Shut-Up Money - The new airline customer service

I've just started a complaints process against Qantas Airways, following their brilliant fuckup of my lost baggage in July, which left me fairly disgruntled and devoid of underpants for six days.

I was watching the mainstream news the other night and I spied one of the flying red kangaroo tails in a story concerning airline ticket costs or maintenance or unions or missing underpants or something, and I realised that the mere mention or sight of the airline now elicits a novel type of fury. On my pissed-off scale, qantas angry falls only a few places below road rage.

Following those jerks jerking me around for the first few days of my recent overseas jaunt, Qantas have offered me compensation - which more than covers my emergency costs - for losing then failing to deliver my baggage to me. They have also offered to provide me with a letter for my insurance company so I can recoup what I spent on emergency personal effects, such as underpants and the like.

Well there is a catch, of course. To receive the compensation and letter for my insurance company - which I'm pretty sure I'm entitled to anyway - I have to sign a confidentiality agreement. A secret underpants accord, if you will.

This release absolves Qantas and American Airlines, the other carrier involved in the complex, tangled mess, of any accountability or responsibility or answerability or liability for their indefensible customer service. It's been two weeks and I still can't sign the darn thing. I'm not sure I will be able to. 

I imagine that sounds a little ridiculous, because they are offering to cover my expenses more than three-fold, but I'm pretty pissed off that they want to wipe their slate clean, presumably so they can screw over the next passenger, and then the next and the next. 

I do recall that I was sobbing on the phone to their baggage claims call centre at one stage when I was in Florida out of anger and tiredness and desperation and sheer frustration with their customer service.  So I can't just take their shut-up money. I can't do it.

But it seems shut-up money is the new customer service. I was let down fairly appallingly by a major airline that probably should spend a bit more time providing a level of service to customers that is commensurate with the pricey airfares they expect us to fork out for a seat on a plane that isn't comfortable for ten minutes let alone ten hours.

And when things go wrong, which they invariably do, instead of some type of human empathy, you get a robotic reply from the Qantas Claims office that tells you they are sorry you were inconvenienced, but with no accommpanying explanation for the extensive list of right royal fuckups you experienced while trying to retrieve your baggage.

I suppose I was naive to expect they would bother to look like they care about customer service, but I certainly wasn't expecting a glib, veiled attempt at blackmail. I imagine it is merely a reflection of the litigious era we find ourselves in, so who can blame big business for taking this approach. It's probably standard business practice to them, but it's just more flawed customer service to me.

So I find myself in a bit of a pickle at the moment. I hate when life throws you pickles. Despite my disdain for any type of confrontation, and equal disdain for those who routinely choose to eagerly engage in it, I've decided that I'm going to be morally outraged for a while, push back a little, ask a few more questions about their complaints process, ask Qantas for a review of my complaint and then engage the ombudsman and trade practices people if need be.

What do I want from Qantas?  In a perfect world you'd expect something that vaguely resembles some type of accountability - or some loose explanation - in what appears to be a gaping hole in Qantas policy regarding on-delivery of baggage to cities they don't fly to.  But why would they bother with apologies or explanations when they have shareholders' money to throw at disgruntled customers to keep them quiet.

Am I wasting my time?  I am under no illusion that I won't get stonewalled.  But I can't just sign that thing.