QF website is a nightmare

[Captain hum]

Just been trying to see if there are reward seats for next June/July BNE to LAX

J class came up as an option , but when I clicked on it to select it, it disappeared. It tried again, but could not get the first result back again. I started over and checked the boxes at the top of the monthly calendar, but it reverts to economy seats every time I hit enter.
I even tried for F, which came up as available, but only for the two domestic legs.
Am I just being stupid, or is the site always this bad?

 

[BAM1748]

The QF web site did something similar to me (except I was trying to pay with real money) and I gave up in the end.

A fail for the customer, but don't panic they just announced a large profit.

Matt

 

[mimishat]

Argh YES! I gave up in the end :evil:

 

[Captain hum]

Argh YES! I gave up in the end :evil:

so frustrating. No idea how anyone gets anything booked..

 

[RooFlyer]

<snip>
Am I just being stupid, or is the site always this bad?

Yes, the site has been that bad for ages, whenever they tinker with it. The errors and non functionality after changes is legendary.

The running joke is that they use work experience kids for the work.

 

[maroonone]

Yes, the site has been that bad for ages, whenever they tinker with it. The errors and non functionality after changes is legendary.

The running joke is that they use work experience kids for the work.

I think we should stop blaming the "work experience kids" because I don't think whoever is doing the work is that good and could learn from some work experience kids.

 

[Melburnian1]

In fairness, the QF website for frequent flyers is probably better than the very poor VA one, which still lacks a lot of basic information such as how many points are required for specific city pair trips.

 

[opusman]

I quite like the new website overall, although it's very slow to load.

 

[RooFlyer]

I quite like the new website overall, although it's very slow to load.

I agree; and that's amusing, as one of the virtues of the new site that QF touts is that its faster to load!!

 

[BAM1748]

The new web site is slower and doesn't work everytime when I want to book something. (twice in the last 2 weeks it's failed me)

The previous site worked for me and was quick to load, but hey, don't worry about that we've fixed it in true airline fashion.

Web/IT departments like change for change sake which works out a crock for the customer.

Matt

 

[RichardMEL]

Web/IT departments like change for change sake which works out a crock for the customer.

bit of an assumption there IMHO. Most of the time these sorts of things are driven by Marketing type areas than IT.

More likely than not some manager in marketing thought something like: Oooh it's time for a refresh/we have to keep up with the Joneses/vendor X does this and we should copy it/I read an article in Y mag that this is cool now so we should do it/lets make the site do this cool thing!" etc

then IT is tasked with it. more often that not (in my experience) requirements come in that often are not so easy to complete with ridiculous timeframes/deadlines and more often than not the internal politics cause more issues that the marketing types have to get it done despite legitimate technical issues which may have been brought up but ignored.

I'm not saying that this is happening at QF, but I've seen enough examples of this kind of thing happen.

 

[maninblack]

Why does the booking engine on the QF website always default to Sydney even when I'm logged in and it therefore knows that's not my hometown. They just can't get it right!
(But it's still better than VA)

 

[Captain hum]

Why does the booking engine on the QF website always default to Sydney even when I'm logged in and it therefore knows that's not my hometown. They just can't get it right!
(But it's still better than VA)

Bloody maddening. But I cant agree re it being better than VA. At least their flights don't 'disappear' when you select them.. Even if you do have to log in 3 squillion times..

 

[RooFlyer]

Why does the booking engine on the QF website always default to Sydney even when I'm logged in and it therefore knows that's not my hometown. They just can't get it right!
(But it's still better than VA)

Sigh. Because as everyone knows, Sydney is not just the centre of Qantas' universe, as far as Australia is concerned, it is the entire universe. The marketing/IT combo of people who put the web pages together may not have been outside of Sydney, domestically, so it may just be ignorance.

 

[eminere]

I'm so thankful I happen to live in Sydney.

 

[DC3]

Likewise. I had thought that it intuitively defaulted to my home city.

 

[RooFlyer]

Maybe PJK spends his retirement tinkering on web sites:

"If you're not living in Sydney, you're camping out".

 

[BAM1748]

bit of an assumption there IMHO. Most of the time these sorts of things are driven by Marketing type areas than IT.

More likely than not some manager in marketing thought something like: Oooh it's time for a refresh/we have to keep up with the Joneses/vendor X does this and we should copy it/I read an article in Y mag that this is cool now so we should do it/lets make the site do this cool thing!" etc

then IT is tasked with it. more often that not (in my experience) requirements come in that often are not so easy to complete with ridiculous timeframes/deadlines and more often than not the internal politics cause more issues that the marketing types have to get it done despite legitimate technical issues which may have been brought up but ignored.

I'm not saying that this is happening at QF, but I've seen enough examples of this kind of thing happen.

Agree, but I have an opinion different from yours and seen IT depts put out things that don't work simply for the sake of changing things.

Anyway, the QF site is slower and more useless on my ipad than ever it was.

MAtt

 

[RichardMEL]

re defaulting to sydney, if one has cookies disabled this may cause this. I agree QFF profile should enable a default, but I have noticed with my browsers that it tends to "remember" the last search city used be it MEL, AKL or wherever. Just a thought.

 

[Mattg]

I noticed in the announcements yesterday that Jetstar is also getting a new website. If this is how the QF site turned out, I don't think I want to know what's going to happen on the other side...