFF is available for download. It seems to have included many of the suggestions noted here. I particularly like the addition of being able to search by class and by number of seats. Overall its a good improvement in my opinion.
 
Freq Fly Friend Support said:
Thirdly and most importantly, FFF is tool which is incredibly useful to Qantas customers. One would expect customer satisfaction to be important to Qantas, so they should welcome any product which their customers find useful and of benefit in helping make the most of their program.

I'd be surprised if Q welcomed a product that lets customers bypass their advertising and other information they customers to see when accessing fares. And no, Q is not particularly keen on giving away award flights. Otherwise products like FFF would not be required...
 
I have just downloaded the trial version of this software and managed to get it working :D , however 2 points I am needing assistance with.

1. I am attempting to an upgrade a paid Discount Economy class ticket to Business online, however am being advised that no upgrade seats are available at this time. When putting the itinarary into FFF, it is advising me that award seats in Business Class are available.
Am I right to conclude that FFF advises of award FF seats, but not of upgrades?

2. My downloaded version seems to be half missing. ie a section of the box is only showing white (under the results list section and stretching to the right all the way to the "Unlock Now" button). Is this normal for the trial version?

Daniel
 
scibo10 said:
1. I am attempting to an upgrade a paid Discount Economy class ticket to Business online, however am being advised that no upgrade seats are available at this time. When putting the itinarary into FFF, it is advising me that award seats in Business Class are available.
Am I right to conclude that FFF advises of award FF seats, but not of upgrades?

Depends on whether it is an international or a domestic flight.

Upgrades come from the same bucket as award flights, namely U class for business class.

If your flight is a domestic flight and there is U class availability, then you should be able to confirm an upgrade immediately.

If your flight is international, then you will need to go on to the upgrade waitlist, and wait until close to departure time to find out if it has cleared. Whether it will clear or not will depend on your QF status.

Dave
 
2. My downloaded version seems to be half missing. ie a section of the box is only showing white (under the results list section and stretching to the right all the way to the "Unlock Now" button). Is this normal for the trial version?

Daniel, if you need FFF support, you should email [email protected]. Someone will respond to you directly.
 
Suggested new features

I have just this hour downloaded FFF and started the trial period. It seems to work fine but could have a couple of improvements, namely :-

The ability to show direct flights only.
The ability to check a multi-destination routing on a range of dates.

The reason for the first one is that the QFF site will suggest all sorts of weird itineraries (e.g. HKK - SYD via Melbourne and Canberra!), but sometimes you just want direct flights.

The second point would just be an ease of use thing .... I know you can put each leg and each date on a new line, but that is a bit painful.

All and all it is good robot that may make life a bit easier, but if you are truly desperate for seats then you will just have to login yourself 24x7 and try your luck. I probably won't be forking out the joining fee until it provides a bit more "value-add".


Cheers,

AC
 
I have just tryed out frequent flyer friend and found that it is not that oneworld friendly.I was looking to book a oneworld award on AA points.I needed to use 2 OW airlines apart from Aa and as I was going to the USA it meant I needed a qantas flight.I only had enough points for a 25000 mile oneworld award.
Frequent flyer friend told me that 2 business class award tickets were available through qantas to HKG on 4 of the 6 days I was looking at.On the qantas site on only 2 of those days was it on QF metal but on 4 it was on CX.However when booked with AA none of those seats were showing as available for an AA oneworld award.
A similiar situation was the result for the return journey.
Fortunately my experience with the AA rep I called(using 001118008828880) in the states was fantastic.She started off with the premise that she was going to get me the awards(I was booking for mrsdrron as well).Basically I got virtually what I wanted on the days I wanted apart from having to route through sydney both ways.That actually took me just over the 25000 miles but she changed total miles to what it would have been directly in and out of BNE.
So frequent flyer friend would be useful if using QF points and flying QF exclusively but if using other oneworld carriers you just have to put in the leg work-I had already used aa.com to find the AA flights.
 
Yes its worth remembering availability can (and does) vary by program redeeming from, even for the physically same flights.
 
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