freediver
Gold Member
Offline
www.ozpolitic.com
Posts: 47350
At my desk.
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That was quick. I got a call yesterday morning from the airline customer advocate, which I returned in the afternoon. It was the weirdest conversation, like a drunk Pauline Hanson trying to pick a fight with me.
I missed the original call and called back. The lady was reluctant to establish what the call was about, although she brought up that it was a complaint about Qantas before I suggested this, so she obviously knew. After establishing why I was calling back, she then revealed the reason she was getting in touch. It was not to discuss my complaint, but to talk about her complaint about me saying she had a big arse. I had never met or spoke to this woman before. She went into a lengthy spiel about how difficult it was to advocate for people when they say these things about you.
Eventually I coaxed out of her that I did not actually say this, and that she was referring to my complaint that the customer care process was designed to be a pain in the arse. She then backpedaled for a bit, before trying to establish that it is OK for me to say this at the end of the process, but not at the start. Eventually she stopped talking long enough for me to point out this was not actually the start of the process, that I was three months into it, that I had already submitted 3 online complaints, two of them to her organisation, and that each time I had to dig up all the information from scratch because neither Qantas nor the customer advocate include a copy of the complaint in the acknowledgment email. The customer advocate closed my complaint while it was still pending, meaning that I could not continue with the one I had already submitted or respond in any way. The emails they had sent were from bounce address that you could not respond to either, so my only option was to start from scratch.
Pauline explained that they do not normally include a copy of the complaint in the response email, but made a big deal of promising to do so, as if this was a huge inconvenience to her. I have not received this info yet.
Throughout this conversation she kept trying to get me to drop the complaint process with them and take it up with consumer affairs instead. She even had me thinking that this was my idea for a while, so she obviously knows how to do her job. Eventually I had to insist that after filling out their online forms twice now, I still want them to look into my complaint. Eventually she agreed to forward it on to Qantas (which probably amounts to clicking a button for her) on the condition that I also take it up with consumer affairs. So I am once more waiting for Qantas to respond.
The airline industry is unusual among Australian retail industries in not having a government mandated customer ombudsman. The airline industry customer advocate is funded, owned and controlled by the airline companies it supposedly stands up to on behalf of mistreated customers. The website of the advocate makes promises about being timely, fair, independent and easy to use - so far it has failed me on all counts. Their website also says that it cannot handle complaints that have also been submitted elsewhere - eg consumer affairs. I am still wondering why she was so keen for me to take it to them instead.
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