Kremmen,
Dont like to hear we are not meeting your expectations. I'll answer what I can at the moment but may have to come back to you on some specifics.See my comments below.
Originally posted by Kremmen:
Gee, I fly to Hobart (using 9,000 AN points) for a couple of days, and look at the size of this thread while I'm away. A few comments:
1) QF should look at its other problems first. If I ask someone a question via email, chances I will get an answer, often not a decent one, eventually. Get realistic. Answer your email promptly and efficiently, or don't have email at all. In particular, I booked a redemption flight online, then saw that an even better (for me) flight was available one day. I emailed QF and they didn't bother to reply for 6 days, by which time the seat wasn't available any more. It's utterly pathetic. Would a caller on the phone be put on hold for 6 days? If not, why can't email that requires 1 min of someone's time be answered promptly?
This is one I'll come back to you on. Can you advise me where you sent the email to? We do recognise sometimes emails get lost in the system and are currently working on a new system to manage emails across the organisation better.
2) I was QF Blue for 3 years. Out of my 3 free domestic upgrade certs, I managed to use just one. The upgrade certs are practically useless, can't be converted back to points, can't be converted to lounge passes, can't be converted to anything useful.
Totally agree the old domestic ones didnt work. This is why we have relaunched them, opened them up to International and allowed them to be transferable to partner
3) I gave up on QF after several years of elite status because of the introduction of the pathetic tier credits system. The new version is better, but still awful.
I went through 2 of my recent Star RTW trips and calculated the status credits I would have got on QF for same trip. Totals: 28785 miles and 28919 miles. With UA, that equals Star Silver + 15% of the way to Star Gold for each. With QF, my itineraries came to 240 credits in both cases. That's 69% of the way to OneWorld Ruby.
Cant check the calcs based on the data you have given me but 2 times 240 is
480 which is 80%/64% of the retain/attain level for oneworld sapphire. This doesnt seem to be too far off the UA figures?
Still a long way behind.
4) I don't really care how "points" are derived, but Australia has been metric for decades. Most people know the city-city distances in km, if they know them at all. Yes, I'm prepared to convert them to miles to work things out on a US airline, but I don't see why I should have to for Qantas. At the very least, QF should list all their distance tables in the correct units.
The new guide will have distances in miles as you suggest.
5) One question I haven't seen anyone ask: What about open-jaw redemptions? Ansett officially allows open-jaw redemptions. Some of the US airlines allow open-jaw redemptions. (eg. UA, even though I've never seen it in print anywhere.) If the new QF scheme not only (effectively) kills multiple-stop itineraries, but also has no option for open-jaws, this makes it quite inferior to other schemes.
Open jaws will still be available in the new program
Cheers
Darren