When trying to make a reward booking on the Qantas website last week, I was surprised to come across a glitch that was pricing my itinerary at ~50,000 more Qantas Points than it “should”.
I wanted to fly Toronto to Melbourne in business class, and my initial search for a reward seat on Qantas’ website came up empty.
But after doing some more research, I found several combinations of individual flights that could make this itinerary work, so I tried to compose the itinerary myself using the multi-city booking tool (this is a handy trick for those who aren’t aware of it).
The way this should work, and how it has for me in the past, is that, so long as the transit time between flights in a ‘multi city’ booking is less than 24 hours, they will be treated as connections, and the itinerary will be priced based on the distance travelled, as per Qantas’ award table.
Instead, the Qantas website priced each flight segment as an independent trip – which of course made the whole booking much more expensive.
I was quoted ~180,000 points from memory, when it should have been 128,000.
Yesterday I realised that other people were experiencing the same problem (see this discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum).
There’s no warning or disclaimer on Qantas’ website, despite the fact people may be being overcharged and can avoid this by calling Qantas to book over the phone instead.
If you’ve been overcharged or are planning to make a “multi-city” booking that includes connecting flights, make sure to do so by calling the airline – and, of course, insist that it waives its usual phone booking fee.
Update 24 May: A Qantas spokesperson has advised that this issue has been resolved and the Qantas website is now accurately displaying prices. Qantas also states that, despite the prices being misquoted, members were not overcharged because when members actually booked, the correct number of points was deducted.Â
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