Angry Flyers Lounge-Qantas makes a meal out of boarding passes

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, printing out meal vouchers for delayed passengers on a boarding pass format, but…..

Passing Through With Qantas

We were travelling from Melbourne to Perth on Thursday evening, and our flight was delayed for two hours. Qantas announced each passenger would get $20 food vouchers so my wife went to hunt them out, eventually getting a couple at Gate One. They were actually two boarding passes instead of anything looking like food vouchers.
“Are these really food vouchers”, she asked the young man at the desk.
“Yes, these are the vouchers”.
“But they look like boarding passes”.
“They are boarding vouchers,” he replied, “and you can use them to buy food.”
Warily, my wife asked, “Soo … the restaurants already know what they are for?”
“Yes, they know”, the young man said confidently.
The Qantas domestic terminal in Melbourne is hardly a gourmet paradise, so my wife asked if we could use those “boarding vouchers” at other terminals.
“Yes, you can use them at the international terminal”, he said.
“And the Virgin terminal as well?”
“Yes!”
In order to make absolutely sure, my wife asked the woman sitting at the other end of the Qantas counter, who had been watching the conversation with interest. The woman nodded, “Yes, provided that it is a food outlet! Not at the retail shops! Only food outlets!!”
Still doubtful about the status of the boarding-pass-look-alike vouchers, my wife approached a female staffer at another Qantas counter and asked if it is true that we could use these “boarding vouchers” anywhere in the airport including at the other terminals?
“Yes, but only at food outlets. And you won’t get any change. So, buy your food and drink at the same place.”
We decided the best spot would be the pub at the Virgin terminal, so we hiked across, past the international terminal, thinking to have dinner there. We studied the menu and ordered using the vouchers. No good. Boarding passes can’t be traded for food. Maybe, they said, we should get Qantas to ring them to confirm that Qantas would pick up the bill.
So I settled down to send some text messages and my wife set off for the nearest Qantas information desk to sort out the problem. That turned out to be in the international terminal. On her way there, she tried the Qantas boarding vouchers at a take away sushi place. The sushi people told her that she was confused and pointed out that boarding passes can’t be exchanged for food.
Now beginning to feel she’d been set up, she reported the problem to a woman at the Qantas Counter at the international terminal. The woman told my wife to go looking for a “Qantas flight manager” a few minutes away where people were queuing to check their bags in. After hunting for a while, she found the Qantas flight manager.
He phoned the Qantas domestic terminal and asked about the validity of our boarding vouchers and reported: “They can be used at any food outlet within the Qantas domestic terminal, but outside that terminal, they can only be used in food courts.” So, all the previous three Qantas staff had been wrong!
Melbourne airport is small, and the three terminals are closely connected. Despite this, 45 minutes had been wasted on the basis of wrong information. We were hungry and thirsty, and we still hadn’t found a place to eat. Maybe it was time to venture a complaint. So we trudged back to the Qantas domestic terminal, went through security again, noting that by now several of the food services had closed.
Back at Gate One, there were four staff but not the young man who’d started us off on the wild goose chase. A woman staffer registered our complaint, then told us that the first information we’d received was completely wrong. The boarding voucher, she said, was only for use in the Qantas domestic terminal. She said sorry; the young man who had given us the wrong info was “just passing through”.
“And is she just passing through?” my wife asked, indicating the woman at the other end of the desk who had confirmed the young man’s claims.
“Let’s just bypass that,” the staffer said, “there’s a place you can eat over there, and you still have time to get something before the flight is due to board.”
“What about the Qantas lounge?” I asked.
It was open, she explained, but she couldn’t send us up there. I could see no reason why not – gestures mean more than words and it might console us for the fact that we had now wasted an hour of our time.
She shook her head: there was nothing to be done. She intoned: “I have apologised once already!”
Great: a two-second apology for misinformation that had wasted an hour of our time, and no attempt at any compensation.
Enraged, I said that if I had my way I would never fly with Qantas. “You should do that,” she said. “Outrageous,” I snarled, and stormed off. My cabin bag collided with the bollard supporting the queuing tape at the desk. To my surprise, the bollard fell over with a rather loud crash. Then imperious shouting from the Qantas staff: “Oy, pick that up!”
We meandered off to the gate for our flight, and found a café where our vouchers were accepted. My wife used them to acquire lots of bottles of water, and then presented most of them to the surprised girl at the counter. She seemed delighted. Feeling much better, we settled down for a cup of tea.
Just before the flight was due to board, we were approached by a pleasant man identifying himself as the terminal manager. He was just wanting to check on whether we were OK to fly, he explained, since there was a report from Gate One of my “violent, possibly drunken, behaviour.” We told him our story, which had by now assumed a slightly amusing aspect.
“Did you pick up a bollard and smash it into the ground?” he asked. I admitted that my luggage had collided with it, and under the circumstances had not felt inclined to pick it up when it fell over. But if the staff at Gate One were alleging that I had picked up and smashed the bollard, they were lying. Were they going to try to stop us boarding the flight? He smiled and patted me on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I make the decisions here, and you’re fine to fly.”
So we did get our flight to Perth. But traveller beware. Best make sure there’s a sensible manager on duty before you dare to complain about the amateurish service that Qantas sometimes provides.
And, about that bollard. I’m really really sorry I knocked it over – but, you see, I was only passing through.