JohnAx

But the EU laws do say things about delivering the passenger some place at some time; does it not apply due to pandemic?

ISTFlyer

Yes, the EU laws have these kinds of statements in their law but it does not apply to voluntary situations and it's less generous than what QR offers.
Plus the compensation part of EC261/2004 does not apply due to the pandemic.

sony2012

to me, it is not about Ec261 but rather it is about changing their terms and conditions after purchase. Whatever the rules may be in the fare rules, the airline ran a promotion to increase sales with BwC and customers bought a ticket under this promotion after reading the terms and conditions of the BwC. However, they changed the T&Cs after purchase and started enforcing the new T&Cs to the old booking. I find that really unacceptable. I am not a lawyer so I don't know what this kinda behavior violates but if this sort of thing is allowed by law, there is really no point in having T&Cs. For my personal purposes, I really do not see myself traveling near future so this doesn't really affect me but it excites me time to time to play with the idea that I can fly and change my tickets. I still have one ticket that I need to change once in a while, and in the worse case scenario, I can just get a voucher. So I didn't really explore the further options to pursue but I do find what QR does in this case very dishonest. I am not affected by this one but I certainly learned a lesson and be careful about QR in the future. Probably far less likely to book QR in the future under any uncertainty etc

SK AAR

Guys, come on, do you really expect QR or any other airline to keep allowing voluntary rebooking into higher booking classes without up-fare? Let alone to keep allowing destination changes within 5,000 miles with recalc. of the fare?

Let us face it; the previous very generous rebooking policies of QR were "too good to be true" and it was just a matter of time before QR realised that it had to be changed/couldn't continue. Congratulations to those who were able to rely on it before the changes, but being upset because the policy isn't continued (let alone to be prepared to sue QR for changing the policy) is simply ridiculous (and will lead nowhere). Move on!

ISTFlyer

I agree with SK AAR ,

I don't find it ethical for a company to provide a huge gesture and then limit it stating the rights that they have the option to change the T&C's.
However, let's don't forget that they are still offering the most generous rebooking policy across airlines.

Also, for the 5000-mile policy, they clearly stated in the initial T&C's that this was allowed for changes made up to 30 September 2020 and for travel until 31 December 2020.

hsumh316

Agreed. The T&Cs when i purchased my ticket(i was able to benefit from the previous policy) states that there are fees for voluntary changes and fare difference applies. I can ask them to hold to their original BwC policy but they could also ask me to pay the fare difference and change fees because that’s what was actually agreed upon when i purchased the ticket and not the policy.

plunet

The key thing here is that people are confusing the terms and conditions, also known as conditions of carriage; and the book with confidence policy as well as other customer service policies.

The terms and conditions along with the fare rules are the legal basis upon which your contract is formed.

However the book with confidence policy is not referenced in the conditions of carriage, and policy has never stated that it would remain static - it has always stated that it can be changed at any time with no notice, and it has never stated that policy can be applied retroactively to time of purchase and there is no indication that it forms part of the terms and conditions.

This is no different to any long standing pre-Covid Qatar policy, for example a two hour time change triggers an invol change, and when you have an invol change you can shift to a different operating airports within a 500 mile radius. These are all policies which do not form part of the contract, and could be changed or withdrawn by Qatar. The book with confidence policies fall into the same category. Hence if the policy changes you will struggle to convince Qatar to apply a previous policy, the agents just have their current policy in front of them and that's it..

IAN-UK

A breath of common sense !!

Another way to look at it: if the policy changed post-purchase to the advantage of a consumer, said consumer would be rightly miffed if the airline insisted on applying the policy in force at the time of ticket purchase.




But worth noting that if push came to shove, an adjudicator could consider the incentive to purchase offered by a policy in force at the time the ticket is acquired, and take a dim view if those policy conditions shifted to the ticket-holder's disadvantage.

