And on the 8th day, God created airline Baggage Services.

December 10, 2011 Leave a comment

The good lord must have been bereft of ideas by that time. What have we done as a society to have Qantas Baggage Services foisted upon us?

Those of you who regularly read this, you know who you are, are quite au fait with my feelings on most things Qantas and the general state trashiness that “the spirit of Australia” has become. Well, have I got news for you, The mess of Qantas in the club lounges and cabin is nothing compared to the mess with Baggage Services. These people know how destroy self esteem. This all started when the automatic bag tags were not recognised by the auto check-in luggage machines – bad start as it was going to involve human interaction. We stood in line at the Qantas Club and Status traveler counter for what seemed like an entirety. The baggage woman then looks up ans walks off leaving 6 or 7 people just standing in the line. Nice. Finally we get to the counter and the second person with a minimum of fuss checks our bags. This was the opening to the total failings at Sydney airport.

Sydney baggage hall. At first I thought I must be standing at the wrong luggage carousel. All the priority luggage came out, then all the rest came out. I thought I was standing at the wrong carousel. No I could see people from the flight near by. When the bags finally arrived, 4th from the end, I said to my daughter, so much fro the priority tags and the guy standing next to me, who I have never seen in my life before, joined in complete agreement. I kid you not, the clowns in baggage services have no idea. Thank you Qantas for being treated so well. It’s the final parting shot as you leave the airport. A two fingered salute to say thank you for flying.

In hindsight, at least they didn’t loose the bags!

Filed under Flying, Travel Tagged with , , , ,

Another meltdown at @QantasAirways and @nab struggle with Frequent Flyer Points.

November 30, 2011 Leave a comment

If the immortal words were ever so true, this morning was the morning, “Mascot, we have a problem!”  And what a problem it was.  It seems that the gremlins from Virgin had been watered after midnight and escaped to Qantas.  Now in the “olden days”, this would not have been an issue as when you entered the departures hall you were greeted with a wall of check-in counters and accommodating staff.  These days you get a hand full of staff showing you how to press buttons on a screen and when the gremlins broke into the datacentre, the screens were not co-operating and thus you get monumental delays and my word, Qantas are good at those.

My usual Canberra run would have been a very long and protracted affair today had I not already been in Canberra.  The 7:20 did not depart till 8:57.  I bet Qantas made the poor bastards sit on the plane !

image

In summer Channel Nine have classic catch’s and Qantas have classic boarding passes but no car to be won!

Twitter image of a hand-written boarding pass presented to a passenger in Brisbane this morning.

The pen and paper is a nice touch, next tablet and chisel?

The other big news, NAB – more take, less give, I think that is how it goes…..

Qantas mediocrity is legendary, they do it so well, so I was surprised at the ease NAB had got in on the act with the allocation of Frequent Flyer points from cards that are earn points.  This sorry affair started in September 2011 when I noticed that I was missing a couple thousand points on my Frequent Flyer statement.  I phoned 1300 number on the back of my card and that is when the fun started.

After spending an hour explaining that there was an error, that it was a bank issue (remembering that at the NAB customer charter indicates that our faeces does not stink) and asked what were they going to do to fix it, I got no where.  Eventually, I was told, some one would ring me back.  Too their credit, they did get back to me and guess what – still my fault.  The rocket scientists in the NAB loyalty department do not consider customer loyalty to be a high priority on their to do lists.  Faeces, smell, ring a bell!  The more give, less take was wearing thin.  After a false start with the NAB Resolve team (another sorry story) I finally got some where and guess what – “Docklands, we have a problem”.  It would appear that a flood of complaints came in after mine and the rocket scientists finally joined the dots (they only had configure 1 to 2!).  What happened next,  the bank has still not issued, and I have looked, any acknowledgement of the problem.  Furthermore they still have not apologised for the error and after 5 follow up emails and a few more phone calls we are getting the points in January 2012 currently as of email 5 today. I did get a letter a month ago from the NAB Resolve team saying the problem had been resolved.

