Older Kids Means Time to Change Airline Alliance Strategy

[Baysider]

Hi Baysider - if you want PP membership, one of the high end credit cards might be worth considering. eg based on advice here, I recently took out a Citi Select card, which among other things gets me free Prestige PP membership - unlimited lounge access for me plus one guest. The annual fee for the card is $700, but there are a lot of benefits, in particular a great rewards programme, so in my case at least the fee is worth it.

I have a Citibank Select Rewards card which is fee-free and includes a basic PP membership (2 free lounge visits with additional visits and guests at USD 27 per time). The thought would be to take out the Standard Membership at USD 212 for my partner.

 

[Jack_OC]

I have a Citibank Select Rewards card which is fee-free and includes a basic PP membership (2 free lounge visits with additional visits and guests at USD 27 per time). The thought would be to take out the Standard Membership at USD 212 for my partner.

Maybe this is a recent change, but when I got my Select card (only a month ago) it came with Prestige PP membership (unlimited visits +1 guest). That is also listed as a benefit on the Citibank website, so it seems to be a standard benefit rather than just a special offer Citibank Select Credit Card - Citibank Australia

Might be worth a call to Citi?

 

[Baysider]

Maybe this is a recent change, but when I got my Select card (only a month ago) it came with Prestige PP membership (unlimited visits +1 guest). That is also listed as a benefit on the Citibank website, so it seems to be a standard benefit rather than just a special offer Citibank Select Credit Card - Citibank Australia

Might be worth a call to Citi?

Except mine has no annual card fee, and I'm happy with that.

 

[Baysider]

However I will make a complaint as suggested because QC have broken the rules by excluding the 12 and 16 year olds at LAX and HKG.

So I ultimately sent Qantas a complaint because this page Eligibility and Access to The Qantas Club Lounges | Qantas of the Qantas website states, under the sub-heading 'Families': "Qantas Lounges welcome you when travelling together with your family. In addition to your normal guest allowance you may also bring up to two children, between ages 4 and 17, into lounges operated by Qantas"; and under the sub-heading 'BA and oneworld Lounges': "This is with the exception of the oneworld Los Angeles Tom Bradley Lounge where Qantas Club members may be accompanied by two children up to 18 years of age in addition to their counted guests".

I received a reply by telephone explaining to me that "it is up to the discretion of the counter staff on the day to determine who will be allowed entry to the lounge". In other words, don't trust what we say on our website because we reserve the right to disregard this completely, even if the lounge is deserted as the Qantas First lounge in Hong Kong was when we visited.

Why bother even putting guidelines on the website when all they serve to do is mislead people about their lounge access rights?

 

[Baysider]

Why bother even putting guidelines on the website when all they serve to do is mislead people about their lounge access rights?

The most irritating part of this whole exercise is that I believed what was stated on the Qantas website and based on that I paid about $750 extra across the five of us to fly LAX-BNE via HKG, however if I had known that lounge access in HKG was not "a given" we would have saved our $750 and taken a shorter route home via Fiji.

 

[eastwest101]

So I ultimately sent Qantas a complaint because this page Eligibility and Access to The Qantas Club Lounges | Qantas of the Qantas website states, under the sub-heading 'Families': "Qantas Lounges welcome you when travelling together with your family. In addition to your normal guest allowance you may also bring up to two children, between ages 4 and 17, into lounges operated by Qantas"; and under the sub-heading 'BA and oneworld Lounges': "This is with the exception of the oneworld Los Angeles Tom Bradley Lounge where Qantas Club members may be accompanied by two children up to 18 years of age in addition to their counted guests".

I received a reply by telephone explaining to me that "it is up to the discretion of the counter staff on the day to determine who will be allowed entry to the lounge". In other words, don't trust what we say on our website because we reserve the right to disregard this completely, even if the lounge is deserted as the Qantas First lounge in Hong Kong was when we visited.

Why bother even putting guidelines on the website when all they serve to do is mislead people about their lounge access rights?

It is annoying to get responses like that. It seems you basically have to walk the excuses provided through their own t&cs by asking closed questions like:

Baysider: Is it true that on the QF website it says that "This is with the exception of the oneworld Los Angeles TBIT Lounge where Qantas Club members may be accompanied etc" ? Yes or no?

Baysider: Do you agree that these are the people I tried to get into HKG or TBIT? Yes or no?

Baysider: Do you agree that it is incumbent on QF to ensure their customers get access to lounges that they are entitled to under your own t&cs? Yes or No?

Then you have clearly made it their problem, of course this is no garrantee that your problem will be fixed but it at least gets you to the point where they may consider compensation or communicating this to someone whom does have the power to fix it, or make you some sort of acceptable offer.

I think your final goal may be that the Lounge Staff are aware of all the T&C's of their alliance partners - they are paid to do that as a job. I don't know and wont be presumptuous to know what your objective is, it may be different than what I think.

Otherwise, as others have suggested, we all need to travel around with hard copies or screen shots of our Airline alliance/status/membership terms and conditions to enforce our own entitlements ........:evil:

Anyway, there are lots of helpful people around here and I am sure i have seen threads about making "effective compaints" that I will try to dig up.

 

[tyrolean]

I think your final goal may be that the Lounge Staff are aware of all the T&C's of their alliance partners - they are paid to do that as a job. I don't know and wont be presumptuous to know what your objective is, it may be different than what I think.

I often had the problem that Lounge Dragons make their own rules. I thought that would be a typical German thing (with quite some alignments to the UK...)

LH officially allows all own children (how to prove as a male? DNA test?) into the lounge. I had often issues with lounge dragons - some know the rules, some tell you that children are not allowed in general, some "let you in for to day but it is officially not allowed...".

I have that problem not only when traveling with children. I remember being bounced at the BA Lounge in MUC holding an AB BP. "AB is our partner - Oh why is there an AB Logo on the oneworld board."

I remember a lounge dragon - "sorry, no guests today".

I have PDFs of those critical parts on my iPad. Calling for the supervisor does the trick in most cases.

 

[eastwest101]

Yes - the access policies of most airlines and alliances are now so complicated and full of exceptions/caveats and !@#$%^&* that its quite clear that the customers often can't figure out if access is allowed, it should come as no surprise at all that the Lounge Dragons can't figure it out either.

 

[Isochronous]

A mere QP member guested in wife + 3 kids in the US to Admirals Clubs without problems a few years ago. This is a disappointing story especially for a QF F lounge!