Any chance of compensation???
 

I had an open segment SYD - HNL but when I tried to book it this morning June 9 Qantas said the next available flight wasn't until July 11, over a month away so I had to reschedule a few flights so as not to spend another month here.

Ticket was bought through AA who has no public office in Australia so I had to rebook through Qantas at a cost of an extra $1034.00 which I don't feel is right as Qantas, the only One World carrier flying SYD-HNL (or so I was told) couldn't provide service in a reasonable time!

Even worse the Melbourne office of Qantas, where I had to go in person as I had a paper ticket, was not very friendly or competent, tried to tell me that AA didn't fly DFW-ANC failed to appologize when proven wrong.

Have added Qantas to Air Canada to my never fly again list!

If you had an open-dated cheap ticket, then all seats in that class may have sold out for near dates, hence you had to upgrade to a more expensive fare class to get availability.

This happens for most airlines as travel dates approach.

Why did you not phone AA in the USA ?
There was (or is) an AA office in Aust that did (or has) an Au phone

It was your choice to book an open dated ticket for SYD-HNL. If there is no availability in the booking class you wish to travel in, then you either have to choose another date or buy another ticket

AA does have a presence in Australia. They have a telephone booking service plus they do have ticketing facilities, however since you had paper tickets ( which likely would have been avoided by not using open dated sectors ) you would have to post them to the AA office for a reissue

It's up to you on whether to travel QF again , but this is the most ridiculous reason I have heard for not doing so

Dave

So you are on a RTW, most probably in Economy, correct? A LONEx maybe?

If this is correct, then you are aware that L is a very low booking class. How is it QF fault that this fare class is booked out? If you have a ticket which is in such a bad booking class you must make sure to get seats long in advance. On some routes you would have to wait far longer than a month to find the next available L seat. Sometimes you can have 3-4 months without any seat in this class anymore.

Also AA has now a decent call centre in Australia and the RTW desk is excellent. Absolutely no need to switch to QF. However, only QF was able to upgrade this fare which isn't even covered by the rules so they have done you a big favour.

And in regards to DFW-ANC. AA has just started this route again as it is seasonal so you can forgive a QF person to not know this. If you walk into a random AA office and start talking about some seasonal QF/MA/IB routes chances are high that they might not know this as well.

If you are really on a LONEx then QF has done something very nice for you as they could have insisted on you flying with the first flight which actually has L availability.

Well excuse me for being a second class citizen who flies L class & uses open tickets so they can change plans & expects when purchasing a ticket that it will be honored in a reasonable time frame!

Well now I know that One World & their Australian member Qantas are both NOT very reliable or upfront organizations to deal with, especially Qantas whose sales reps need to upgrade their knowledge & public relations skills.

As to the myth that AA has an office in Australia where they can change RTW tickets, I did call the Australian office, or at least the Australian number, the office could have been anywhere & was told it was NOT a public office where customers could come in & I would have to do the change through Qantas.

Never had a problem with AA anywhere, they were very accommodating at the Bangkok office when I changed the date on a previous leg, actually the flight that brought me to this land where Qantas seems to have a monopoly & treat their customers with utter contempt.

Oh well all's well that ends well & Qantas only ripped me off for $1034 to get out of this expensive hell hole & I have learned the lesson that a One World ticket isn't worth the paper it's written on & I surely shall never return & avoid Qantas like the plague from now on.:mad:

:rolleyes:

No-one suggested that.

Cheap tickets come with conditions. Limited availability is one of them. Get used to it or buy flexible tickets. If you do travel with open-date L class segments, keep an eye on availability, eg using KVS.

Actually the best advise on cheap tickets is to avoid Australia with Qantas's near monopoly:td: & only choose destinations with multiple carriers which I shall advise anyone who asks!

The best advice is to exercise judgment when 'booking' open sectors on any carrier.

It's unfortunate that this has happended to you on QF and will influence your opinion towards QF, but this really could have happened on a whole number of carriers.

You should only avoid an airline (or any business) when they genuinely screw up. QF haven't screwed up. You had the option to make a reservation on QF when you bought your ticket (an open sector is not a reservation), or you could have at least seen (or been advised by your TA) that there is no availability between SYD-HNL and should look at a different route.

You chose to use open tickets rather than have them dated. If you had just put a date in the future on it you could easily have got it changed by AA without the need to post tickets in ( they do allow posting tickets in , they do not have a publicly accessible office )

You had a ticket for L class; in order to use it, there has to be availability in L class. That there was no availability is not somethign valid to have a go at QF at , but it was your risk in using open tickets

Qantas did not rip you off, they charged appropriately for the journey you wished to book

If you know enough to book open tickets, you know enough that class availability is limited. No airline will hold a L seat open just for you when might want it as you seem to expect.
Time to get over it and stop blaming everyone but yourself.

It's extremely unpleasant to find that an airline has restricted inventory to the extent that, for all practical purposes, it's unobtainable. The advise that I would offer to other RTW travellers is to ensure that they familiarize themselves and adopt tools that alert them to when such rare inventory becomes available for booking.

