A Qantas customer has spoken of her months-long ordeal with the airline after she was mistakenly charged nearly $40,000 when she tried to book a vacation.
Sydney woman Carol Johnson only found out something was wrong a few days later when she went out to buy coffee and her card was declined, leading to weeks of hours of call center waiting, bank accounts frozen and a lot of stress.
Ms. Johnson described the process of talking to Qantas customer service and getting her money back as “slow torture…you don’t know if you’ll ever get an answer.”
‘I’ve been on the phone for days. I got up at three or four in the morning to be put on hold for four to five hours,” the broker said. newscorp.
Sydney woman Carol Johnson only found out something wasn’t right when she went out to buy coffee a few days later and her card was declined, leading to weeks of hours of waiting at the call center, frozen bank accounts and a lot of stress.
The trouble started on March 15 of this year when she organized a vacation for herself, her husband and her son, who lives in the US, and booked five flights with Qantas for a total cost of $16,357.33.
Within the next four days, she was double debited for each of the transactions, amounting to a second $16,357.33 that she only discovered when her bank card was declined.
The money was eventually returned, but only after five days of repeated calls to airline customer service and hours of waiting in line.
During those five days, her accounts were frozen, adding to the stress.
The family had to postpone the vacation and then cancel it, but on July 26, Ms. Johnson tried again and booked two business class tickets to Honolulu, Hawaii for $13,431.48.
Ms. Johnson described the process of talking to Qantas customer service and getting her money back as “slow torture…you don’t know if you’ll ever get an answer”
But more than a week later, on August 4, she received an email from Qantas saying that the company was having “problems processing” the transaction.
After calling Qantas again and being told that the payment had been declined, she put the tickets on her husband’s bank card while on the phone, with the payment appearing to go through.
A few days later, she received a similar email about payment issues.
This was repeated two more times, with Ms. Johnson at one point having three payments of $13,431.48 pending over three cards, freezing $40,294.44.
On August 19, the issue was resolved when one transaction was finally accepted and the others were refunded.
The ordeal didn’t stop there, though, with the original booking for the flights to Honolulu being written off on September 8 the following month – resulting in double payment.
She would also get that money back, but only after another 12 days of contact with Qantas customer service.
Ms Johnson said she has still not received a clear explanation as to why she has been repeatedly charged with double charges.
She added that she got a shock one morning when she woke up to find that her account was over $13,000 overdraft.
Ms Johnson said she has still not received a clear explanation as to why she has been repeatedly double charged
Qantas told the newspaper that they have apologized to Ms. Johnson and offered her a $2,000 Qantas voucher.
“She should not have had to pay twice in August and September and we returned the money to her as soon as we knew,” the airline said.
“Authorisations for purchases rest with the credit card provider and Qantas has worked with them to resolve the issue and refund the customer.”
She said it is not enough for the months of stress she has endured and wants Qantas to upgrade her to Gold Status in their frequent flyer program.
‘I’m not asking for money. I just wanted them to admit they screwed up,” she said.