Airlines
Woman spends tortuous three months trying to resolve huge Qantas errors
The woman mistakenly charged $22,650 for the Qantas flight.
A simple transaction caused a Sydney woman to experience multiple rounds of double direct debits and frozen funds, which at one point reached more than $40,000. She then spent three months battling Qantas over the matter. Carol Johnson’s three-part struggle has raised concerns about how the airline repeatedly bungled the transactions.
The problem for Ms. Johnson started on March 15 of this year when she booked five flights for her, her husband, and their son who lives in the US for a total of $16,357.33.
Two days later, her bank account was double-debited with 11 transactions ranging from $30 to $1996.92, totaling $6363.73. Two days later, on March 19, she was charged another $9993.60, bringing her total to $16,357.33. She didn’t realize it until her card was declined while she was buying coffee.
She spent the next five days calling Qantas customer service numerous times, frequently waiting in line for hours. This may sound like a situation that some of you have experienced all too often.
Ms. Johnson would try twice more to buy the tickets using different debit accounts. She once had three lots totaling $13,431.48 pending on three different cards, for a total of $40,294.44. On August 19, one batch of the transactions was finally completed, and the frozen funds were transferred back to her account. According to Ms. Johnson, this happened after a period of seven to eight days.
Carol’s bank accounts were also frozen, which added to her nightmare situation. You can only imagine how stressed she was at this point! In the end, everything was resolved, and she received her money back.
