Qantas Forced To Apologise After Customers Lash Out For Waiting On Hold For 10 Hours

Qantas has been forced to apologise after being called out for their appallingly horrible customer service. 

Customers are taking to social media to lash out at the hold-times for Qantas customer service calls, with some saying they’ve been on the phone for up to 10 hours before finally speaking to someone.

That's enough time to fly from Sydney to Hawaii (I know what I would prefer to be doing).

One customer tweeted: “After a cancelled flight (with 20-minute notice) trying to get through to customer support. Been on the hotline for a total of 10 hours!!! disconnected after 5 yesterday, got through to someone today who never called back after saying they would. Very frustrated."

Another said: “We have spent a total of 10 hours and twenty minutes on the phone to sort out a flight change for this Saturday. The operator promised to call back yesterday and didn’t. They downgraded my friend's flight.”

This seems to be an increasingly common theme for Qantas customers with Ben Fordham of Sydney’s 2GB taking to the radio station to air his frustrations.

He said: “That’s not customer service, that’s gaslighting.”

“You can actually fly to Sydney from Perth faster than you get someone to pick up the phone at Qantas.”

It seemed getting called out on radio served up a faster response time from Qantas than waiting on the phone.

Qantas chief customer office Stephanie Tully appeared on the show to apologise about the situation.

Ms Tully said: “I want to sincerely apologise to our customers, the wait times are not acceptable at all and it is our top priority to fix this."

However, in what will probably anger customers even further, she revealed that the airline actually had more staff than ever.

She said: “We’ve actually got more people working in our contact centres than we did pre-Covid. It’s one of the areas of the business where there wasn’t redundancies or stand-downs, we’ve actually been growing.”

Even though Australia looks to be past state and international border closures, Tully took the opportunity to yet again blame Covid-19.

She continued: “We also need to understand that Covid has hit us hard. A lot of the customers calling, they’ve had changes due to borders starting and opening, they’ve got cancellations, things are changing quickly.”

One Twitter user retorted, with a fair assessment.

They said: “Amazing how Qantas has had all this time to hire customer service agents but has instead decided to keep using covid as an excuse for 5-hour phone waits and 2-week responses to customer complaints. Then have the gall to want government assistance. Worst company in Australia.”

Sounds like the apology has fallen on deaf ears or at least ears that are still waiting on the phone to Qantas.