Travel agent smarts

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chocolate radiation man

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Jul 14, 2014
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I needed to book some flights AU to Singapore so asked our work corporate travel agent to do it for me. I was very clear - I want flexi fares so I could upgrade with points (or at least try) for both flights.

Flights booked, so decided to go online and request upgrades and I was very surprised to find the cost was 40K points per leg. This seemed to be a huge increase on my previous upgrades I spent points on.

I am too miserable to buy the business seats unless its really long haul and not coming from my pocket, but as it stands I have quite a few frequent flyer points and I don't mind using them, but I am concerned when the cost has near doubled.

So, I contacted the corp travel agent and this was their response...

I've had a look and there actually isn't a fare structure sheet available for international on the QF website. We have a domestic one only. The last one that was available was issued in mid 2014!
In any case the fare codes are the same so it's really confusing as to why they've jumbled them on the frequent flyer section (where that information is that you sent through). I'll obviously go with the info as per the needs of the frequent flyer upgrade t&c's but the fares in order of price are jumbled.
The SAVER/ RED eDEAL fares are (in order) E,O,Q,N,S,V,L, (G is for Groups) FLEX fares are (in order) M, K, H, B, Y and Business Class is I, D, C, J.

For upgrade requests, the lowest fare that can be booked is S.

This is the same for domestic as for international. However if you have different information, please let me know. I have flagged this with our product team as Qantas may need to clearly reflect this on our agent site because that's where we go for all information.


It took me a couple of minutes searching on the Qantas site to find that there is a line at H class - this is where the points near double for the upgrade.

That's OK, I understand that there are rules in place - its a business not a friendly society so I'm not complaining that Qantas have these "cost steps" - I would do the same, however, this corp travel agent books 100's of flights for the company I work for monthly and is very astute in tweaking fares and getting the most of what is on offer for us, so I was very surprised at their statement above.
 
My first reaction was that "Everything with Qantas is complicated, so a mistake by the TA might be forgiven." But then note what the TA said about going with what's on the TA 'site' (I presume they mean this one.) and the international table not being updated for some time. That site may well just say what he TA quoted and booked on (and it wouldn't e the first time a QF site is wrong / slow to be updated), compared to what you found on the public site.
 
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