The New Zealand Herald said a Qantas promotional video asking “What will you do with your Qantas points?” had brought a torrent of complaints from irate viewers who had been caught out by a Qantas rule that sees frequent flyer points deleted from accounts after 18 months of inactivity.

The publication mentioned reports in Australia’s News Ltd tracing some of the problems back to a deal the airline made with Woolworths in 2016. Changes to the Woolworths Rewards program, the default option for Qantas passengers, were switched to earning discounts with Woolworths instead of frequent flyer points.https://www.centarahotelsresorts.com/cosihotels/?utm_source=e-global&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=cosi-firstlaunch&fbtrack=CUST-cosi-firstlaunch-e-global-banner

To continue earning Qantas points while shopping at Woolworths, users needed to manually go into their account and select that option.

Qantas says the rebranding was well-publicised at the time, but some passengers claim they didn’t get the memo and the first they learned of it was when they found they hadn’t been earning any points since the switchover – and the points had expired.

“This happened to me,” Kellee Maree wrote on Facebook. “I had been saving points for over twenty years when they took mine. I will never fly #Qantas again.”

Colleen Gleeson of NSW wrote on Facebook this week: “I read with interest today that many Qantas Frequent Flyer members have had their points wiped. This happened to me as well without any notification even though I was told I was sent three emails!! What a low act from our Australian Airline. I wrote to them about five weeks ago and so far have had no reply.

“What’s the point of saving Frequent Flyer Points if you get punished for not using them by losing them. It would seem that points earnt from Woolworths had some regulation that I didn’t know about and obviously a lot of others.

“It is punishing the people who have accrued their points little by little, not those who can get swags of points with holidays and flights. Just not fair Qantas.”

One customer said he called Qantas to explain his hard-earned points had been accrued over 25 years and he was saving them “for something I really needed”.

He claims to have been told: “We don’t give back expired points.”

A GlobalTravelMedia release Written by Peter Needham   ||  May 09, 2018   |||