biba

In late 2001 I renewed my QC membership for five years. Six months later I attained SG and my membership was put on hold. I have maintained SG and WP since then and this year reached LG.

As I will no longer need QC membership, I decided to contact Qantas to enquire about a refund of the unused 4 1/2 years of membership. I was advised that I needed a letter from the bank which issued the CC which I used to pay the membership. I thought this was an odd request but started to go through my old records. My problem is I no longer use this CC, in fact I don't remember which one it was. My records don't go back that far and I can't find any old CC statements and don't know where to start.

Is this a legitimate request from Qantas? Has anyone had success in getting a refund for unused QC membership?

Dave Noble

I wasn't aware of Qantas giving refunds for unused QC membership for those that have Gold/Platinum status ( even lifetime )

If you can get a refund that would be interesting

Dave

d00t

While they most likely will refund you, it's going to be very difficult to obtain and you're going to have to jump through a lot of hoops. And why should they make it easy? You prepaid membership, and 5 years at that?!

So you're out of pocket what - $2k? I'm sure you've since claimed that 2k on your tax returns somewhere and had the GST refunded back to you/your business. Gotten a few points for the spend on the CC too. It's not all bad news.

Take an alternative route - next time you speak to QF make them aware that you've since made LTG in 8 years (thats a lot of flying) and you have 4.5yrs of paid QC still - try and have it credited to your partner or business associate. Might even be worth asking for a goodwill credit of points instead.

They should definately do something for you given you have since spent bucketloads of cash with them however I'm not convinced a cash refund is on the cards for you...

og

LTG is not Life Time QP membership. Should QF ever decide to remove the free QP membership from SG status, you will be out of the QP (unless - of course - your can gain access through another means).

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

If QF wanted to do this then anyone already holding LTG would have a fairly good case for compensation.

I would argue this is something like Qantas Club fees (indexed) for whatever period 'life' might be (this might end up having to be determined based on legal argument by the courts, but I would suggest something like 20 years).

While Qantas can alter the terms and conditions and benefits etc with 6 months notice (if they are to our detriment), something which takes a gold flyer 23 years to aquire (14000 / 600 annual renewal) couldn't really be undone with 6 months notice. I would also argue that if Qantas decided to remove LTG all together, there would have to be some cut-off point at which those members already close enough to LTG would have to be permitted to continue to earn SCs to reach that level and its benefits. This would especially be the case for members who could show they were specifically crediting SCs to Qantas to reach LTG.

regards

lme ff

DownUnderFlyer

IIRC there have been reports here were people were successful with their refund which Qantas is doing at management's discretion.
I faced this issue last year when I became LTG and decided not to ask for a refund because a) I can see how LTG might not be LT QC and b) this might (or might not) impact the LT partner QC.

kangaroo route

.I obtained LTG right away when it was introduced through already accumulated SCs, and so I did call and asked the FF phone service centre if I could get a refund of my 9 months unexpired original annual QP membership. which dated back to late 1999, that had been put on hold in early 2000 when I first got to silver (in those days silver was enough for comp QP access). They were fine with this, just asked me to send the original evidence of paid QP membership, which I still had, and they refunded the 9 months (which I handed over to my employer who had paid for the original QP). If I remember it was a couple of hundred dollars at least. Good luck with your case.