Qantas high cancellation fee for accidental booking with points

[Kevin steele]

Not having booked with qantas ff points before, i tried to make a trial booking to see how many points and what is the size of the fees.
In doing so i accidentally booked a flight using points only. There was no cash fees attached.

Flight booked was many months ahead, so i cancelled the points booking, only to be charged
A $400 cancellation fee.
I consider the fee to be excessive and far in excess of qantas,s costs. They would not have an empty seat as the flight is normally fully boojed and many months ahead.

 

[juddles]

A "trial booking"?? If you did that you would have known you had ended up with a ticket - how long after "trial booking" did you try to cancel it? And how did they charge you the $400?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Not having booked with qantas ff points before, i tried to make a trial booking to see how many points and what is the size of the fees.
In doing so i accidentally booked a flight using points only. There was no cash fees attached.

Flight booked was many months ahead, so i cancelled the points booking, only to be charged
A $400 cancellation fee.
I consider the fee to be excessive and far in excess of qantas,s costs. They would not have an empty seat as the flight is normally fully boojed and many months ahead.

There are two types of Qantas awards. One is using pure points - this is simply a conversion of the actual $$ fare into a points equivalent. Generally this values poitns at 0.7c each. Terrible value. But when you use points this way they treat it exactly the same as a paid fare. All the conditions of a paid fare apply to your points booking.

The other way to do it is to use points for a classic award, and pay the taxes and fees by cash. This 'classic' award has its own terms and conditions. But cancellation costs a flat 6000 points.

If your booking was made and cancelled same day it should have been free of charge. If you booked close to midnight Qantas usually extend the cancellation into the next day.

 

[GSP]

I thought it was 6000 points cancellation fee. I had to do that once (I used Points for the whole fair including taxes - Melbourne to Auckland).

 

[Mick1969]

A "trial booking"?? If you did that you would have known you had ended up with a ticket - how long after "trial booking" did you try to cancel it? And how did they charge you the $400?

I'm having a guess that it was a Points plus Pay international booking with a $400 cancellation fee.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I thought it was 6000 points cancellation fee. I had to do that once (I used Points for the whole fair including taxes - Melbourne to Auckland).

oh yes - 6000 - I've edited my post accordingly

 

[juddles]

I'm having a guess that it was a Points plus Pay international booking with a $400 cancellation fee.

yeah - a bit hard a process to go through without realizing you were actually booking a flight.....

 

[Mattg]

Did you cancel the original Points+Pay booking on the same day it was (accidentally) booked? If so, you should have been able to call Qantas and have the cancellation fee waived. They have a "same day, no mistake" policy for flight bookings.

 

[mannej]

I’m a bit miffed as to how this could be done accidentally?

 

[Kerrodt]

seems somewhat unbelievable to me.

 

[juddles]

......

Flight booked was many months ahead, so i cancelled the points booking, only to be charged
A $400 cancellation fee.
I consider the fee to be excessive and far in excess of qantas,s costs. They would not have an empty seat as the flight is normally fully boojed and many months ahead.

I suspect that if you cut out the part about an "accidental" booking, and just go by the last part (as quoted), then you get to the bottom of the OP's actual gripe.

 

[deebens]

I do this all the time to check fees on oneworld partners.

Never accidentally booked one yet.

 

[opusman]

Mistakes happen, not sure why everyone assumes the OP is lying.

The important question is, was the flight cancelled the same day (or within 24 hours). If so, the cancellation fee should be waived - although I don't know if that would happen automatically if you cancel online, or if you'd need to call up.

 

[mrsterryn]

If new to bookings mistakes happen...but how did they charge you ?
I havnt booked a no payment fare , do you still need to put in a credit card ?

 

[davidj]

Can't you call up right away and cancel?

How many points did you end up burning? If the ticket was worth less than $400 maybe its not worth to cancel and just take the trip.


I can't think of a valid reason to end up on the final page prior to booking, unless you were 99.99 % commiting to the purchase. Taxes and qantas tax are shown 1 or 2 pages in?

 

[Haplo]

The points required for points plus pay is displayed when you select the pay, so about 4 screen before you get locked in, so I dont understand how OP went all the way to the end when just the first step is sufficient. For classic fixed price reward the taxes are shown in step 2, again about 3 screens before you lock in.

 

[RichardMEL]

I'm unsure how someone can mistakenly click on "Book Now" for a "trial booking" ... that seems a bit bizarre.

This wouldn't be points+pay, but a full points paymentfor a revenue fare, rather than a classic reward (points covering the taxes and fees etc hence no up front cash component). As noted above the $400 fee would have been the cancel fee of the revenue fare purchased with points, and not a "fee" for cancelling the points booking per se.

What I also find odd is that, as noted by others, say I did hit book by accident and had a now confirmed booking with all those points taken out, I would have just cancelled right away (or called) and there should have been no charge if same day

so seems the OP waited over a day to sort this out?

If so well.. the penalities are provided prior to booking (as are the charges) so.... it's fairly up front about it IMHO.

 

[Happy Trails]

Does the 'Same day no mistake' provision include outright cancellations?
Seems limited to simple changes.

Same Day No Mistake | Qantas

What mistakes do we waive?
If you've made an error while making your booking, we'll waive the service and change fees associated with correcting mistakes, including:

Lists mistakes we waive with no change or service fee
Mistake to change Waived
The spelling of your name Yes
Time, day or month of your flight Yes
To and/or from destination Yes
Swap gateways
(eg. if you accidentally book London to Sydney, instead of Sydney to London) Yes
Fare type or cabin Yes

 

[RichardMEL]

Interesting point there HT.

Some airlines (eg UA) will allow full fee free cancels same day but it's true QF could be more limited on that. If so.. ouch.

The fine print on that page seems to support it's ONLY changes, not cancel:

Important information


Disclaimer: * The policy only applies to bookings made at qantas.com. Only change and service fees will be waived. If the new fare is a higher value, the difference is payable by the customer. Changes are subject to availability.

And also they say to call them by midnight (so it's not within 24 hours from the booking date, which would be coughpy if you booked at 11:45pm!) and it's not stated but one assumes it's local time rather than Sydney time, but who knows with QF!

It does seem like the fee was a fare cancel fee. That's quite a common amount for QF fare cancellations (annoyingly)

 

[RoMambai]

I've lost count of how many times a new member blazes on the scene with a thinly veiled fishing exercise only to bale under the withering scrutiny of cross AFF examination. Yet we good people of this noble endeavour continue to theorise what may or may not have happened long after the OP has moved onto more slippery pastures.

This story sounds fake. The OP has gone to ground and so, I submit, should we.