[afoxe]

The CEO of Qatar Airways wrote an email to all the Privilege members. One of the paragraphs is titled “Honouring your loyalty” !!

Qatar Airways made me pay 360 USD for 12 kg excess on top of the 5890 USD for a one-way ticket to Rome I am surprised they did not ask for 2 litres of blood too.
They ought to be ashamed. They told I had no allowance for diving gear nor I could pay with miles or q-credits.
Basically cash is what they want and seen this is the only option we had to go home they take full advantage. How disgraceful, especially considering that we had no other option and we had to let me twist our arm to the fullest extent.
Finished are the times of having a platinum card and flying only Qatar. Fortunately, Alitalia was flying direct before Covid and hopefully will do again soon, so Qatar Airways: enjoy this lousy few dollars ‘cause they are the last ones you will ever see from me or my family or my staff.
To add to the above, at the end of the first sector the crew come with the usual Godiva chocolate box, but… pity it was open, one chocolate was missing and the inner box had been replaced upside-down.

Arrived in Rome I flew Alitalia Economy to Naples. 67 Kgs x 3 pieces plus 2 cabin luggage…they did not charge me a single cent excess.

Obviously having accepted to be squeezed of almost 6K for a one-way ticket i could afford the 360 USD for excess. It is not the 360 that bother me, of course, but the way they take advantage of such a difficult moment.

Of course, they replied to me, stating that the cost of the ticket was due to the number of bookings: well, there were plenty of free seats in business on the first sector and only 5 seats were occupied on the Doha-Rome one.

Enough of Qatar Airways

2 users thanked author for this post.

Londonfrog, Shamsh1

[GivingupBA]

It seems to me, reading your post, that you are complaining because you had to pay for excess baggage? Were the airline not just applying the rules / their rules? Based on your story, to me I am sorry that I do not see how that is “disgraceful”, or why the airline “ought to be ashamed”.

Of course I understand why you are upset. If I was that upset, though, I would just vote with my feet and fly on another airline next time.

4 users thanked author for this post.

FinnKZ229, ImissConcorde, Switzerlanding, tomwjsimpson

[MK]

I completely agrees with the comments of the author.

[capetonianm]

afoxe I’ve never flown QR and hopefully never will, I’m not trying to defend them.

Let me make a general point. You pay ‘X’ to be transported from A to B. That fare allows you ‘Y’ pieces of baggage totalling ‘Z’ kilos.

In your case, unless I misunderstand your ‘complaint’, you exceeded that allowance, which is indicated on your itinerary, on your ticket, and was probably brought to your attention when you booked. The airline charged you their fee for the extra, which by the way does have a cost to them. Do you think this should be negotiable? Can you imagine the chaos at airports if it were so? If not, I can explain to you.

Extending that, do you think that perhaps the fare should be negotiable too?

11 users thanked author for this post.

AussieJohn, alainboy56, Jacob, FinnKZ229, FaroFlyer, openfly, ImissConcorde, ASK1945, rferguson, MartynSinclair, Montysaurus

[canucklad]

[quote quote=996949]Qatar Airways made me pay 360 USD for 12 kg excess on top of the 5890 USD for a one-way ticket to Rome I am surprised they did not ask for 2 litres of blood too.[/quote]

Sorry for being so blunt afoxe, but I’m not sure why you’re getting yourself so vexed , especially under the current circumstances ….

I’m assuming you’ve managed to get yourself safely home to Naples ?
And you did so in the comfort of business class , suggesting that you’ve the means to repatriate yourself when others can’t .

As I mentioned to another forum member who bemoaned the price of a hotel room in Wuhan , companies occasionally inflate the price to manage down custom, although in this case it’s probably not relevant as 12kg’ s seems trivial

Assuming you’re an Italian national , i’d recommend you do switch your custom to Alitalia , they’ll need your money more than QR do after this all done
Anyway welcome to the forum , glad you made it home to Naples and stay safe

6 users thanked author for this post.

Shamsh1, Seat62k, alainboy56, ASK1945, capetonianm, MartynSinclair

[rferguson]

This is a total double edged sword. On the one hand, one things airlines strive for is consistency. The middle eastern and asian airlines tend to excel at this. On the other hand, when it benefits them, passengers want flexibility. The same airlines that tend to exceed at consistency tend to be lousy at flexibility.

As an employee of an airline I can tell you one of the things I dislike most in my job is being viewed as ‘the bad guy’ because i’m trying to aim for a reasonable level of consistency and follow the rule book so everyone is treated more or less equally when I have it then rebuffed ‘well…on the flight over I was allowed to do/was given XY or Z’. So I can understand (and sometimes applaud) airline staff who can be consistent and follow laid down rules. Because believe me, sometimes it’s easier to just say ‘yeah whatever i’m not going to argue, do what is it that you want to do’. But then there are caveats for service recovery and we can be flexible at BA within those caveats. For example, your IFE isn’t working and the cabin you are in is full we can upgrade you. You’ve booked a Veg meal and it wasn’t loaded in economy we can get you something from Business or First. It would be different if in the first scenario someone says ‘I don’t like this seat I want an upgrade’. Or in the second scenario ‘hmmm neither of those meal options appeal to me can I have something from business instead’.

