m0hamed

Rather, sales get priority over customer service. Again you'll find this in most sectors. Sales departments are required to have minimal wait times to ensure new business.

Blackcloud

Also the sales area, is often separate from customer service or claims, may not be able to answer or help you out so I would not bother with this strategy.
I do not call airlines that often, maybe once a year, so do not think much about wait times, and being WP or *G do not have much of a wait anyway.

Geoff F Flyer

I have had to re-schedule 2 business flights with Qantas in the past week.
On both occasions I have been on hold for over 1 hour.
We are really sick of this and I will never book with Qantas again. Virgin Australia are more responsive and better to deal with.
Your loss Qantas

Mwenenzi

Geoff F Flyer Welcome to FT (Au branch)

Why did you not change on line?

How many times do we read this on FT?

As VA do fly to all the places QF do, at some time people who genuinely take this attitude will be driving or in a row boat instead of flying.

m0hamed

That doesn't discount the ridiculous wait times since they closed the BNE call centre.

At least EY prioritises F and J calls and BA has You First.

It is a major oversight to ignore premium pax who may be other OW elites of not elites at all.

Awesom Andy

Quite a few bookings can't be changed online. For myself, over half of the changes required calling as the link is disabled.

og

Simple web bookings are handled very differently to OW circle products - eg xONEx, xCIRCxx and so on. Notwithstanding, my last contact with a QF human operator was a few months ago and was answered quickly and handled efficiently and was a pleasant experience. As have most if not all calls in the last decade (as WP).

Dave Noble

The times I have called recently, there has been a call back feature. Made use of that and although still had 10 minutes to wait, it didn't involve being stuck on a phone waiting to get to front of queue

The callback service has made it much better

Blackcloud

I too have used the call back feature and had the call returned in 30 minutes. Although it does not excuse QF for the poor wait times I have had many a long waiting experience for other airlines in which I did not hold status but had Business Class tickets. For complicated itineraries I use a trusted travel agent so they can sort out issues in their own time, or simple ones I book and change online.

Awesom Andy

I find some "simple" bookings such as SIN-MEL-SYD-SIN made from the website to require calling as well. Not sure what the rules/requirements are, but I seem to be getting the short straw a lot.

It was still all good a few months ago. Although I either call the WP line, or call during absolutely weird hours (3am AEST).

Platy

Phone calls to the premium line as a WP generally get answered quickly and premium team members are mostly great. However, I recently assisted a friend with bookings who is Gold and the wait times were so ridiculous for him that I ended up making the travelling arrangements for him using the premium line myself in one case and taking up the offer of one of the premium team members to ring him directly and immediately to facilitate his booking.

Failing to provide a reasonable level of service to customers (and especially Gold members) is mental when you're supposed to be selling a product and aiming at customer retention in a competitive marketplace.

For comparison I have rung AA maybe 6 times in recent weeks as a non status member of AAdvantage and the calls were all answered within seconds.

tuapekastar

I had cause to call QF from Thailand recently (I very rarely have cause to call them from anywhere). I am SG, so was not expecting any sort of premium desk service. First call, waited about 1:20 (1 hour 20 minutes) until my Skype credit ran out. Second call (after topping up) about 30 minutes and I cracked it and hung up.

Those calls were in the evening (Oz time). I tried later (about 3AM Oz time, perhaps even the next night) and the call was immediately answered with 'premium desk' (I didn't think they were on duty at that time of night but that is what the chap said). All sorted very quickly after that.

My take out of that is, without trying to sound precious, what right does Qantas have to treat it's customers like so many pieces of sh*t! Appalling wait times for any caller regardless of status.

Having ranted here I probably should post something on QF's FB page.

og

I just wonder if there is a bug in the QF phone system whereby some calls are routed to a dead line and will NEVER be answered? Hopefully somebody with knowledge of the (type of) system that QF uses can add comment.

patrickk

but lately has slowed quite a bit. The offer to call back does not work a you call when it suits you but you need to budget half an hour.

Dave Noble

it has been not far off the time estimated ime and gives you the same outcome as waiting on hold

If you choose to call at 20:00 and there is a 40 minute wait, you would have to wait until 20:40 regardless

For me, with airlines which offer this feature, such as MH and QF, the wait time becomes somewhat less important since I can just go do other things