It's reassurring to note that numerous competitors have recently entered into the US - Australia market, severely reducing both QF's pricing power and its monopoly stranglehold in general. This increased competition, however, does not help one on a xONEx RTW ticket, as none of the current competitors are members of OW.

That all said, the part of your experience that I find most concerning / upsetting is where you refer to SYD as an "expensive hell hole". While it undoubtedly can be expensive, I've never before heard SYD referred to as a hell hole. I've only visited Sydney 4 times, but each time I've thought it among the most pleasant, beautiful cities in the world ---- someplace that my wife and I would be happy to move to in retirement. Hopefully your comment was made in regard to a specific event (i.e. dealing with an unsympathetic Qantas CS rep) and not to the overall SYD experience. If not, I hope that you do some day give SYD another visit (even if travelling there on a different airline) to revisit, and enjoy, one of the world's greatest treasures.

Sorry busman, you deserved better
 

Busman, IMO when OW sells a RTW product bookable in L class only and then OW carriers (e.g. QF) have restricted availability in L, I think it is somewhat (or a lot) deceptive on the part of the airlines.

Just curious, did you HAVE to go to HNL? If not, you could have paid a $125 change penalty and re-routed your ticket to SYD-LAX for instance.

I think you just ran into bad luck when you called AA in Oz and reached someone who could not be bothered to help since you were trying to book a QF flight. Also, remember that the quality of airline staff (particularly ticketing staff) has been steadily declining throughout the world - most agents are fairly clueless and can only add 2+2 to get 4, but not 3+1!

Besides, many airline staff are given incentives on how much additional revenue they collect (e.g. if your baggage is 1lb over the limit, you will be dinged), so they are sometimes keen to extract more money from the passenger than absolutely necessary.

Finally, I will add that I had visited the MEL QF travel centre (on Collins St, if I am not mistaken) last year and also remember that the agent handling my booking was neither competent nor friendly, which is somewhat of an exception Downunder.

The OP was wanting a low booking class on a route that has only 3 flights per week and the flights are busy. Taking 2 weeks from 17 June, for example, 1 flight is full in economy , one has K class available and the other 4 only have B and Yclass available . Doesn't seem that it is restricting L class , just that the flights are busy.


Leaving it to the last minute to try and make a booking on a low inventory on a route with few flights seems a pretty risky approach to me and not the airline's fault

Unless it was the last sector, the OP did have other options available such as not going to Hawaii and going straight to LAX/SFO

Well having more options is always good. The reality however is different. QF has a monopoly within Australia. AA has a monopoly within the US, BA within the UK etc. as far as OW is concerned. And then there are international routes which are operated as a monopoly within OW such as SFO-LHR among many others. So if you only want to fly routes which are served by more than one OW carrier then this will restrict your movements quite a bit.
And there are some AA routes like your DFW-ANC who don't have any L seats available for days in a row even so it is a daily flight.


I agree with Dave Noble here. This particular route is only served three times a week on 767 and it is just very busy. Of course one can take HA, FJ, NZ or JQ on that route but the OP bought a ticket which doesn't allow to use them. I wouldn't call this deceptive. I agree however, that this is one of the big problems of the LONEx as its low booking class creates those issues. Not just with QF but with any carrier. The Star Alliance RTW is superior in this respect as it books into a much higher booking class.
BTW, you can get the same problem in Business or First as well. One segment the OP is flying DFW-ANC is very often sold out in A and you need to wait days to get a flight confirmed. I sometimes fly LHR-MCT-LHR and I know that Business Class (D) sells out on certain days (Fridays!) so I have to confirm those tickets 6 months in advance to get what I want.

For the record, fair warning had been provided...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11661378-post8.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11661454-post9.html

Bingo: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11661841-post10.html

Qantas said there were no seats available for over a month. If that's the case how would it be possible to change a confirmed booking to a date with NO available seats????

Glad someone else has had a less than positive experience at the Qantas flight center on Collins St in Melbourne.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.


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

I have also found Qantas to be very annoying when it levies service charges and other nuisance fees on xONExs; unfortunately this is permitted in the rules: One question I had - if you had to go to Hawaii, why didn't you just get a reissue, fly to LAX or SFO, then buy a separate ticket to Hawaii and back? $1034 for the upcharge (is that AUD, CAD or USD?) is an awful lot compared to $400 - $500 (US) for a return flight from LAX to HNL/KOA/OGG etc. Even adding the $125 change fee and a Qantas nuisance charge, you'd still have been ahead; in fact you'd have lots more miles in your FF account. Just a thought for next time - there are a number of OW routes where L inventory is notoriously hard to come by; AKL-SCL is legendary.

So you judge a whole country based on one poor experience getting a seat? :rolleyes:

Heaven help Ireland if its visitors judge it by the de facto national airline, Ryanair.

Dave Noble, I repeat AA's software in Toronto would NOT print an E-tickect so after 4 hrs & many calls later they issued paper tickets.

