Qantas REFUND/ FLIGHT CREDIT Discussion

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akky

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Jul 25, 2013
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Hi All

Perhaps this may have already been covered before... but I couldn't find anything in search.

I booked red e-deal flight Syd -> BNE
I had to cancel due to covid and was slapped with a flight credit value of approx $400 with 12 months expiry that is fast approaching.
Its very difficult to travel due to work, and I tried to see check for quick weekend getaways but all of them were roughly $300 Return.
Unfortunately Qantas only allows flight credits to be used for equal or higher value ... which makes it even more difficult.

I was wondering, could I use flight credit + pay difference to buy a flex ticket to say Syd -> Bne , and since flex tickets allow for a refund (after $99 Cancel Fee), could I cancel a few days later and get full refund of amount (Flight credit + difference paid - $99).

Anyone had any experience with this?

Thanks in advance :)
 
This is unlikely to work, as all refunds go to the original form of payment. It's possible this would be a way to extend the expiry date, but it wont' get you cash.

I am not clear why Qantas is still getting away with these flight credits with so many restrictions (which are mostly due to the technical limitations of storing the value as a flight reservation between fictitious points). This is especially since many such credits were converted to Qantas Passes , which are a debit-card-based value system which is much less restrictive, but many credits were NOT converted with seemingly no rhyme or reason. You could try calling them up and asking for the credit to be converted to a pass so that you can use it more flexibly, but I am not sure the success rate of this these days (it did work last year I think).

You aren't the only one struggling with this - article about the problem here: Qantas flight credit extension doesn't address restrictions | CHOICE
 
I noticed tonight that a flight credit pops up lower prices than the main booking website.

so I bought a $50 gift voucher to check out what prices that brings up and the gift voucher prices are the same as the main booking site

PS I also noted in the past on the Main booking site that using Payment Hold ($25 to guarantee the booking) saw the original price drop by that amount and then you got the $25 refunded anyway appearing to give a $50 discount
 
the other option was to buy something like the @Matt_01 inspired opportunity to flight credit during DSC's

Blackall to Longreach Flex fares at $166...

this seems to be the cheapest flex fare around - the South Aussie ones are now well over $300 one way

because I'm not sure where Flex Flight credits land when you go back to book later with the credit, it had led me to wondering which method of booking was more advantageous price-wise than the other ones.
 
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I might be wrong, but my previous experience on flight credits is that no matter what you subsequently buy, the refund conditions remain as for the “worst” or “toughest“ refund conditions of any part of the ticket. So effectively your cheap red e deal conditions will apply even if you buy a business class ticket by paying the difference. This is a lesson I learned the hard way a couple of years back. Maybe they are being a bit more generous with COVID cancellations as per the gazette article by @Mattg which talked about QF apparently suggesting all credits could now be refunded. However, in that thread, a lot of people are saying their claims (mainly discount economy fares) were not given refunds when they tried. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
 
Seat0B said:
I might be wrong, but my previous experience on flight credits is that no matter what you subsequently buy, the refund conditions remain as for the “worst” or “toughest“ refund conditions of any part of the ticket. So effectively your cheap red e deal conditions will apply even if you buy a business class ticket by paying the difference. This is a lesson I learned the hard way a couple of years back. Maybe they are being a bit more generous with COVID cancellations as per the gazette article by @Mattg which talked about QF apparently suggesting all credits could now be refunded. However, in that thread, a lot of people are saying their claims (mainly discount economy fares) were not given refunds when they tried. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
Click to expand...
yes, and that's why the dirt cheap Flex Fares @ $166 made it a pile easier to avoid the Red-E deal dilemma - noting for cancellation there's is a $99 fee versus zero fee for changes.

when I bailed on a $109 Red-E deal that I purchased to retain WP status (recall the one booked flight requirement) despite the loss of fare, i still got back $24 in taxes - which went back onto a Qantas travelpass - which was then a process to re-use.
 