There again, courts don't usually enforce performance, so you'd likely get a refund - unless you had bought yourself a LAX-Bangkok ticket to replace the original (e.g.) New York-Kiev one, in which case you'd face a steep uphill battle to receive financial compensation for the difference in fares paid to "make you whole".

sony2012

unfortunately, I have to disagree with one of the statements. I personally did not think the BwC was too good to be true. Airlines were in a desperate need of cash and became very flexible with their tickets because they could use the money we paid at that time. I simply thought QR was doing slightly more than the competitors (particularly TK in this case), which is quite common for QR. So I certainly didn't think it was too good to be true or had any expectations that the terms and conditions would change later. I believe many people had the same expectation as mine. Now personally, it didn't affect me much because I am fairly confident that I can use the voucher in the future in case I cannot fly the ticket I bought but as I said earlier, I don't feel very confident about the airline anymore. If QR had the competent staff to think through the potential implications of their promotion, we wouldn't have had this discussion at all. You can think about potential use of this promo immediately, so why couldn't their staff? To me, this shows how incompetent their ground team is, as such I would be very cautious about them in the future. That is all I am saying but you may have a different trust level for them and you are free to book them with an expectation that they can change their terms and conditions at any time and you are stuck with this ticket. I certainly won't put myself in that situation unless I am prepared to deal with it. Just a general impression of a company, QR certainly strikes me as an airline that doesn't have much business integrity from this case. If this was my business, I certainly do not entertain the idea that I would trick my customers to buy something from me with a great promo and then change the T&C later so they are stuck with it when they do not like the product and want to use the old T&Cs they saw when they bought it. It is just not right and if, as a society, we let companies do this, we won't have any confidence in purchasing products, so I thought there should be a simple legal remedy to prevent companies from doing this sort of tricks. But it seems like the commentators here seem to disagree and claim that it is legally not possible.

SK AAR

Looking for tickets to SE Asia for dates where the fare is quite high. Looking at the schedule further ahead where the fares are much cheaper, in S21, it seems very optimistic with 3 daily flights CPH-DOH and 3 daily flights from DOH til final destination. I am quite sure that QR will have to revise the schedule at some point, which will provide the opportunity of an invol. rebooking (i.e. regardless of fare class as long as within same cabin). Anything wrong with asking to get rebooked to earlier dates when such invol. schedule change or cancellation occurs? I realise that most pax will rebook for later dates, however, would QR object to rebooking to earlier dates? (obviously, I'm fully aware of the risk that sch. change or cancellation will occur too late, i.e. after the preferred travel dates - or that there are no more seats in same cabin for the desired travel dates) Thx

ISTFlyer

No problem with earlier dates if there is availability in the same cabin.

IAN-UK

It's certainly not impossible to take them through a small claims procedure: the problem is you'd be unlikely to get more than a refund out of it - unless you were exceedingly brave, funded the itinerary change yourself and then claimed back the fare difference.

But i take your point that the situation shouldn't arise: declared policies should not be diluted post-purchase.

I gather QR were initially taken aback at the number of people booking cheap deals like Boston-Doha-Kiev then immediately changing to, say, LAX-Doha-Bangkok. Then changing again. They then had to iron out the Doha-as-final-destination conundrum as well as the opportunities presented by Sao Paulo-Buenos Aires etc

So, as you say, they didn't think through the implications of their policies before they were introduced. And after that it's been fire-fighting.



But there you are, it's Qatar Airways: fine in the air, but a mess on the ground.

flashware

Given a lot of our bookings are likely to be at good prices, in R buckets, it looks like when we rebook them now we'll end up with no seat selection and lounge access. Great.

realgaga

The old (Book with Confidence) policy states that it is changes were allowedto 30 September 2020 and for travel until 31 December 2020. The NEW EOC policy was put into use on the 1st October, after the old policy expired.

ISTFlyer

I did try to make a voluntary change today ( involving a destination change in the same country ) and I was denied by the hotline agent.
Then I realized that in the recent BWC policy, destination changes in VOLUNTARY situations are now gone.

So, if you book a ticket and try to change the destination, unless you have an INVOLUNTARY change, all destination changes, including if there is availability in the same fare bucket is not allowed. Although, you are welcome to change the destination by paying the fare difference.