Luff

Let me start by saying I am a HUGE QA fan in the air. I would fly it anytime and as well I would definitely recommend their services, and for this post, I will put aside all other issues I had in the last 3 months with them (a lot of issues).

Some of you are probably familiar with their Double Qpoints campaign 2211PC074B.

When it was announced via Email it was "2211PC074" and had an eligibility date for all flights bought from the 8th of January. However, after it began, it was changed to all flights bought from the 15th of January and renamed to 2211PC074B.
I saw the terms and conditions before and after the change to 2211PC074B, so although I re-booked some flights(for after the 8th or 15th) in a booking in a PNR bought before the starting date, I did not mind as I knew I was not eligible.
However, on the 28th of January after carefully reading again the Terms and Conditions I booked 2 business class round trip tickets for me(was Gold, now Platinum) and my partner(was Burgundy with close to 100Qpoints). The first flight was on the 10th of Feb. After the first flight I received my Qpoints + the bonus(double), while my girlfriend didn't. It was odd but we decided to give it a few days. After a few days, nothing so we decided to contact QA support on the 15th of February via chat, both me and her.

The answer was blunt "This offer is for Members Tier: Silver, Gold, and Platinum only".

However, the Terms and Conditions on the 15th of February looked like this:


Terms and Conditions on 15.02.2023

While I explained that I booked on those very specific dates to make sure that we both reach a different tier(her Gold, me Platinum as over 80 Qpoints were going to expire on 20.02.2023), after checking the Terms and Conditions, all they did was apologize and say nothing can be done, but they will modify it on the website. Which they did a few hours later.

I want to teach them a lesson about how a marketing campaign should never update the Terms and Conditions after it was announced, let alone a month after it started, so I will make a legal complaint in the EU. This time it was a light matter somehow, but if they make a campaign to make you buy a ticket to a specific location in a specific period, and then decide their terms and condition need to be updated to what they had in mind but not published on the website, they can do so. So I want to make sure never again they will do such a thing. TaC is made to protect both the customer and the company.

Luff

No one else was burgundy and shocked by this to find out there are no double Qpoints?

msm2000uk

Do let us know how the legal action goes.

Safe travels

M

Passportinonehand

I was a little disappointed too! Both my girlfriend and I would’ve been Silver after our current trip, now we remain Burgundy 🤷‍♂️. Especially annoying as we have 2 other QR trips in April and May, so Silver would’ve been nice, but not going to lose any sleep over it.

Sphinx21

If it's any consolation it appears that flying QR in the back of the plane with Privilege Club status doesn't confer many privileges. The only appreciable difference is that they ask which meal you would like before everyone else.
In Doha the status based lounges cannot hold a candle to their business lounges. It's an overcrowded mess. The differentiation is especially stark vs what you see with other airlines and they gold/platinum status holders.

Luff

Not quite. I do fly 90% of the time business class, and 70% of the time spent in the air is on a flight bought from Qatar Airways. And while the only perk that mattered for me and my girlfriend and to upgrade from Silver to Gold, was the QCredits, the tier of One World, and the extra Avios.

So other than that, yes it was more about a dishonest campaign made by Qatar Airways, that for this time it was about tier... but other times it can be much worse.

mwiski

I had the same situation with my wife. I bought the tickets convinced double points are applicable to all members.
After the flight I raised the complaint attaching the screenshot with original text of the campaign but they refused to credit bonus Qpoints.

Is there any outcome of your actions?

Luff

For now, no. I don't think it reached them yet as it takes a while for the EU's ECC to move the issue internally. It will take at least a year for a solution but it will not be left unresolved

I suggest, if you are an EU citizen, to reach European Consumer Center and make a complaint.

mwiski

hi, you can check the discussion on Twitter on the same topic, search for 2211PC074, I can’t paste the link here.

Passportinonehand

Just wanted to update this thread as both my gf and I made a complaint through the 'contact us' page in the Privilege Club dashboard and now we both received the double Qpoints for this flight, which has catapulted us from lowly Burgundy to Gold (with the help of a few other flights :-)).

My request initially got declined (same old 'you were burgundy at the time of flying and this offer is only for Silver, Gold or Platinum'), but she got the double Qpoints approved (even though she was also burgundy at the time). I then responded to my declined request with screenshots of her Activity Statement showing the adjustment made for double Qpoints, and a few weeks later I received an email that I was now a Gold member and upon checking my account I noticed I also received the double Qpoints adjustment.

So for those who have been struggling to get the qpoints credited, it might be helpful to try again!

Now I just have to find out how to best use those 40 Qcredits :-)

florin

I'm glad that your situation got sorted.

Nobody should have to try again and again... the fact that HUCA is prevalent speaks volumes about failures in customer service.

I agree with the fact that they need to be careful about their marketing campaigns and approach them with competence.

KingCanute

I agree that there have been some sloppy but basic errors with communication of the double qpoints promotion.

It also seems probable from the way people have had to push back and the quick corrections to the t&cs that the campaign was never really intended to apply to burgundy members, and the date in the original t&cs was also probably a typo, with someone erroneously typing the date one week before the communication went out on the real start date.

Some people here have been successful in holding them to account for these errors and receiving the points, and well done to them. But it seems that has had to go up the chain of command to be signed off, hence the delays.

The answer for QR of course is a better attention to detail and lateral thought about boundaries and exclusions when writing and publishing these promotions.

So well done again to those who have secured the bonuses, but I suspect that if QR had been more focussed on communicating the detail accurately and thoroughly in the first place, those same people would likely have lost out. Realistically it's probably a win:win for those who pushed back against sloppy errors and received something that wasn't really intended for them, rather than anything deliberately dishonest as the thread title suggests.

Enjoy the bonus Qpoints and whatever they may bring