Moral of the story

  • “More give, Less take” only works when nothing goes wrong!
  • when dealing with third parties about Qantas Frequent Flyer points, large quantities of pseudoephedrine may be required.  At one point, a dose of the green dream was looking appealing.
  • All ways check your Frequent Flyer points – you have paid for them physically and mentally!
  • The words “benefit of the doubt” and “bank” do not sit well in one sentence,think oil and water.

Next time, I have done some research and Ferdinand Magellan was wrong.  In Mascot the world is FLAT !

Filed under Flying, Frequent Flyer, Qantanomics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

#QantasLuxury, the hashtag debacle from @QantasAirways.

November 24, 2011 Leave a comment

Oh dear!  What I would have given to be a fly on the wall in Neil Ross’s office (Group General Manager Marketing) on Wednesday.  The Gen Y social media guru’s would have come up with this plan as a brilliant idea as part of the “reconnect with the customer” strategy. The play would have been put in place and the campaign launch set, except! And this is where the pain started.

The online tsunami started when the Gen Y people released  the “Qantas Luxury” competition on Twitter, asking users to say what their “dream luxury inflight experience” in return for a pair of pj’s and a wash bag branded Qantas.

Within minutes, users had hijacked the #qantasluxury hashtag to vent their anger at the embattled airline, which late last month cancelled all its flights around the world in an attempt to force government intervention in its industrial negotiations.

Lets take a look at some of the better twitter feeds

@lehmo23

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@julieposetti

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@QantasAirways They really lost the plot, would the judging be the most derogatory(thousands) or pro Qantas entries (Count your fingers).

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But the best was still to come on You Tube which could be argued hijacked the show.  The Qantas downfall parity video is nothing short of brilliant. There must have an accolade that can be given for this work, Golden Globe …..

Just how did they get so wrong?  For two days the hashtag #QantasLuxury ran wild on twitter and the media did not miss the story.  How could they? The only thing that would have knocked this out was a natural disaster of biblical proportions or a screw up from a shock jock and did they have their prayers answered, Enter stage left Kyle Sandilands.  In the words of my daughter, OMG.  In the end even Qantas was ducking for cover in the Kyle Sandilands mess.  The following tweet must have appeared 40 times on the Qantas twitter feed
ScreenShotM032

Oh well,another day, another Qantas PR disaster and as an end note, the Brisbane baggage handlers did not loose my luggage on Monday despite it having to sit on a trolley in the baggage handling area for 11 hours but the Brisbane Qantas lounge, Canberra is a sea of tranquillity and harmony.

Happy travels.

Filed under Qantanomics, Travel Tagged with , , , , , ,

Qantanomics, The Economics of Cancelled flights and more.

October 26, 2011 Leave a comment

Qantanomics is where “The Spirit of Australia” look after the bonus pool with no regard for  “those annoying people who take up valuable space on the aircraft”.

As previously indicated, I was rolled by Qantas due to “Industrial Action” but that did not seem to stack up this morning.  Qantas fly two direct flights from Melbourne to Canberra each week day before 9 AM.  The first flight (7:20AM) is a 767-300 and the second (8:30AM) is a 737-800.  Based on their own data, that would give you somewhere in the vicinity of 390 to 420 seats in a combination of Business and Economy seating configurations.  On Tuesday(25/10/2011), Qantas  then cancelled the first flight and ran a full 737-800 on the second flight.  This would indicate that they calculated they were taking a bath on the seat yield across the two flights so conveniently dropped the first flight and blamed the ongoing industrial action for the cancellation.  Good one, you must think we are fools.

The other side of Quantanomics is the yield that can be extracted before flyer start drifting access to Virgin Australia.  Since July I ave flown to Canberra every week and in August, I had a side trip to Brisbane.  In this period, I have spent over $12,500 and on my present flying regime, I will not break out of  the  entry level flyer status, Silver flying every week till Christmas so looks like the investment in the Qantas Club was a necessary requirement!

Tired using the iPhone app to check in.  I did and see what happened:

When I asked about this in the Lounge, the response was the problem must be with my phone – checked that, no problem, wrong app – checked that, no problem.  Ahh well it could not possibly be our (Qantas) fault as you were checked in successfully.  I hope the people who manage aircraft safety do not work on the iPhone app’s!

Filed under Qantanomics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,