Qantas check-in complete disaster

RSD

Established Member
Joined
Feb 13, 2010
Posts
2,498
Not Happy Jan!!

I arrived at check-in in MEL this afternoon in plenty of time for my flight down to DPO, spoke to the staff member floating in the machine check-in area about whether it was sensible to try to use the machines for check-in or whether to go to the counters given that I had 3 oversize bags to check-in and that I had purchased extra bags etc - was directed to the counters.

The Priority queue was lengthy and there was only one person taking people from there, and other queue had very few people waiting and two staff serving so the "queue greeter" directed me down that one. Unfortunately that queue didn't seem to be moving at all and after a few minutes the guy in front of me asked the queue greeter what was going on and was told "I don't know why they are taking so long".

I finally got to the front of the queue and then to a counter and then things got silly - I had some lithium batteries with me that were well under the 100Wh size limit - but the check-in person didn't know what the quantity limit was (20) and ignored my suggestion to look it up in the little hand book that was on her desk and instead decided to call the service desk. She was on hold to the service desk for ages and then received the advice that the quantity limit was indeed 20 - which I was well under.

It had now been 30 minutes since I had arrived at check-in, and then I was sent to oversize to lodge the bags.

Another queue at oversize, and then it was my turn. The guy manning that decided that he wanted to open all the boxes in my bags - even the taped up ones, and then run his sniffer probe through everything.

Finally he was done and my bags were on the way downstairs, but he told me I had to go back to the service desk - where I was told that due to all the stuffing around my bags weren't going to make the flight and so I was being rebooked onto the next flight to DPO - 3.5 hours after my booked flight.

So I'm sitting in the QF lounge rather seething at the moment!
 
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Sadly the manual check in desks for domestic (MEL seems to be the worst) have been painful since they got rid of all the staff and went to all automated check in
 
Sadly the manual check in desks for domestic (MEL seems to be the worst) have been painful since they got rid of all the staff and went to all automated check in
They didn't get rid of any staff ILO the automated check-in. This is also enshrined in their EBA and just to point out, that's been nearly 15 years ago.

Oversized baggage is manned by Melbourne Airport staff and are useless since they changed the company they use.

Check-in agents are generally bad too in MEL and don't have a clue. But this is what you get when you have high turnover and low paid workers.

Excluding the dangerous goods you had, having extra bags would not inhibit the automatic check-in.
 
I finished my complaint by saying "and please don’t reply saying that Qantas always puts safety first etc. – because if that was the case then the check-in staff would have both known that the maximum size for lithium batteries without special approval is 100Wh, and that the quantity limit for lithium batteries is 20, and would have known to refer to the little guidebook on their counter if they were unsure about anything."
 
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