Originally Posted by
busman7
As I held a paper ticket, my RTW booked at Pearson in Toronto with the first flight originating at LHR, (software would not print an E-ticket) it was necessary to actually go into an office to change, well maybe not as I made a date change in Thailand by simply faxing a copy of the paper ticket to Bangkok, but that was AA in Thailand not Australia which I am inclined to believe makes all the difference.
That was because rather than just put dates on a ticket and change as necessary, you decided to have open dated sectors. Avoiding paper tickets would have been easy
Originally Posted by
busman7
Another problem was Qantas insisting on charging $80 to put a date on the open segment (saying it was a change) when I had changed the date going to Australia twice with AA in Thailand at no cost.
Qantas charges service fees for revalidating tickets and is shown clearly on scale of charges at the ticket centres. If you had not had a paper ticket , you would have avoided this. They were not charging a change fee on the ticket , but a service fee ; it is pretty standard for QF to require that the ticket have a date on it when checking in ; the service desk verify the validity of the ticket and reservation and date the ticket and then the check in staff can allow check in.
Originally Posted by
busman7
The whole experience, along with a few minor issues, has left me with a not very high opinion of Australia in general & Qantas in particular. It's really sad when a customer & visitor to a country knows more about the travel options available than the Qantas employees & is treated with contempt for having that knowledge!
You chose to gamble on availability on a route where there are 12 services per month and lost. The flights currenly to HNL are very busy with not much more than full fare available and so you could not change the booking. How is this Qantas's fault? You could have changed the booking to bypass Hawaii rather than spend $1000 and you could have avoided the issues of paper tickets by having dates on it . This would not have changed the fact that the flights had no availability however