Long story short I had a rewards booking through Qantas on a JAL flight from Narita to Melbourne. Start of September JAL cancelled that flight and moved me to a flight a day prior, new e-tickets were issued and I was able to manage my booking via JAL and select new seats. Fast forward to three weeks ago mysteriously the booking in the Qantas’s app reverts back to the old date but e-tickets remain as the new flight so a little confusing. After 50 plus calls to Qantas and going around in circles they decide my booking has been cancelled it no one knows who by. I am told I cannot be re-booked onto another flight and a refund is my only option hmmmmm ok. So I manage to rebook myself on classic rewards bc tickets Osaka-Singapore Singapore-Melbourne funny because the agents said there was nothing available. So is it a stretch to think that any taxes and points that exceed the amount of my original booking should be refunded? I don’t see how I should be out of pocket for a mistake made by qantas.
Not sure how much you are out of pocket by. If you are patient enough or determined (angry) enough, you can choose to pursue this and escalate this to the end. You might get the outcome you desire if you push hard enough.
I’ve heard of much worse outcome from others who had Qantas/Partner airline award seats cancelled/disappeared. You have done well finding alternative business class seat(s).
Call me a pushover but I’d rather chew glass than go through another 50 calls to Qantas. I’d just write it off as Qantas being horrible to deal with if you have to deal with a non-Hobart call centre.
Whatever you do, good luck!
Agree with @w.hiew ! Unless you are Platinum (preferably P1), you will most likely get routed to a call centre outside of Australia with agents who are essentially powerless to deal with situations like this.
Depending on how much you value your time, it might not be worth it to spend 2+ hours trying to claw back say 50 dollars.
Send a letter of demand
I had a similar story when Finnair modified my booking by putting me on BA flights but on non-rewards seats so Qantas could not re-issue the tickets (probably JAL put you on non-rewards fare which caused the problem with your booking). And yes, also had to find alternative flights myself. There was no business class so I had to get premium economy.
I called Qantas and they promised to recalculate and refund the points. After 3 calls someone there told me that I should frequent flyer number, not Qantas number and that resulted in the points refund. They also checked my taxes and technically I should have paid more taxes with the new flights but since the cancellation was done through no fault of the passenger they absorbed the difference in taxes.
So my thinking - call them on FF number and ask for refund of points.