Troy Kelly

Let me preface this with - I know I was asking for something that had been explicitly denied by the exceptionally onerous terms of sale that Qantas puts on it’s tickets.
As anybody who works with touring shows will know, performers occasionally injure themselves - strange, I know.
Due to a fairly major injury, we have had to bring in a swing cast member for the first leg of our Australian tour. Because of this - I had to talk to Qantas to try and change the originally booked details to our new cast member.
For some reason - Qantas has a policy to disallow name changes on booked tickets. I assume they would say it is under the guise of security, but if you book as a “group” you can make changes up until 24 hours before the flight - so that negates any argument around disallowing changes for security reasons.
My call this morning was answered by the Hobart call centre, in particular by Mel. I explained our predicament and she understood and appeared to empathise. She informed me that Qantas policy was to disallow name changes, and that as the producer had purchased discounted online tickets, there was a no-refund clause in place as well.
There were two options that Mel gave me, first was to “no show” and forfeit the fare, the second was to put the ticket on hold, and purchase a new ticket for the new cast member (with no cheap tickets any longer available - the new ticket is almost double the price of the originally purchased tickets).
I explained that the two options were both not really suitable. I also tried to express my confusion around the no name change policy, especially considering we were obviously a “group” travelling. After Mel tried a few times to talk with her manager, she again came back and presented the same two options to me. I asked if I could be escalated, and was transferred to Matt.
Matt is true manager material, appearing empathetic - listening to my complaint and then responding while keeping the company line.
After a considerable conversation with Matt and having to get back to work, I gave in and had to purchase another ticket. As an act of good will Matt did not charge a booking fee, and gave us the cheapest available fair for the flights concerned.
Qantas likes to see itself as a friend to the arts, and this really doesn’t show a strong friendship. I am sure there are discounts to the larger performance companies that get corporate sponsorship, but there is a lot more to the arts then the Australian Ballet.
If we had ten members of our touring show, we would have been a group booking, and name changes would have been permitted - for those playing at home - we have nine touring members of this particular show. If there was more money in the arts, the producer would have been happy to purchase full fare tickets that are refundable. If Qantas was concerned about maintaining a good relationship with it’s customers - I am sure more could have been done.
Those who read this blog will know that Qantas and I have a patchy history, and my Qantas complaint details receive about 8 hits a day from people searching google for “Qantas Complaints“.