Originally Posted by
number_6
Sounds like you were on a very cheap industry fare such as an ID90, as otherwise the "minimal refund" would be over $1000. One of the drawbacks of flying on such very cheap fares are the terms and conditions (which include no guarantee of class of service). If you care about this, there are lots of other, more expensive, fares which would have given you stellar QF treatment. Thousands of other pax got hotel paid for, upgrades and even rerouted on other airlines, at QF's expense; there is lots of evidence that QF in general does give a damn about their pax. In fact threads right here on FT indicating how much better QF is at this (irrops and pax amenities) than other airlines.
ID90s are staff travel concessions only issued to staff & some TAs as well as their friends/family. Looking at the posts the OP has interacted with, it seems he/she booked with a TA called Vayama so it was definitely
not an ID90.
http://www.vayama.com/
With the above in mind, my advice still sticks, although I suspect QF will only refund the different between a Y and T fare, which we all know will be very little if anything. [I'm making the assumption the OP was on a R or T class fare as W is full fare PE]