Qantas Frequent Flyer Program.

[Grandma's Wings "]

Good Morning one & All.

I have just looked at my December Points & Balance email and was curious about the Qantas Amex Credit Card.. so I had a peek at the Terms & Conditions. particularly about the Frequent Flyer Program.
I realise of course that the Terms & Conditions must be adhered too for Business reasons, but in all of my years ( over 30 odd years) I saw something in these Terms that sent a chill through me...and to be honest I have never seen or noticed this before... Has anyone else

Quote:
[h=2]4. Termination or Suspension of Qantas Frequent Flyer[/h]4.1 Qantas gives no warranty as to the continuing availability of Qantas Frequent Flyer. Qantas may terminate or suspend Qantas Frequent Flyer at any time. Qantas will give at least six months notice to Members of such termination or suspension, except if Qantas ceases to operate an airline business in which case Qantas Frequent Flyer will cease immediately.
4.2 If Qantas terminates or suspends Qantas Frequent Flyer, Members will be able to redeem Points during the notice period in accordance with these Terms and Conditions, except where Qantas is ceasing to operate an airline business and/or has gone into liquidation or other form of administration, in which case Qantas may terminate or cancel any Awards or Benefits immediately without notice. ( end Quote )

The part that particularly disturbs me is the paragraph where it reads

" If Qantas ceases to operate and airline " and (2) where Qantas is ceasing to operate and airline business and /or has gone into liquidation "

Is this a standard procedure or am I reading something into this clause .. After the recent debarcle with Qantas hitting the headlines it would simply break my heart to see that we ( Australia ) lose Qantas forever.

Looking forward with interest to a comment.

Have a wonderful day.

Grandma's Wings "

 

[reductionist]

I think it's the latter, you're reading too much into the clause.

 

[drron]

The last thing an airline wants to do is give its more frequent customers a reason to desert.Although not applicable to Australia we are seeing this with AA in the US.Although the airline is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy rather than diluting the program(they did that a few months ago) Aadvantage members are being offered more goodies such as double status qualification miles.
In the same sort of way QFF has recently given out a few sweeteners to make up for the discontent re the grounding.
But obviously if the airline ceases to exist what use would be a FF program.Once Ansett went belly up you could not use your miles on Star alliance airlines unless already ticketed-we had a booked but not a ticketed award on United but it was hard cheese.

 

[oz_mark]

Wording to that effect has been there a couple of years. It is actually more friendly than the clauses it replaced. Previously it said that they could suspend or cancel redemptions pretty much unilaterally. Now there are only specific cases where they can do this.

 

[serfty]

I am thinking it may have been decided those previous terms could have been considered "Unconscionable" by a court and were changed to effectively produce the same results.

 

[medhead]

I would only add that they seem like standard terms that a lawyer would add. I'm sure all similar program would contain similar terms. There is always a risk of a company going bust.


Sent from my iPhone using Aust Freq Fly app so please excuse the lack of links.

 

[Stephen65]

These sorts of clauses are routinely included in contracts. Their presence does not indicate some concern inside QF that it is in financial trouble.

In any event its likely to be a moot point. If Qantas were to go into liquidation or some other form of insolvency such as administration then FF members would be at the back of the queue along with all the other unsecured creditors, as happened in the Ansett administration. In such a scenario the law provides for secured and priority creditors to get first rights to the assets of the company regardless of what any contract between Qantas and FFs may say.

 

[vyaw2003]

what is the problem? Kylie Minougue lost 300,000 points when Ansett went under.

 

[harvyk]

It's pretty standard get out clause QF have used... They want the ability to close down the program if needs be, and they don't want the liability of QFF members becoming creditors should they go under.
If they didn't have this clause they would be unable to shut down the QFF program ever, and if the airline goes under every QFF member would be able to go to the administrators and demand that points get cashed out at a fair rate.

By having the clause in there should the program start losing them money they are able to close it down, and in the event that QF does do an AN, they don't have the problem of needing to cash out billions of points. Even at say at rate of 1c per point, even a QFF member with a modest amount of points could claim hundreds or even thousands of dollars from QF if they didn't have that clause.

 

[JohnK]

Most of us would hope Qantas will be around for many more years.

Love them or hate them flying in Australia would not be the same without Qantas.

 

[Simo]

Just the butt covering statements.

Generally people don't read T&C's.

If you don't agree they are not negotiable anyway.

I do agreements up all day.

We have a massive legal team which has got them worded and they keep upgrading them as well.

I had a leading barrister come in and sign up and he wanted to amend the wording and he was advised no amendments would be entered into.

He signed and walked out and never heard from him again.