Up until now Qantas has been the only true air carrier in Australia as far as I am concerned with regard to “old style” air travel. By that I mean, not all their customers are treated equally – the regular customers enjoy certain benefits according to just how regular they are.
Sadly, as the years have passed Qantas has lost site of what it means to look after their regular customers – and is more and more trying to use the same “all passengers are equal” methodology as their budget carrier JetStar.
This would be fine, if the pricing was inline with a budget carrier – but you can’t charge normal domestic rates, and treat your customers as budget travelers.
Given that we are touring a show, I have had to purchase additional luggage for several members of our touring party. I did this online, and have printed the confirmations. I received a receipt a little later – that showed the incorrect amount billed to my card (they hadn’t charged enough).
I called customer care, after a little over 10 minutes on hold – the assistant spent some time researching it. It appeared as though there system had “dropped” one of the additional bag requests. At this point in time I would have expected an apology, and then their rectification of the problem. Instead, they offered nothing.
When I pressed them and explained that I didn’t just buy the extra luggage for my health – it was actually needed – they said that they could separate the traveler out – and I could try the booking online again.
This is not my type of customer service. I shouldn’t have to “try again” when I was not at fault. And not when we are flying a party of 11.
A little later, I tried to undertake what I would consider a simple task of getting a touring party of 11 seated together. Because for some reason the bookings were made under two reference numbers – I wasn’t able to sit everybody together. One group (that includes a Qantas Club member and another Silver Frequent Flier) were allocated seating near the front of the aircraft – and the other larger group allocated seating near the rear.
Because I couldn’t use the online seating allocation to sit everybody together, I tried calling customer service. I had the screen open on front of me where a group of 11 seats were available together. I told the phone assistant the rows that were open, and she told me it just couldn’t be done – and then went to end the call.
When I insisted that it would be done – and that our touring party will travel together – she put me on hold, and then proceeded to take nearly 30 minutes to (not) assist with the call.
On returning she explained again it just couldn’t be done, and that she had checked with a supervisor. So, I asked to speak with this supervisor.
After a brief explanation, I was told that it could in fact be done, and that I would receive a call later to confirm that our seating had been arranged. And about 15 minutes later, it was all done.
My disappointment here is firstly that I am now sitting some 18 rows behind where we could have initially sat as a group, this may not sound too bad – but I do like to get off and not have to sit around when we land.
Finally, it’s just not good customer service. The two “first level” service staff didn’t care at all about my concerns and didn’t want to resolve the issue at hand. They wanted to blame policy, or their computer systems – and have me just accept it. Which I would do if I was flying with a budget airline – but I’m not, so I don’t.
The Why Qantas is in real trouble when Virgin Australia gets going by Troy Kelly, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.