‘Please don’t hang up!’: What it’s like trying to claim Qantas credits
Rick Britten spent $11,000 with Qantas on a Top End business class trip for himself and his wife in late 2020 only to have it cancelled because of COVID-19 lockdowns. It was annoying, but nothing compared trying to claim the travel vouchers the airline gave him as credit.
“There were many phone calls to the online people, and it always ended in frustration, with someone saying they would get back to me,” said Mr Britten, who is one of thousands of Australian Qantas customers trying to claim $400 million in credits the airline says are left over from the pandemic era.
“I really think they’ve just tried to hold the money for as long as they can. How much interest are they getting on it?”
Cairns couple Ricky and Julie Britten are struggling with Qantas to claim flight credits. Brian Cassey
Qantas has warned customers that more than $400 million in leftover credit for flights that were cancelled during the COVID-19 period of international and domestic border closures and lockdowns must be booked before the end of the year or the credits will be terminated.
But difficulties getting refunds from Qantas were the top cause for customer complaints in unpublished Aviation Customer Advocate data reported by The Australian Financial Review this week. More than 4000 of 6918 complaints recorded last year were about Qantas.
Mr Britten paid $11,000 for flights from Brisbane to Cairns to Broome to Cairns to Melbourne in a short COVID-19 travel window in 2020, but he and wife Julie couldn’t go. Last year, he tried to use the vouchers they had been given to book another trip from Brisbane to Cairns.
After struggling to make the booking, Mr Britten eventually visited the Qantas Club on the Gold Coast where someone helped him to use part of
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