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It takes a lot to get me upset but Qantas managed to do that to supreme levels at LAX in Los Angeles. A work colleague, my son and I travelled to an Internet conference in Los Angeles (my company ParkLogic was sponsoring the conference) and we arrived tired and hungry at the LAX Qantas check-in counter for our return journey.
 All was going normal when the Qantas representative said that one of our backs was 27 Kgs which was 4 Kgs over the limit.
A few things to note here is that this same bag with MORE in it (ie. Conference material) travelled from Melbourne to LAX a few days before hand with no problems. The second thing of note is that because I was a Qantas club member I was 46 Kgs under total wait (I normally travel very light). The over-weight bag was NOT an occupational health and safety issue as there wasn’t a problem with sending it. Go figure?
While this was all happening our other bags were checked in and had disappeared to be loaded onto the plane. Thinking that more sensible heads would prevail asked to speak to Dan (a supervisor) and he told me that we would have to repack our bags. After trying to argue the fact that we were actually incredibly under-weight he still held his ground and said, “That’s the policy”. So much for saner heads.
I then asked to speak to the next higher person in the Qantas chain of command. So out came Crystal the customer service coordinator who after around 10 minutes of pointing out the stupidity of the issue stonewalled me completely and indicated that repacking the bag would have to be done. I must admit it that I thanked her for being one of the most unhelpful customer service people that I’ve ever spoken to. I was seething in a polite sort of way.
I then requested that our already “checked in” bags be returned so that we could possibly juggle weight around by repacking everything. After waiting an additional 30 minutes at the counter the bags had still not materialised and it was then that I got an absolute inspiration!
Rather than paying Qantas the ridiculous fee (there was not a chance that I was going to do that) I sent one of my colleagues to buy the cheapest bag they could find, fill it up with bottles of water plus 4 Kgs from the offending bag. I know that this is a little petty but sometimes you just have to stand against the stupidity of idiotic bureaucracy.
What this ended up meaning was we didn’t have to pay any additional baggage fees, I have a new bag, Qantas has heaps of extra weight (courtesy of the water) and I felt eminently satisfied that I had a perverse bit of revenge against tin-pot Qantas Gods at LAX.
What was so frustrating that after around a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes a new person at the check-in counter mentioned that we could pay $53 and all our problems would go away. By this time I'd decided that Qantas wasn't going to get one more penny of my money.
During this whole process I discovered a few other things. For instance, did you know the Qantas check-in staff at LAX are not employed by Qantas (other than Crystal) but are via a contracting firm…..hence the stupidly inflexible rules.
In the budgets for my company (ParkLogic) I anticipate that we would be spending in excess of $60,000 this year on air travel to both the USA and Europe. Sure it’s not much in the scheme of the Qantas revenue line but as you can imagine Qantas will have minimal chance of getting a slice of that revenue in the future.
I then headed to the Qantas club to relax prior to the 16 hour flight. We arrived and the person who greeted us (Chloe) indicated that we need to go back down the elevator and then onto another club that seemed a LONG way away. I asked the sensible question of how we were to know that we had to go there? She stared blankly at me and then just repeated the instructions.
At this point I’d enough of Qantas. I asked how I could cancel my membership so without asking why or even trying to empathise with me whatsoever Chloe proceeded to dial the Qantas customer support number so that I could do just that. After a few minutes she indicated that they were closed. It seems crazy to me that they were “closed” as I would have thought that being a global airline Qantas club members had a way to contact Qantas at anytime. After all, it has to be daylight somewhere in the world!
It was at this time that Chloe decided to adopt a new strategy to get rid of me. She applied another stupid rule by saying that since my son was 18 I couldn’t allow my colleague into the club. My work colleague started going purple in the face and just said, “I’m out of here or I’ll start yelling at someone.” As you can imagine he’d had enough of Qantas. He headed to the gate only to discover (he called me) that there were about 50 seats to cater for around 500 passengers. How crazy is that!
What amazes me about this whole episode is that both Crystal and Chloe both actually believe that they’ve done a great job. At each stage both of them are costing Qantas money so something has to be seriously wrong with the customer service side of the airline.
What I’m going to do now…..I’m posting this article on downwind.com and numerous other blogs and services. Every now and then I get a miffed at large corporations so I’m also thinking about spending $100 and sending it as a press release article to several thousand media outlets. This will litter the Internet with the message that flying with Qantas is bad…..something that marketers at Qantas spend millions of dollars to stop. Seems to me like trying to extort $53 out of me was a bad deal for Qantas.
It just so happens that my company manages the Internet traffic for almost 1 million domain names that receive over 10 million unique visitors per day. It’s quite trivial for me to leverage some of this traffic to warn people about Qantas......bears a little thinking.
Upon returning home my first port of call though will be to the director of customer service for Qantas. It will be immensely interesting to hear their response to what’s happened and whether they fall back on policy and rules or actually bother to listen to a customer. I’ll keep you posted on this.
The deepest irony in the whole experience is that I’m typing this up on a Qantas club computer and I’m about to inform Crystal and Chloe so that they can have a read. Please let others know about this article and spread the word as sometimes corporations like Qantas need a real kick in the pants. In the meantime, my son and I are about to leave the club to join my colleague and sit on the floor waiting at the gate. In a couple of words this whole article can be summarised as..... Qantas sucks.
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Sounds like an episode of a TV show I have seen,Airport,and the airline Easyjet.Sock it too them mate.