straitman said:
- Qantas refund time up to 6 weeks
5. It's not just Qantas. Try any airline and I agree entirely.
As much as this is an annoyance, there is a very valid reason for it. If airlines refunded unused or cancelled tickets quickly, people would regularly be booking fligthts they have no intention of taking for a number of reasons, including:
- gaining access to lounges for which they only have access rights when flying. They would purchase a redundable ticket, checkin, enter lounge then cancel the ticket
- reserve seats on multiple flights when only intending to occupy one. Perhaps in the hope of being able to upgrade and then cancel the ones that don't succeed in the upgrade process
- to reserve multiple seats on the same flight, pre-allocating adjacent seats and then cancelling one at the last minute leaving them with an empty seat next to them
All of these things really screw up the airline's ability to manage yield. They need to discourage false or ghost ticket purchases in order to stop this practice.
The downside is for those of us with a genuine need to cancel and refund a ticket, we must wait until after the credit card bill is due before they action the refind.
The 6 week wait has nothing to do with paperwork or administration delays. Such refunds could be actioned overnight. BUT they purposely delay the processing by 6 weeks to discourage the actions I have exampled above.