Qantas has won Choice’s Shonky award – which recognises the worst of the worst products and services taking advantage of Australians – and they are not happy about it
Choice awarded the airline the undesirable award and dubbed them “the spirit of disappointment” over their high prices, frequent cancellations, travel credits and long wait times.
“If there was ever a company that appeared to deliberately be going out of its way to win a Shonky award, it’s Qantas,” CHOICE travel expert Jodi Bird said.
“People are still paying premium prices to fly Qantas but it’s clear from the complaints we’ve heard, they’re not getting a premium service.”
Bird added that Australian’s travel credits were all but useless when they expired due to COVID related border closures.
“Qantas has made it difficult and confusing for their customers to use flight credits for cancelled travel,” he said.
The product comparison company found that on average callers spent 21 minutes waiting on the phone to Qantas before their call was answered – with some customers waiting up to 50 minutes.
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“This includes forcing many people to spend extra money, putting limits on available flights, being unable to make bookings using credits online – the list goes on.”
“Qantas might call itself the Spirit of Australia, but we think Spirit of Disappointment is more appropriate,” CHOICE chief executive Alan Kirkland said.
However, Qantas hasn’t taken the criticism lying down, they fired back at Choice saying that the “awards are clearly out of date”.
The airline disputed the figures that Choice used, claiming that they’ve beaten out other airlines in regard to service and performance.
“We had several months of poor performance earlier in the year, but it’s improved significantly since August and we’re back to our pre-COVID level of service,” they said.
“We’ve been very transparent with our performance figures, both good and bad, but Choice isusing figures that are just wrong.
“We’ve beaten Virgin for on-time flights eight out of the past 12 months, and in some months that’s been by a significant margin.”
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