Sent: 27 April 2010
Dear Qantas,
After being on hold to your call centre for 27 minutes, I hope this will get me the information I'm looking for.
I have flights from New York to Dallas to Austin to LA that I took with American Airlines last month and I would like to claim the frequent flyer points for those trips.
I have not been able to find the details/instructions on your website to make this claim and contacting the frequent flyer call centre during the listed opening hours but still being on hold for 27 minutes has done nothing but add disdain to my opinion of your brand.
Now I'm frustrated and still don't have the information I require.
Is there a form I have to fill out? Is there an address to send the boarding passes to? Do they have to be the originals or can I send photocopies?
It would be simple to have all of this information linked to on your website in the appropriate place but it's not. Instead, links lead to pop-ups that are the wrong size and still don't have the information I need. Other links send me around in circles throughout your site. Surely mine is a fairly common case. Why doesn't your website cater for it?
All I want to do is claim frequent flyer points I have earned. Can you please tell me what I need to do?
In frustration,
Josh
Update 28/4/10
Last night Qantas sent an unhelpful automatic reply:
Thanks for your inquiry.
We'll respond to any concerns as soon as we can. If your inquiry relates to a missing points claim that is eligible we won't send a reply - instead we'll simply credit the points to your account. You can then view your
account on-line at qantas.com/frequentflyerThis is an automatic message, so you don't have to reply. However, if you need to send us any further correspondence in relation to your enquiry, please include all previous e-mails and your membership number. This will help us process your request more efficiently.
Firstly, is it an "enquiry" or an "inquiry"? I don't care which side of the semantic fence you fall on (see the usage notes on Wiktionary) but you should be consistent within the document.
Secondly, it's not that hard to send out another standard email saying "we have credited your missing points to your account."
The main problem here, however, is that same as on the hold message. How long am I expected to wait for an answer if I'm ever going to get one? As soon as you can? That's bullshit. What's the expected time frame?
At this stage, and with that letter, I expect I will never get a response from Qantas.