I haven’t written a tale from the field from our adventures at Cranky Concierge for some time, but there hasn’t been a shortage of opportunity. Booking travel remains as nutty as ever, but this one just got me so worked up for being so ridiculous that I thought I’d share. Qatar Airways has decided to use a new practice to raise money… making up stories and charging agents penalties for things that did not happen.
And there is no way to fight it.
We had a client going on a heck of a honeymoon trip:
- Fly from LA to Paris
- Travel around the south of France and Southern Europe for awhile
- Fly from Santorini to the Maldives
- Fly from the Maldives back to Paris for a night
- Fly from Paris back to LA
This is a complex trip that obviously wasn’t going to be easily solved with a single ticket. Instead, what we did was find a roundtrip from LA to Paris on American (actually a codeshare operated by Air Tahiti Nui) and then a separate ticket on Qatar from Santorini (first leg to Athens operated by Aegean) to Male and back to Paris. Getting between Paris and Santorini was all on land or with a low-cost carrier, so that wasn’t related to any of this.
We’ve run into problems with Qatar before for slapping on stupid penalties, and it has made us wary about using the airline unless there is no better option. For example, we had booked a traveler from San Francisco to somewhere in the Middle East on Qatar but the first flight was on JetBlue down to LAX then connecting over. This client had a home in both places, so she just asked us to cancel off the JetBlue flight before ticketing and start in LA. We did that and then Qatar said we were manipulating the point of origin, so it hit us with a penalty. That should have been a good first warning of what was to come.
On this trip, we were careful. We sold the flights in date order. Since it’s easier for clients, we put all the flights in a single reservation and just issued multiple tickets. That means we sold in LA to Paris, then from Greece on to the Maldives, and then back to Paris, and finally back to LA. The tickets were issued and all was well… until Qatar came up with a lie.
As Qatar explained to us, they can see the point of origin country in their system. It’s nothing we can see on our side, nor is it anything we can change, so they can basically make up whatever they want and we can’t confirm anywhere. Apparently since we first sold in the flight from LA to Paris, it showed the origin country as the US and not Greece, which is true for the trip but not for the Qatar ticket. Qatar decided this was an egregious violation and charged us $307 for, once again, manipulating the point of origin. This is not something we can pass on to our client, so we just lose.
Keep in mind, this is a problem that’s entirely of Qatar’s own invention. Regardless of whatever this point of origin shows, the fares that apply are the same. No matter the point of origin, the point of sale is in the US because that’s where we’re based. So we have access to the fares that are made available to US point of sale.
Where this becomes an issue for the airline is when Qatar gets too smart for its own good. It has decided to vary availability depending on the point-of-origin country. So, in theory, Qatar could say that if you are starting your trip in the US it will make I class available, but if you are starting in Greece, then you are damned to hell and I will be closed. You’d have to buy the higher fare.
In this case, we have absolutely no way of knowing if there was even any difference in availability by point of origin. We weren’t trying to game any system. Our clients absolutely were originating in the US. We were just booking the flights that our client wanted booked. It’s entirely possible, and I’d argue likely considering what availability was like at the time, that there was no difference at all. But Qatar doesn’t care. It just penalizes at will, regardless of if there was any actual impact.
Now, we’re used to getting dinged for things that don’t make sense. That’s why there’s a whole dispute process around this. We submitted multiple responses proving that there was no manipulation, and the airline just kept coming back like a robot ignoring any evidence and saying the penalty stands.
We did reach out to the sales team. At least in the US, sales teams can help fix these types of issues where there’s clearly some misunderstanding somewhere in the system. Qatar’s rep was very nice, said she agreed there was no violation, but she told me that she had no power to do anything and that it was entirely up to the revenue management team in Qatar that handles these disputes.
The dollar amount on this isn’t some enormous amount like I’ve written about here before, but the anger of it all being completely unfair and incorrect has made my blood boil. I’ve now instructed my team to inconvenience our clients by booking any Qatar tickets in a completely separate reservation from any other travel plans. I’ve also asked them to only consider Qatar if there is no better option. Of course, if Qatar is the only/best option for a client, we’ll still book it, because we always do what’s best for the client. But we’ll just have to live in fear that we’ve somehow mistakenly broken some nonsensical rule and wait for a penalty to fall upon us.
This is worse for the traveler in that it’s harder to keep track of everything, but Qatar clearly does not care about any of that. It’s all about whatever the robot says, no excuses, no changes. That’s a terrible way to run a business.