CaptJCool said:
yes, and that's why the dirt cheap Flex Fares @ $166 made it a pile easier to avoid the Red-E deal dilemma - noting for cancellation there's is a $99 fee versus zero fee for changes.
Click to expand...
Such a great tip! Other people have hinted at this before but I never really “got it”. I will be looking to do that in the future for sure.
 
I had to cancel a MEL-LAX-MEL trip this morning in economy flex - will I receive a refund to credit card or a travel credit?
 
sadly, there's a set of "travel credits" issued AFTER 1 October 2021 that DON'T QUALIFY for the current process

thus my mothers $458 went into the black hole of Qantas never to be seen AGAIN and adding to the $2.45 billion before tax profit!
 
I had to cancel a trip to Europe a couple of days ago that involved award tickets from Qantas, United and BA.

I was able to cancel each ticket online, using the relevant airline's website, and the points/miles for BA and United were credited back to my account almost instantly.

In the case of Qantas, of course, the points (144,000) were nowhere to be seen. I'd like to get these points back asap in order to make another booking, and was able to contact the Hobart call centre (I'm Platinum) and speak to a nice lady who tried to help me by calling the Qantas refunds dept, but in the end she had to admit defeat as they would not answer the phone for her.

So I was wondering if there was anything else I could do to try and get the points back quickly, though it's worth noting that the ticket was issued by the QF Bangkok office, who can be notoriously slow in my experience.
 
As an update to my previous post, I rang Qantas again this morning and got put through (after about 15 minutes) to a helpful male agent, who was in an offshore call centre (SA I think, based on accent).

He took it on board to contact the refunds dept to have my points credited back to my account and said that he would ring me back when it was done.

Based on previous experience, I was somewhat sceptical, but lo and behold, after about half an hour my phone rang and there was the agent telling me that the points would be back in my account within a few minutes (which actually did occur).

I was impressed, especially as last week an agent in Hobart effectively told me she did not have the time to do it...
 
Well todays AFR was another shot at he who’s sold 92% of his QF shares

Apparently flight credits will be harry pottered into Argentinian pesos on 31 December

And the headline figure only includes Australian residents Qantas credits (not JQ nor internationals lumbered with considerably higher credits as result of fare pricing say out of London

The class action comes on the back of 52% increase in international fares anyway

I know when I used the credits I held that despite the waiver of the $99 change fee, in effect the 50-100% price increases simply to use them in July 2022 to take the family to Perth on red-e deals more than outweighed the $99 waiver



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Finally got around to getting a refund for my unused credits today. The process was fairly uneventful, the only complication being that the credit card used is no longer active so they needed some time to do whatever it is they need to do to switch refund methods.

For what it's worth I had the booking reference number handy, as well as the email details of when they were converted into TravelPass. I was also able to find them on the Find My Credit page (https://www.qantas.com/findmycredit). Why they needed a separate tool to locate customer credits, instead of, you know, making them readily available and accessible through the regular account portal, I have no idea. But if I was going to complain about Qantas IT in general we'd be here all day.
 
RooFlyer said:
Not sure how this link will turn out
Click to expand...
Link worked fine for me. I see the video is also in the email I got this morning.

There doesn’t appear to be a lower limit on the amount that can be paid using a travel credit. I could be wrong. My two remaining travel passes have 0.97 and 0.39 available; I’ll see if I can use one next time I book.

And of course I booked a flight a couple of days ago using another travel credit :rolleyes:

Cheers skip
 
No emails arrived in my inbox which suggests I finally used them all on buying the same flight sector tics at twice the price !

I had it all

The entire QF Experience of different buckets of “flight credits” and flight credits as TravelPasses and obvious refunds (Flexi and half used F fares booked ex-Sweden) and disappearing booking references which ought have been refunded and gift vouchered originated credits that could only be booked through the separate system and flight credits that could only in the past couple of months be booked through the separate credit booking system where prices were lower than the mainstream booking system and archived bookings that could only be refunded

Talk about the variety of self service checkout choices. Qantas gave me them all !

So I earned my 75 status credits. It’s the least they could do so they did the least. After all, it is their pricing strategy fly less pay more
 

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