Recently my wife flew business class on Singapore Air Sydney to Singapore and had no entertainment system available. On arrival see was met by Sing. staff and given a very expensive box of tea plus 7500 frequent flyer miles as compensation. I on the other hand flew with Qantas from Tokyo to Sydney in Business class and all I received was an apology and told bring a book or download something on my device. Well I brought a book because I had no means of downloading anything. Clearly Qantas does not care about their customers like Singapore Air does. No compensation for me despite both of us been full cash payment passengers. We are both Gold status passengers me lifetime having lost me Platinum status 2 weeks ago. Time for me to leave Qantas for another airline.
Hi @gordon35au,
Sorry to hear about your experience. Given you have only recently lost your Platinum status with Qantas, I’d be inclined to contact them and casually ask what they might be able to do for you. You might has well try and leverage your status rating - even Lifetime Gold should be worth something??!! Politely explain your wifes experience with Singapore Airlines and see what they say.
Also… I always find it a good idea when contacting a company to complain about poor service etc… to have an idea in your own mind as to what would make you happy as far as any compensation they may elect to award you. Often times people phone up to complain, but when you ask them what they’re after or what would make them happy, they can’t elaborate on exactly what that would be - they’re so focused on the complaining part and getting it all off their chest, that they fail to stop and think about what sort of outcome they’re actually seeking. You can’t take the flight again obviously, so it’s good to have this in mind.
So go into the conversation with a goal in mind - 10,000pts or 50 status credits. Maybe there is a bottle of wine from Qantas Wines you have a particular preference for. You never know, you just might get the right person on the other end of the line who, if you treat them with respect and kindness, might be able to arrange some sort of compensation that you’re seeking. As a recent Platinum member I’d be looking to speak to the Platinum Rewards Team. Begin your steps here:
https://www.qantas.com/au/en/frequent-flyer/status-and-clubs/status/platinum.html
Best of luck. 
Hi Jenart
Thank you for the very helpful reply. I did ring up Qantas and was fobbed off. I was told the only way they will listen to me is if I make a complaint in writing. They did make it challenging to find the right form to make the compliant. Time will tell what response I get but I do not hold any hope of it been positive. I will keep you informed of eth outcome.
Good point… putting a complaint in writing is even better as it leaves a paper trail. Although they can always go back and listen to the recording of the phone call too, but that requires more effort I’d imagine to dig it up. I hope you hear something positive back.
Hi Jenart
To keep you up to date Qantas responded with an apology stating that when the system is off line the cabin crew offer newspapers or other reading matter. This did not happen but I did have my own book.
They gave me 10,000 FF points as compensation which I am happy with. It is still very annoying that I actually had to complain in writing to get this. They should have been automatically addressing compensation like Singapore Airlines did but then Qantas do not seem to value their customers in the same way. Thanks again for your advice.
Glad you managed to receive something. That’s a win for sure. 
In my last two overseas Qantas trips, we had:
Departing sydney - the plane was delayed 30-60 minutes for “scheduled” maintenance. Why would they schedule maintenance during the time the flight was supposed to take off, you ask? Because it wasn’t really scheduled. When they finally let us board the plane, I went to sit in my seat 1K and found that they were fixing the tray table of one of the centre seats. I was one of the few who couldn’t get into their seat so we were standing around for 15 more minutes while they did a temporary repair to it. One of the staff mentioned the tray tables are so bad that they have a dedicated team purely to fix them constantly breaking down.
On the way home, I was sitting in a centre seat which was actually designated as a disabled-friendly seat with a sliding armrest to allow easy access. However this armrest was broken and that entire side of the seat was wobbly and about to fall over. Also the floor where my feet would go was busted open and bendable and underneath it was exposed metal and what looked like pneumatics. And then there was a third thing wrong with that seat that I can’t recall now.
Anyway it was pretty pisspoor. I alerted the attendants to the issue and the first one said a 2nd one would come take a look at it. Which seemed like it took them 30-60 minutes into the air to even come around.
Nothing ever came of it because I didn’t bother putting in a complaint. Maybe I should have.