I fly about once a week on Qantas, domestic and international. I am a Gold Flyer which I guess is meant to have privileges and have spent some time trying to book a holiday through Qantas Holidays. Here's Qantas looks like from my eyes:
- Their planes are delayed about 50% of the time when I fly.
- I tried to book a flight using points and their website didn't work because it kept telling me that my 6mth old son's birthdate was invalid. I went over this thing about 10 times and still couldn't work it out.
- I then tried to phone and their voice activation system thought I had some strange accent. 1hr later, I was able to make a booking via a real person. Lucky I'm a Gold Freqent Flyer.
- I then tried to book a holiday via Qantas Holidays, probably my worst ever holiday booking experience ever. They have no website where you can book a hotel. Their prices are inflated probably about 25%. Their staff in the call centre are rude and unhelpful and they never get back to you even if they say they will.
- When booking a flight, they have a software called Infotriever which is meant to update Outlook with your flight details. Half the time it puts in a flight time which is out by about 10hrs. I wonder if I missed a flight because of their software problem, would they blame me?
- And then Qantas has its maintainance issues and union problems that really provide a terrible service to its customers. Too often we hear of panels falling off or planes having to turn around.
- The food service and quality has plummetted even further. It's the only thing you look forward to on a flight to break the monotony.
- The new Qantas Frequent Flyer program is terrible. Expensive. Awful. Impossible! It's about 240k points just to fly to London.
- And lastly, I seem to recall Qantas being voted the worst for customer service in the world. In the world!
Geoff Dixon has given the incoming CEO a big hospital pass. He has spent the past few years running down the core of Qantas for the sake of profits. Great that it has close to a $1bn profit in increasing fuel prices, greater expenses and a unionised workforce, but this is all at the expense of customer satisfaction. I am starting to get pretty sick and tired of their "efficiencies" at the sake of my comfort and satisfaction. It doesn't take much to please a customer, but Geoff Dixon was 100% focused on profit because he was leaving and a big payout was tied to the earnings he returned.
I pity the new CEO. He will have a challenge of his hands trying to restore the loyalty that they used to have. Geoff has eroded this.
A money hungry corporate who has forgotten that his airline is not the only one in the sky.
Good to see the back of you Geoff.
