Hi all,
Found myself in an unusual predicament and not sure what next steps I should consider. Story below:
Back in Apr I completed Qantas' flight booking process (including providing CC details) to book international flights for my family. Few weeks later, I logged in to Qantas online and to make changes, select seats etc. and the changes were made successfully. Based on this, I assumed the flights were all good and proceeded to make reservations for hotels, car hire, tours etc, of which some are non-refundable.
On 6 Oct, after reading https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/728843, I decided to double check my flights and noticed the flight time had changed and a connection was missing. When I called Qantas, the agent said he would manually reticket and it would be sorted within 48 hours. At this point I could still make changes, select seats etc.
On Oct 11, the connection was still missing so I called again. This time I was told that despite having my CC details since the time of booking, payment was never taken and my flights had not been confirmed. After checking my CC statements, I realised this was true… and something I had not picked up on back in Apr. Qantas advised that they could not honour the original price and my only option was to rebook at a price ~$2,000 higher! This felt unreasonable as I had followed the booking process and provided a valid payment method. At no point in the last 6 months was I advised there was a problem with the booking and the itinerary remained active in my account (from what I understand, unconfirmed tickets are usually automatically cancelled after 48 hours).
I was advised then advised to escalate to customer care. I called the 1300 line and after hours discussing with Qantas, an agent confirmed they would honour the original price, which was an immense relief at the time. After confirming passenger details, she took my CC details and advised payment would be processed and ticketed within 48 hours.
On Oct 13 I noticed no payment had been taken and called the 1300 number again. An agent advised that the tickets were cancelled again as no payment was taken. I had sufficient credit available and my bank advised that no attempt to take payment was made by Qantas… Once again I was advised that I could only rebook at a higher price, only the prices had risen to $5,000 more than the original price…
At this point in time, I no longer have any flights booked and am waiting on an escalation response. I have a horrible feeling that since no payment was taken, Qantas can simply tell me to bugger off or that I'd need to eat the cost of the higher priced fares.
Any suggestions on how I might persuade them to honour the original booking price? Thanks in advance
Resolved:
After a few more back and forths with Qantas I managed to speak to someone on Oct 17 that was able to honour the original price (with a slightly longer layover). Once again they checked passenger and CC details and sent it to ticketing. After a few hours, I receive an email advising Qantas was unable to take payment again… despite having more than ample credit available.
Checked with my bank, the problem was indeed as @uncompressed mentioned in a different thread: at time of booking, Qantas makes a pre-authorisation request for the ticket amount. At time of ticketing, instead of taking funds from the pre-authorised amount, they make a completely separate attempt to take funds which many banks would decline due to insufficient credit or being flagged as a duplicate. However, it's not clear that this happens every time as I was eventually able to pay using a different CC (thanks Mum!) that had available credit for the booking, but not for double the amount.
Be persistent, but nice to the contact centre folks. In my experience, they're genuinely trying to help, but can only do so much with a borked system. Hope this helps anyone who's having or had payment issues with Qantas!
No.