Qantas phone call hold times: Customers spend hours waiting

Need to call our national carrier? You might want to settle in with a long read, or that movie you've been meaning to watch from your streaming service. Make it two movies, just to be on the safe side. Holding times for the Qantas call centre have blown out, and callers are getting angry.

"4 hrs 9 min call, when I get through it seems like my credit will be fixed, she puts her mic on mute, 5min later line goes dead," was one typical Tweet. "This is how long my wife has been on hold to speak to someone about her flight being cancelled," was another, showing a screenshot with a call time of seven hours, 20 minutes.

"I've called seven times... I have sat on hold two-to-five hours each time, I have spoken to Zair, Sarrah, Sam, Ema, Nathan, Chad and Carl. They say they will call me back. They don't call me back!" ran one Facebook post, sandwiched between Qantas' own posts, one trumpeting the airlines' support for the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras, another promoting flights to Vancouver.

A member of the Traveller crew needed to change a flight booking. That was not possible on Qantas' website, the only alternative was to contact them over the phone. Which she did, and hung on for a total of close to 10 hours.

Qantas' reputation for customer service is in the toilet. A Choice survey published in October 2021 put the average wait time at over 40 minutes, but that blew out to over 50 minutes for calls after midday. Average wait time for Virgin Australia was a fraction over seven minutes. That was before Australia's states opened fully to visitors from other states, and before we were able to travel freely overseas.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the wait times are far greater today. I've had occasion to call Qatar Airways twice in the last two months to redeem a flight voucher. Both times I was on hold for less than five minutes.

According to a Qantas spokesperson, "Ongoing network adjustments due to changes in border settings continues to drive an increase in call volume which has meant our customers have been experiencing longer wait times, which we sincerely apologise for.

"We've trained hundreds of new agents and continue to hire and train more so we can reduce wait times as much as possible. We are also introducing new processes around call backs to make sure our operators are contacting customers if a call drops out."

According to some reports, Qantas downsized its call centre staff radically during the pandemic. Now that flights are back on, those staff are needed, but they've found other jobs. This was foreseeable.

Qantas' own website says "If you're calling our contact centres in Australia or New Zealand you may be offered our call-back service." Callback takes some of the sting out of the process but for many flyers, the customer loyalty that Qantas works so hard to build has been trashed.