Aussie dad out of pocket $8,977 from Qantas debacle: 'Put my life on hold'
Jason Wilson has had the money deducted but has no Qantas tickets, and he has no idea when to expect a resolution.
Eager to celebrate his son's 18th birthday in style, Geelong dad Jason Wilson excitedly sat down last Wednesday to book Qantas flights to the US — only to end up empty-handed and with empty pockets.
"I finally successfully settled on some flights and proceeded to payment. I attempted not once but five or six times to make a payment ... I thought I might use a different card," he told Yahoo News Australia.
After experiencing multiple error messages, Jason said he decided to try again later, only to have his card declined at the shops the next day.
"I'm out by $8,977.20," Jason said, sharing one bank account is currently overdrawn by almost six thousand dollars.
Customer told to hope issue 'fixes itself'
Since the issue was detected, Jason claims he has been in contact with the Qantas customer care team at least seven times with no explanation or resolution being provided so far. It is still unclear why the money was taken from his account, if not in exchange for plane tickets.
"I have not been given an indication of the reason why they have actually made the transaction," he said. "The possible solution is that it will just fix itself."
Yahoo understands the money was temporarily in possession of the airline, however, it has since been released. The money is not accounted for, either with Jason or his bank, yet Qantas is taking steps to locate the funds.
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"They've offered me the tickets at the sale price. So they will honour that," Jason said, with the missing amount being the sum he was willing to pay for the tickets.
However, he pointed out he has no idea when he can expect the tickets for the Christmas trip since the location of his money is "floating" somewhere, with the very least knowing it is not with the airline. Jason claims no timeline has been given for a solution.
Qantas mess causing 'a lot of anxiety' for dad
With one bank account in deficit of $5,975, Jason said he "won't see a penny" of his pay this week and has borrowed money from his friend.
"If I don't have access to that money, when I have all my direct debits occur when my mortgage repayment gets paid I'm actually not going to have any expendable cash to be able to do that. So that's when the problem is really gonna start to be apparent."
"I'm not destitute, but you know, it's been difficult over the last four days or so because I've had to put my life on hold until this is resolved. It's causing a lot of anxiety, I don't know if I'll ever see that money again."
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