Saturday, May 01, 2021

Forced to wait over four hours to get through to Qantas to use a credit

A flight I booked last year with Qantas was cancelled by them due to pandemic lock-down and so I have a credit. Now that things are open again I wish to use that credit. It's not easy... The web site told me I had to ring them.

I've rung a few times in recent months and been informed that the wait time was over two hours so I gave up. Today I decided to stick it out as it didn't give any information about the wait time. I interpreted this lack of estimate as a sign that it was going to be quick.

After more than two hours I started trying to contact them via Twitter as this seems to have worked for some other people in my situation.


Facebook looked like it might be a more efficient way to contact them as they say this:

Alas, "7 days" doesn't seem to include today.

I tweeted a thread of comments but didn't get a response. 

This is what you have to listen to:

Finally, after more than four hours I got to Eric. A very nice operator who was able to fix me up.


I value my time and this punched a big hole in my day. My guess is that many people are not able to invest this much time in redeeming their flight credit so Qantas gets to keep it. This reeks of being a "dark pattern".

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