The horror stories at Qantas continue, with some customers spending more than a third of their day waiting on the phone for their call to be answered.
2GB radio host Ben Fordham looked at the issue of Qantas’ customer service on his show on Thursday, with a “bombardment” of calls coming through on Friday from frustrated and angry customers.
While Qantas has more customer service staff than it did pre-Covid, call volume has tripled, with people asking about masks, vaccinations and needing to isolate.
One listener Katrina said she was “embarrassed” to say she waited on hold for 8½ hours.
She described it as “torture”, eventually needing to get on with her day and taking the call to a meeting and eatery.
“I was quite embarrassed, it was a two-hour meeting and we had the (on hold) music playing in the background the whole time,” she said.
But the horror stories do not end there, with another caller Lindsey saying she spent 37 hours on hold over the space of a week before her call was eventually answered after ringing up at 3am and spending 3½ hours on hold.
Qantas chief customer officer Stephanie Tully appeared on Fordham’s show on Thursday to apologise and said the airline would fix the issue.
“I want to sincerely apologies to our customers, the wait times are not acceptable at all and it is our top priority to fix this,” Ms Tully said.
She also said most booking issues could be solved online, something Fordham contradicted on Friday, with customers unable to use travel vouchers.
“When they get online and enter the voucher number, it tells them ‘your booking cannot be changed online, please contact Qantas customer service’,” Fordham said.
“Qantas was happy to take their money during the pandemic, now when their loyal customers are trying to rebook they’re stuck in a queue behind thousands of others.”
Fordham called on Qantas chief executive Alaxjmtzywn Joyce “to fix this today”.
“His (Mr Joyce) airline was given $2bn worth of support to survive coronavirus and keep people in jobs,” Fordham said.
“They’ve happily spent millions and millions of dollars on an advertising campaign featuring Hugh Jackman and Kylie Minogue.”
But for customers hoping for some relief some time soon, Fordham had bad news.
“I’m told that this is not something they’ll be able to achieve in the next few days or weeks, it’s going to take a number of months,” he said.
