To put it mildly, a lot of people have had issues with airlines in the past year. Cancelled flights. No refunds. Endless phone wait times to reach customer service. Mysterious fees that seemed made up on the spot.
Dealing with Australia's flagship carrier during lockdown was "an absolute nightmare", as one Qantas customer told us, along with "very stressful, very frustrating and unnecessarily complicated".
But who could we turn to for help?
The Airline Customer Advocate of course.
Never heard of it? You're not alone. In a recent national CHOICE survey, only 32% of Australians said they were aware of the service, and only 15% had used it.
Alison Elliott, CHOICE head of policy and government relations, says the Airline Customer Advocate will forward your complaint to the airline – and that's about it.
The Airline Customer Advocate says it's a free service to facilitate "the resolution of current unresolved complaints about airline services".
It's an airline industry-funded scheme that's meant to solve your problems. But really it's a forwarding service.
"The Advocate can't look at your problem and make an independent decision," says Alison Elliott, CHOICE head of policy and government relations.
"Instead, it will forward your complaint to the airline, asking it to respond to you in 20 days. And that's about it."
It's almost as if our fearless advocate is working for the airline instead of us!
It's almost as if our fearless advocate is working for the airline instead of us!
And just when we needed it most, this feckless advocacy service announced it wouldn't be taking complaints on the issues people were experiencing in 2020: travellers being offered a credit instead of a refund (a common problem for pandemic-affected travel); poor customer service and delays in getting a response from airlines; and delays in getting refunds.
The Airline Customer Advocate was established after a 2009 report into the aviation sector found that the airlines weren't treating customers well and needed to improve their complaints-handling processes.
Well, it's been almost 10 years and our advocate hasn't done much, if anything, to lift airlines' performance – 2020 and 2021 showed us that many airlines need to go back to customer-service school.
It's telling that it didn't respond to our requests for an update on how many travellers it assisted in 2020 and 2021
It's telling that the Airline Customer Advocate hasn't published an annual report since 2019. It probably has very little to report in the way of customer assistance for 2020 – a time when Australians were left to fend for themselves as our travel plans came undone and the money we paid went missing. It's also telling that it didn't respond to our requests for an update on how many travellers it assisted in 2020 and 2021.
Australians deserve a real airline ombudsman with the power to independently decide complaints and help travellers, not this shonky imposter.
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