No I am NOT judging a whole country on the basis of one seat but by the majority of my experiences there where the so-so, poor & really ignorant (Qantas staff) out numbered the few good in Perth, Freemantle, Alice Springs (with the exception of that overrated big red rock in the middle of nowhere desert), Kununurra, Brisbane & what I saw of Tasmania.

As I couldn't go directly to Hawaii I chose instead to go to Guatemala & ANC on the OW ticket which added an extra continent & the cost but made more sense (to me) than paying extra for Hawaii & extra again for Guatemala, ANC covered by 2 unused segments when I was erroneously told it was not available.

All in all OZ was a big expensive disappointment! :td:

Guatemala, Anchorage and Hawaii are all on the same continent as far as a RTW ticket is concerned. If you really have been charged for an additional continent, it may be worth pursuing a complaint (presumably to the issuing airline, rather than QF) about being ripped off.

Open dated sectors will have caused the paper ticket issue. If there had been dates on all the sectors, there would not have been an issue in eticketing

If you had put a date on the sectors and just changed dates as dates were known, it could have nicely been done electronically

That's what I thought but just wanted out of OZ ASAP & the only other option was Singapore Airlines MEL-LAX for around $1500.

Have a couple weeks down time here in Antigua Guatemala so shall pursue this ripoff by Qantas with both AA & One World!!:mad:

If you do make a complaint, then you really must leave out the issues you have QF. AA can do nothing, and won't really care, if QF do not have the desired availability. QF will similarly not care. You held no reservation whatsoever with QF on any of its SYD-HNL services. Complain to your colleagues, friends and family if you wish, but don't waste your time in trying to seek any kind of settlement to this issue.

Being incorrectly overcharged is clearly another matter that was within the airline's control to prevent and, consequently, sort out. I'm not sure who it is that you are ultimately going to complain to as (to me) it's not 100% clear who you paid to reissue your ticket. But if you include a rant about the QF availability gripe, it will make you appear bitter and trivialise your other complaint which sounds legitimate.

You gambled and lost. Why you believe you should be compensated for losing a bet you made is beyond me.

This is how this issue looks to me:

- you have been warned by one of FTs most experienced contributors that what you were planning was risky. You decided to do it anyway.
- while being in the expensive disappointment called Australia for weeks you didn't check flight availability for your next flight at all even so it is a 3 times weekly service only. Just a quick call to AA or a look on the internet at the right time would have solved the problem. But you decided not to call.
- Then apparently you spent almost $1000 to upgrade a LONE4 to a LONE5 and re-route even so you don't even touch South America.

I would use my time in "Antigua Guatemala" to reflect on what your real base for a complaint is. The only thing to complain about IMHO is the less than stellar service of QF MEL and the fact that they charge fees (I know, lots of other airlines do this as well but I still don't like it). But none of this is a bad enough to ask for compensation.

Lots of criticism from down-under & from my experiences there it's evident that you people live in your own little world there & do things differently. So be it!

However in the real world some travelers don't plan their trips to the minute a year in advance, therefore the open ticket. I had no idea when I would leave OZ until until a week prior so what would be the point in checking.

Also during my 30 years in a public service business it was always the rule that when you sold s service it would be delivered in a reasonable amount of time, if not you were branded a shyster & didn't last long.

In my opinion 30+ days is not a reasonable amount of time & I am willing to bet there were empty seats on some flights to HNL during that month.

What Qantas did was nothing less than acting like a common thief!

If people complacently put up with such actions they will just escalate & I for one will not remain silent at a blatant RIPOFF!

I shall also recommend to anyone who will listen to avoid Australia in general & Qantas like the plague.

Yet you purchased a ticket which books into a class with very restricted availability on a route with only three flights per week, and were advised as to the risks before you did so.

Caveat emptor is appropriate here, methinks.

Nobody FORCED you to buy a ticket that books into L class. You could have purchased another higher fare that books into a different class. You were warned that your plans were risky, yet you proceeded despite the warnings. Your loss.

Absolute rubbish, what you are doing is acting like a spoilt little brat who took a gamble and lost.

Your opinion will be duly noted and ignored.

This is where your credibility is totally lost, NOBODY judges a country based upon a single occurrence, otherwise NOBODY would go to the United States (in order to avoid the TSA and CBP). Heck, TSA and CBP would be enough to deter anyone from going to the US, but we go there anyway because it is a great country. Using your yardstick, nobody in their right mind would go there.

Dave

(Who is beginning to think the OP is nothing but a troll)

*IF* you had booked just a holding date in the future, you would not have needed open sectors and so would have been issued a electronic ticket which is more easily changed directly with the issuing carrier; this would not have made any difference to availabilty though

If you want to travel on some of the lower booking classes on a route which only operates infrequently then you are taking a large gamble if you only plan to decide a few days before travel. If you need that flexibility then there are more appropriate fares unless you decide to gamble...which you did ... and lost; no ones fault other than your own

the key words being "who will listen" I posit

The last several posts haven't really added anything to the discussion, so I'll close the thread before someone posts something they later regret.

Kiwi Flyer
OW moderator