As others have said – when it comes to baggage limits what you are entitled to is clearly stated on your ticket. OK, if you were 1kg over and the airline wanted to charge you i’d think that a little mean. But 12kg is a reasonable amount extra. Because Alitalia let it slide does not mean that Qatar was wrong in charging you.

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AussieJohn, alainboy56, Johnnyg, FinnKZ229, Montysaurus, MarkCymru, openfly, DerekVH, RomP, capetonianm, fatbear, ASK1945, esselle

[capetonianm]

I found when I worked for airlines that at check in passengers who had XBAG and didn’t want to pay for it would invariably use one of a couple of arguments :
“I fly 10 times a year on airline A and they never charge me for excess baggage, in fact I came over here on them last week and I had 45 kilos and they didn’t make me pay”, which may or may not be true.
“It’s not going to use any extra fuel”, which is incorrect.
“The ‘plane is going anyway so what difference does it make?”

Some used to try to bribe the check in staff. I used to tell them to work out the XBAG charges, double it, and tell them that would be the bribe price.

As I said yesterday about airlines preferring freight to passengers …. I know which I prefer!

3 users thanked author for this post.

alainboy56, FinnKZ229, ImissConcorde

[SimonS1]

I’m not really sure what the real issue is here – the high one way fare or the excess baggage?

Baggage allowances are what they are, and published by the airlines. So either you are over or you aren’t.

On the fares – well I suppose that is supply and demand. 2 months ago, airlines were operating full schedules and fares were low in real terms. Now most are operating reduced routes or not at all and fares have gone up. Of course there is a fine line between supply and demand and gouging, equally business seats come at a premium price and may also reflect that the plane may only be used on one way.

[afoxe]

Hi

Thank you all for your replies. You are all correct in saying that I had 12 kgs extra and I had to pay them; what I was trying to dwell upon is not so much the excess per se, but the disgraceful and shameful (yes) way they took advantage of a bunch of persons locked in a country with only one possible flight to get home. When there still was one flight with Aeroflot and one with Turkish on top of the QR one, their pricing was still not reasonable but let’s say understandable. Aeroflot cancelled and the price shot up; when Turkish also disappeared, 5890 USD one way. The QR person that replied to me stated that prices were rising because of the very high number of requests but as I mentioned, there were plenty of seats available on both sectors. I mentioned the excess price because I would have thought they would relent somewhat on prices in general, considering the specific situation, the fact that many persons on board were employed or related to tourism, that many had to bring home their complete possessions including dive gear. Many airlines including previously QR allows sporting goods for free but no, not this time. I could not pay with Miles or with Q-Credits: only cash or credit card, accompanied by being treated like a bum from the Station Manager.

I hope I have explained myself better this time. Basically the focus of my message wanted to be not barely a complaint about the excess but rather the impression I got of being scammed because I had no other way out.

Regards

2 users thanked author for this post.

Shamsh1, canucklad

[Chris in Makati]

[postquote quote=996998]I found when I worked for airlines that at check in passengers who had XBAG and didn’t want to pay for it would invariably use one of a couple of arguments :
“I fly 10 times a year on airline A and they never charge me for excess baggage, in fact I came over here on them last week and I had 45 kilos and they didn’t make me pay”, which may or may not be true.
“It’s not going to use any extra fuel”, which is incorrect.
“The ‘plane is going anyway so what difference does it make?”[/postquote]

In the case of a large amount of excess baggage, you’re right, those arguments don’t hold up.

But what I do find annoying is when you’re only a couple of kilos overweight on your check-in bag and they make you remove stuff and take it as hand-carry baggage. This is not uncommon, especially with the budget carriers. It just makes more work for the security check and the argument that “the plane is going anyway and it’s not going to use any more fuel” is actually true in those situations.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Shamsh1, capetonianm, canucklad

[Ah,Mr.Bond]

12KG is not a huge amount. You were permitted 2x15kg as carry on baggage. Could you not have broken it down?

[afoxe]

Hi

I suppose I could have swapped a few lighter items from my 2 carry-ons and spared a few Kgs but the issue was not saving a few bucks but rather how I felt scammed of thousands and on top, them grabbing every cent they could

Regards

1 user thanked author for this post.

ASK1945

[nazirkhaki]

Its all relative. While the system is not flawless, it isn’t how you’re making it out to be. We complain about what we don’t understand.

[Chef khan]

Same happened with my wife as she travelled from lahore to oslo, as flights are operating very limited depends on the offical announcement by the goverment of pakistan. The qatar airways increased their fare up to 400 percent.The reason is demand and supply numbers of flights,and numbers of passengers.I can understand the covid-19 pandamic situation in all over the world and the crises, but question is that price of the oil has been reduced.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Shamsh1

[Davido II]

When purchasing tickets, there is baggage allowance allocated as per class of travel and destination, So you can’t blame Qatar Airways for your excess baggage of which nobody forced you to carry.
In today’s World, there is nothing for free and people like you are the reason your LOVELY ALITALIA is going down.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Shamsh1, capetonianm

[Author]

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