I booked a rellie US-AU-US with points and everything went pear shaped, cancelled kaput the month before the flight. I have a few points in the QF bank but no status. The points were promptly returned as were add-ons/taxes. The US travel policy also promptly refunded the full cost of the policy. How times have changed.
That was May 2020 before it got ‘deep’.
If the $1.4 Billion in the QANTAS coffers of the value of credits/vouchers is true (see no reason to doubt that figure), QANTAS may be using that to buffer their bottom line. If they don’t pay it out, it is money that remains in QANTAS hands. Right now it may be held in a payments reserve account but if enough time passes it reverts to income for the business. A nice little journal entry moves it over and no pain experienced to do so (well for them anyway).
@FraM If I were you I would follow phb’s recommendation, sit and wait until the 5 business days have lapsed.
I don’t think public holidays count in the five days Bpay can take to be received.
Your suggestion of buying another ticket means you’ll pay Virgin in addition to what you paid QF, because until say 5 business days pass and still they have not issued the e-ticket, from where I sit (and I am no fan of QF), they have done nothing wrong.
Your perspective of defining payment by Bpay as the instance when your account is debited is incorrect. What is crucial is when the funds hit QF’s account. Of course, when QF contacts you to issue you the e- ticket or tells you when the funds actually hit QF’s account is not only beyond your control, it may be some time after the funds have really been received.
For countless reasons, I never Bpay for such purchases. I use credit cards if for no other reason, if the e-ticket is unreceived by a reasonable date, I can seek and often receive a ‘chargeback’ ie a reversal of the original debit.
When a bill is paid by Bpay, with some exceptions, the receiver is contracted to date receipt on the date the BPay was sent regardless when they receive it. The payment may not be processed and show on the account for 2 to 5 business days after being sent. eg a BPay sent today for a water bill is posted as received today even if the water company receives and processes it 2 to 5 days later.
OTOH if one pays for a ticket by BPay the recipient does not know if the customer has paid or ‘done a runner’ until the funds are received and processed into the account so a ticket may not be issued until the BPay is received and processed into the ticket account. It is generally unwise to pay for a ticket by BPay within a week of the ticket time in normal conditions; in these times following up anything with QF seems at the buyers risk.
There are some companies and often government agencies that clearly state the date of receipt is the date of receipt, not the ‘standard’ BPay agreement.
Everything might be on track on schedule but until a ticket is issued the traveller reasonably can become concerned. If there is a problem, waiting until a few days before travel and trying to contact QF when they seem all but uncontactable?
Hi
FYI, have sent you below a copy of an email I sent to Qantas on 21 March, the content of which is self explanatory.
Needless to say, I have had no response from them at this time of writing to you.
Am sure this email is just the tip of the iceberg you will have received. Feel free to add mine to the collection and pursue to whatever extent you consider necessary via ACCC or otherwise to add weight to the complaints.
FYI, the flight credit for $224.68 is stated to have a redemption expiry date of 31 December 2023 which I should have been entitled to redeem and use against a 21 April 2023 flight I have had to pay for afresh. Also, the 11 January 2021 was a Qantas cancelled flight (not by me), I had to book an emergency last seat ticket on Flight QF619 on 8 January 2021 to get out of Brisbane pre lockdown (Booking 6xxxxx) costing me a rediculous $832.48 that I would love to claim part or all of that back.
Over to you.
Allan (Choice Member)
From:
Sent: Monday, 21 March 2022 2:57 PM
To: frequent_flyer@qantas.com.au
Subject: Query Regarding Bookings and Redemption Credits
Hi
I have recently booked 2 flights that I was hoping to redeem credits from the cost of the flights. After waiting on line for over 90 mins on 3 occasions I had to hang up due to commitments so had to pay full amount for the 2 flights.
Trying to redeem when trying to make on line booking of same failed as the reference number was not for whatever reason acceptable and just kept repeating the request for details.
As I have paid for the now booked 2 flights in full I would like and prefer to get a reimbursement to my bank account before the expiry date of the credits rather than try in the future to hopefully have the system accept the credit redemptions.
That is the background and my aim by virtue of this email.
Now the details for you to match up and look at:
Name: Allan
FF Member No:
Flight Credit 1: Ref 5xxxxx - $224.68 for Qantas cancelled Flt QF617 Bne/Mel on 11 Jan 2021
Flight Credit 2: Ref Kxxxxx - $40.00 paid for seat selection upgrade on Flt QF610 Mel/Bne on 4 Dec 2020 that was cancelled. Receipt number ##########
Flight Credit 3: $5 paid re Flt QF617 Bne/Mel on 11 Jan 2021 that was cancelled. Receipt number ##########
The above 3 flight credits were confirmed in a previous telephone discussion with Qantas in early 2021 as being recorded and confirmed available.
