How does the domestic change policy work where you don't want to re-book straight away onto another flight, but merely hold your credit to use toward a yet to be determined fare in the next 12 months. ie I want to cancel and then hold the residual balance for use at a later date.

Can you get a "credit" for future use and can you do this on line.

Further, if you can get such a "credit" can you merge two or more of them into a booking in the future and can this be done on line?

You will need to cancel over the phone. To ease the pain, it is best to keep a copy of the ticket number, they will be able to find it by other means but it is heaps quicker if you have the actual number.

And yes, you can combine more than one cancelled itinerary into a new booking, but you will be subject to multiple re-booking fees ($33 each, or $38.50 each, depending on when oyu booked it).

All rebookings will have to be done over the phone, but you will not be charged the telephone booking fee.

Dave

Just to report, QF London have charged me the telephone service fee today to rebook a stored credit (the first time I've done this).

Credit = AUD 112
Change fee = AUD 35 (no GST chargeable as outside Oz, I presume)
Service fee = GBP 25 = AUD 60

Net credit applied to new ticket = AUD 17

I've e-mailed QF to ask for clarification about this.

With the other GST adjustment, I've actually effectively carried over GBP 15, which is better than a smack in the face with a wet fish - I'd mentally written off the original ticket completely, then remembered that I could store the value - so I'm not going to throw a tantrum over this. But on a purely financial basis, GBP 15 was definitely not worth being on the phone for 20 minutes.

Just over 90 minutes later, I received an e-mail back from telesales, explaining that if this is done through the London office, then a service fee will be payable.

However, as London had not yet processed the changes, telesales offered to take over the booking and make the change with only the AUD 38.50 change fee (now including GST, of course) + fare difference. I said yes please, and a 45 minutes later had another e-mail back saying that they were doing exactly that.

The ticket has not yet been reissued, as far as I can tell, but it seems that all is well, I have saved the GBP 25/AUD 60 service fee, and learned a lesson about how to do it in the future.

And QF has impressed, and earned more than GBP 25's worth of goodwill.

Funnily enough, I can currently see the booking in ba.com (it has my BAEC number in for the 12K oneworld bonus) and checkmytrip.com but not on the QF website.

I have a cancelled $75 fare waiting in the wings since June last year. To date I have not been able to use it.

I have tried three times to use this credit ($42=$75-$33 back then) without success due to the Nett cost being more than I could purchase over the internet. That is the cost of the new "over the 'phone" fare less my $75 credit plus the $33 fee came out more than I could buy the same flight for on-line.

Last time I tried when calling Qantas the cheapest nett cost was to be about $10 more.

I have not tried since the fee went up $5.50 to $38.50.

Maybe I should wait until I need to buy a non deep discounted fare.

Really dim question: Does telesales not have access to all of the fares shown on the website?

It's an issue when changing Red-e-deal's. The new fare must be higher than the old fare.

So if I buy BNE-SYD at $105 and then Qantas have a sale, I can't change my $105 tix to a $98 ticket if I want to change flights. I have to instead go up a class to a ticket that costs more.

The staff cannot (or are unwilling) to just change it to the cheaper ticket and charge you the standard change fee. They have to instead move you to a fare that is more than $105.

I've previously been told to just cancel a ticket, rebook a fresh flight and use the credit later rather than changing tickets due to this issue...

The conditions say "Your original fare may be used as credit towards the payment of a new fare of equal or higher value, provided the new fare conditions are met."

So if I have a $75 credit from an O class fare, and I now want to book anoher $75 O class fare, can I do that for just $38.50?

Or does telesales not have access to the cheapest fares, thus forcing me to, say, buy a $100 N class fare, thereby paying $25 + $38.50 = $63.50 even though I could just spend $75 on a new ticket on the website?

I wasn't quite clear what restriction serfty had encountered when referring to "the new "over the 'phone" fare".

You are correct about the fare conditions. My bad!

I believe the telesales op's can't access one of N or O class. Can't remember which. I'll leave it for someone else to explain properly what goes on!

I suspect that's what serfty means, then. I imagine it would be O class that telesales can't access; that's cheaper than N class. Also, it looks like O is unpublished, whereas N class is published - so that would be consistent, too.

Good thing I was specifically looking to book a YBH this time, for the BA OW promo!

Now just to wait for them to get around to reissuing the ticket ...

Yes, I cancelled a $64 fare, from the OP, and when I went to use the leftovers it would have cost me more via telesales than to book direct on the web, same as Serfty mentions

The conclusion I have come to is that the cheapest fares are on the web - just a shame you can't apply the credit to a new fare on the web, it is still sitting in my FF profile so should be a no-brainer for the IT people to build an extra step into the payment screen on the web.

QF telesales couldn't explain why the QF website doesn't show the booking even though the other sites can. However, apparently the booking is now too complex for me to change online anyway, despite it now being a flexible ticket.

However, a request made at the SYD QP service desk yesterday produced the final change I needed (I hope) in 30 seconds flat, so all is well, and the tiki tour of south-eastern Australia proceeds apace.

Whatever problem prevented me seeing the booking on qantas.com, despite continued visibility on checkmytrip.com and ba.com, also prevented me using the QuickCheck machine. Trying to get at it various ways all produced a rejection card, so I ended up taking half a dozen of them to the service desk in the lounge. Where it took the agent about 10 seconds to check me in and produce a boarding pass, with the observation that the booking looked absolutely fine.

ba.com still shows the booking now, with an information sector SYD-QMX in May 2007!