Seats Lost in Qantas Call Centre Stuff-Up

When calling an airline to make a simple enquiry about a confirmed booking, you certainly wouldn’t expect them to cancel your entire ticket without your consent or knowledge. But that’s exactly what happened to a Qantas Frequent Flyer member recently after they called Qantas to enquire about changing their Business Class flights.

AFF member davidhes had redeemed Qantas points for two Classic Reward seats in Business Class from Brisbane to London on Qatar Airways. A week after receiving a confirmed ticket, this member then noticed that Qantas Business Class reward seats appeared to be available. So, they phoned the Qantas call centre to enquire about the possibility of changing to the Qantas flights.

After waiting four hours on hold to speak to somebody at Qantas, davidhes finally got through to somebody at one of Qantas’ outsourced overseas call centres. Despite them showing on the Qantas website, this staff member advised that there were no Business reward seats available on Qantas. After this, the call disconnected and the operator never called back, even though davidhes had specifically asked the operator to do this if the call dropped out – as often happens when calling Qantas – and provided his mobile number at the start of the call.

At no point did this customer ask Qantas to cancel the original booking. So he was quite surprised a week later to discover that his confirmed flights on Qatar Airways had disappeared from the booking and been replaced with flights on Qantas in Economy! He had not been notified of this, nor had Qantas refunded any points or money.

In the weeks that followed, davidhes called Qantas multiple times, waiting hours on hold with each attempt. While the Qantas call centre staff admitted that the original flights should not have been cancelled, the airline was either unwilling or unable to reinstate the Qatar Airways Business Class flights.

The reason that the Qatar Airways flights were lost in the first place is that the original call centre operator made a mistake and did not follow the correct processes. This is likely the result of poor training.

How this eventually got resolved

After trying for weeks to get this resolved and posting about his experience on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum, this AFF member eventually tried directly emailing the Qantas Chief Customer Officer. We also contacted Qantas.

This finally seemed to get the gears turning into motion and Qantas eventually rebooked davidhes on a Qantas Business Class flight to London via Perth. Qantas has also now refunded the difference in the points and taxes for the new flights.

Yet another Qantas call centre horror story

While this customer received a reasonable outcome in the end, it should never have come to this! In particular, this incident highlights the need for better training of the overseas call centre staff employed by Mindpearl. It’s astonishing that such a serious error could be made by a Qantas call centre operator which has effectively cancelled this person’s existing, confirmed booking without their knowledge or consent.

Many AFF members are now concerned that a similar thing could happen to them if they contact the Qantas call centre about their own tickets. Sadly, this is just one of many horror stories about incompetent service received from Qantas’ outsourced call centres.

The Qantas contact centres in Hobart and Auckland do typically offer excellent service, with the staff at those locations highly trained and experienced. But Qantas has intentionally made it almost impossible to get through to these call centres unless you have Platinum status – leaving everyone else to deal with call centre staff who are so poorly trained they might accidentally cancel your booking!

The fact that emailing the Chief Customer Officer was the only way to get a resolution to this problem of Qantas’ own making is also a disgrace. For weeks, Qantas made no attempt to remedy the situation via its regular contact channels. That’s not good enough.

Australian Frequent Flyer requested a statement from Qantas about this incident. A spokesperson said that the airline was investigating and apologised for the inconvenience.

After the matter was resolved, davidhes did finally receive an apology from Qantas Customer Care.

“You should receive capable, helpful service from all of our staff, and I would like to assure you that your experience was not the service we strive to deliver in our Contact Centres,” part of the email read.

“We’re committed to giving you the best service and advice, so are grateful you took the time to let us know about your experience. I hope that you will give us the opportunity to welcome you on board again soon and apologise for the inconvenience caused,” the email also said.

Many Qantas reward bookings not getting ticketed

Sadly, this is far from the only problem experienced recently by Qantas Frequent Flyer members when booking reward tickets on partner airlines. Many AFF members have also complained that Qantas hasn’t issued their ticket after making a booking.

When a reservation is not ticketed by the ticketing deadline, seats on partner airlines are automatically cancelled – so this is a serious problem!

One AFF member even posted recently on our forum that Qantas never issued their reward ticket, and still haven’t refunded the points that were taken when the booking was made either! In this case, Qantas says they have no record of the booking – even though the points have been deducted from the member’s Qantas Frequent Flyer account.

If your Qantas reservation hasn’t been ticketed within a few hours of booking, it has likely been placed in a manual processing queue. This could take weeks to be processed, depending on your flight’s departure date, by which time many Qantas partner airlines will have already cancelled your reservation. The only way to expedite the process seems to be to phone the call centre and (politely) insist that you won’t hang up until Qantas tickets the booking.

Many Qantas Frequent Flyer members have also had problems when one or more flights on their Classic Flight Reward itinerary have been cancelled and Qantas hasn’t provided any alternatives, other than a refund (which may take 8+ weeks to arrive).

Another AFF member recently lost six flights on their Oneworld Classic Flight Reward booking after there was a schedule change, and Qantas didn’t re-issue the ticket on time. This resulted in the flights operated by Cathay Pacific and Qatar Airways getting cancelled and disappearing from the booking.

Qantas has not responded to our request for comment about bookings not being ticketed.

It’s appalling that so many Qantas customers need to jump through all these hoops to book a Classic Flight Reward – and that even once you have a confirmed booking, it won’t get cancelled. Qantas clearly has some serious issues with its call centre and ticketing processes which still have not been adequately addressed.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Rewards seats changed from QR to QF without approval and from J to Y

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.