One last thing, my upcoming flight bookings are on references 6xxxxx and 5xxxxx. The booking 6xxxxx will not as yet allow me to choose seating. When will that option be allowable under “Manage My Booking” for the 21 April flight?. I already have seating allocated under booking 5xxxxx.
I await your response.
Allan
Welcome to the Community @Foxmulda
That is a terrible experience and you were fortunate to be able to buy a fare while you try to get it sorted.
It is not obvious the frequent flyer program is the best place since they are all about miles not bookings and fares, even though they seem inextricably linked and FF members are encouraged to use that portal.
You might embed your original email(s) using the form at Customer care feedback form | Qantas AU as a complaint?
This 3rd party page has many (unconfirmed) methods to contact QF. Whether there is any better response from one or another remains to be discovered.
Good luck with it, and please let us know if any of these contact points are helpful/responsive to get you sorted.
"You can only go SYD to HK " Is this not the same as before COVID? A flight credit was only ever given for a specific flight and could not be transferred to a different one (or indeed a different person) i.e. it was never considered the same as a cash refund ti be spent in future as you wished. Granted COVID situation is/was different but it seems the terms of refunds/credits have not changed.
Qantas advice is different. The credits are saved as a dollar value. They can be used on available flights. There are some restrictions indicated.
Note there are 2 sets of conditions accessible through the link. One covers where QF cancelled the flight. The other if it was the passenger due to ……
The conditions avoid defining ‘available flights’. This could be interpreted as any flight with unbooked seats. It might also apply if a more restricted set of seats on a limited selection of flights. The second would be similar to how the original ‘frequent flyer’ rewards seats were managed.
Hi, just reading through the notes here - thank you. Helped put a bit more clarity around this. They were QF ticketed flights and it was not my choice about paying in HK dollars. If you purchase the tickets on the QF website and it detects that you are sitting in HK when making the booking, the QF portal currency switches over automatically. That makes sense, but the downside is that moving back to Aust, complicates the refund. I did go to a call centre, and to Qantas’ credit, when I brought the subject up, they (call centre) were quick to locate the credit in my account, but restricted in what they would do to recognise the credit. So, to my mind, it is a policy position that I am bringing into question, not anything to do with the call centre. I am just hoping, after hearing on the radio from Dean Price, that Qantas had squirrelled away 1.4Bn in credit refunds, that they may change their position, because it appears to be skewed.
(apologies for the length of this reply - once I started getting it off my chest, I could not stop)
This is just another sad story regarding Qantas flight credits.
It all started well enough when, due to the Covid situation, I decided to book our economy class return trips from Sydney to London using the Qantas Flexible fare option.
I did not mind paying more than the normal prices as I was buying some insurance against having to change dates or cancel.
Sure enough, I changed the dates twice and although there was no charge for this service, the available flights were $250 more expensive the first time and $500 more expensive the second time. At the time I shrugged this off as availability due to increased demand.
Finally, because of the escalating Covid situation in the UK, I cancelled my flights until the situation settled down. I received a credit voucher for the full amount of $7,500 (yes, that is a lot of money for 2 economy return flights).
Now for the really sad part.
When I finally decided to re-book on-line, I dutifully put in my credit voucher number but only received the offer of flights costing many hundreds of dollars more than my $7,500 available credit.
I thought “that is weird”, so I tried re-booking without using my credit voucher, and low and behold I could get my flights for a total of $3,600.
I did some research on the internet and reread the Qantas Terms and Conditions. The Qantas answer was basically “tough bananas mate, we make the rules and you have been done over”.
I could almost have accepted the result, if I could have used up all my credit for the flights. But I could not. There was no way the Qantas system was going to let me use my credit without spending more money for extremely expensive economy flights.
So, I booked my cheaper flights and kept the Qantas credit which expires at the end of 2023. I am hoping, but not expecting, that Qantas will voluntarily or be forced to do something reasonable with their Customer’s credit.
Wondering whether this was all a bad dream, I have just been online to check Qantas flights to London for October 22.
Without using my credit voucher I can get return economy flights for 2 people for $3,816. This is using the normal Qantas online booking website.
When I use my credit voucher, the Qantas system takes me to a special web page for redeeming credit. In this case it offers me no economy flights as they are all less than my credit voucher value. The cheapest flights it will offer me are Premium Economy Saver. Total value $10,550.
So, effectively, Qantas wants to charge me another $3,000 to redeem my credit. Qantas has my money, but they will not let me use it in what I consider an equitable way.
@JodiBird, @BrendanMays is this seemingly common behaviour by QF something of interest to Choice?
Thanks, these first-hand account continue to inform our work, and sorry to hear you have been affected @DaveB. It is shocking to hear the number and severity of the issues occurring, and specifically around Qantas. We know it’s not fair or reasonable, and we have an ongoing complaint with the ACCC. Unfortunately, we don’t have perfect solutions in the short term. The only success we have heard about is by pursuing Qantas persistently via their customer service to try to get a better outcome. If you have the luxury of time on your voucher, it may be best to hold on and wait but we know that this isn’t an option for many of us.
A month old, but relevant.
A bit OT but QF seems on a roll of abusive tactics, whether or not on purpose.
Not able to fly QF until QF sorts their own errors?
Why would anyone fly Qantas? Seems like they are just in business to rip off their customers.
I’ve tried to use my travel voucher of 1.700 to pay for a new ticket to see family overseas which now costs more than double than on pre COVID times - 4,000! Still the system didn’t recognise my voucher. Spent two hours waiting on the phone and no answer. Emailed twice no reply. Couldn’t buy it. Not sure we can do anymore its like having your money disappearing with no legal means to be compensated.
Still waiting for an arranged refund from Qantas for COVID cancelled flight to New Zealand in July 2021. No reply to emails, can’t get through on phone and no refund even though they sent an email in December asking for our payment details. Frustrating hardly the word, have others managed to get a refund.
Welcome to the Community @SueBee
I moved your topic into this existing one. A fairly large number of QF pax have not even made it as far as you have in the queue. If you peruse this topic it describes the present state of QF ‘customer service’.
They claim to be hiring and training more staff but so far I have not seen reports anything has improved.
After 5 months that would be disturbing. You would be correct to worry whether there was a typo in your response (but you can check that in your sent folder); a transcription error when they entered the information (that you cannot check without them answering ‘the phone’); unlikely but someone will offer it as a possibility that you responded to a scam email (however if you had no funds withdrawn that is a low/no probability and you can check/verify the email addresses from your ‘sent’ folder); or they are still delaying processing it for their own cash flow management; or in a worst case they lost it (email can go astray in cyberspace, or in their own systems).
So many possibilities but not many ways through it. Maybe the contacts in my prior post could assist?
Please update if you receive your refund, or how you proceed as it could help others.
Since my son cancelled his QANTAS flight scheduled for 24 April 2022, we have been appalled by QANTAS’s customer service. When he cancelled his flight, the QANTAS webpage displayed the money paid for the flight and indicated that this amount would be refunded to my son’s bank card. On 26 April, QANTAS emailed my son: “Your refund for booking reference XXXXXX has been processed, and we’ve refunded the cost of your ticket (that you paid using cash) to your original form of payment.” However, on 27 April, my son received a refund for $50.11, even though he paid $451.32 for the flight.
On 14 May, my son called QANTAS to enquire about this discrepancy. After two hours on hold, QANTAS informed my son that the flight was not fully refundable, and that he was only eligible for the taxes associated with the flight. My son subsequently filed a complaint with QANTAS for misleading behaviour, as all communications from QANTAS clearly indicated that my son would receive a refund for the full cost of the ticket. As my son indicated in the complaint, had the two options (travel credit for $450 or refund for $50) been clearly displayed side-by-side, he - along with 99% of people - would select the travel credit, notwithstanding the frequently publicised challenges associated with using travel credits!
Since filing the complaint with QANTAS on 14 May, my son has heard nothing from QANTAS. He sent a follow-up email to QANTAS on 22 June, with no success. If QANTAS truly put their customers first, they would clearly indicate their options side-by-side when cancelling their flights, including how much they would receive for a travel credit and how much they would receive for a refund. They would also provide customers with regularly updated estimates regarding how long it may take for their complaint to be addressed. Maybe he should lodge a complaint about their complaints handling process?
We expect QANTAS to issue my son with a further refund or travel credit for the remaining $400 that they owe him. How do you suggest we pursue this with QANTAS further?
Welcome to the Community @CustomerServiceNerd,
Without knowing the exact T&C of the ticket as well as the displays he saw from QF regarding his options, the lack of QF communications has become something of infamous legend as you can deduce from this topic, where your son’s situation is yet another wrinkle.
It appears patience is the primary need but since it appears you are $401.21 out of pocket as you see it, their complaints system seems next for your engagement and regardless they appear hopelessly overloaded.
This site is not connected with QF but the contact details might be useful.
and contact QF via a complaint with (read the about and other related pages to understand what they do and do not do)
If and when you get engagement please post how you went as it could assist others.
