Ghost flights and party poppers: Brands aren’t saying sorry properly when they own up to customers

Welcome to an end of week update from Unmade. Today: Qantas and Superhero have both been owning up to their customers about ripping them off in recent days, but you’d hardly know it from their communications.

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When the word sorry is replaced by a party popper 🎉

This week Qantas customers, myself included, received a text message from Deloitte.

“You are eligible to receive a remediation payment from Qantas following legal proceedings brought by the ACCC.”

Qantas has outsourced to Deloitte the job of breaking the news to thousands of people that yes, they are among the customers who the airline conned be selling them flights it had no intention of running.

This is the tail end of the ghost flights scandal which eventually precipitated CEO Alan Joyce’s early departure. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched enforcement action back in August when it discovered that Qantas had taken bookings for 8,000 flights it had already decided not to run.

The airline initially, foolishly, tried to fight it with the PR Krypotonite legal argument that passengers were, in fact, buying “a bundle of rights” to get somewhere, not a ticket on a particular flight.

Qantas eventually caved in May and agreed to pay back 86,000 passengers a total of $20m, which is what finally led to this week’s texts to customers. Part of that settlement with the ACCC involved Qantas accepting that it misled customers. At the time Qantas put out a statement from new CEO Vanessa Hudson saying the airline was “sincerely sorry”.

But you’ll find less evidence of that online now. The “customer remediation program” page on Qantas’s own website is cold, factual and unapologetic. The same on the Deloitte website.

Remember, for most individual customers this week’s communications were the first time they found out they were among those ripped off by the airline.

It’s one thing to read in the abstract about that fact of Qantas owning up. It’s another to get a message confirming that the Australian brand I’ve spent more money with than any other over the last decade was indeed ripping me off. It feels a little more personal.

There is a single line in one of the customer emails from Qantas: “We sincerely apologise that we did not notify you of your flight cancellation in a timely manner.” That feels narrow and legalistic.

Sorry for unnecessarily complicating your travel. Sorry for taking your money under false pretences. Sorry for taking two years to make it right.

Last week, the annual Skytrax rankings for global airlines came out. Based on customer feedback, they offer a sense of how airlines stack up globally. Qantas has fallen from a top ten company before Covid to number 24.

I’m not surprised. Over the past decade I’ve travelled with Qantas a lot, both interstate and internationally. Every aspect of the brand experience is slightly worse than five years ago, and at a much higher price.

But that confirmation that they deliberately ripped me off too, adds another dimension.

Meanwhile, share trading company Superhero has been sending out similarly slippery communications about misdeeds in recent days. The brand failed to disclose in its Financial Services Guide that it was receiving kickbacks when customers buy US shares.

It may be the first time I’ve seen a company owning up to its misbehaviour accompanied with a party popper emoji

You’d think that by now brands would be better at simply saying sorry.

Unmade Index flat for Thursday

The Unmade Index finished Thursday flat, twitching upwards by just 0.2 points to 466.7 points.

Of the larger stocks, ARN Media and Seven West Media saw the most movement, rising by 3.76% and falling by 2.78% respectively.

Time to leave you to it. We’ll be back with Best of the Week tomorrow morning.

I’ll be writing with the BBC’s coverage of the UK’s likely Labour landslide playing in the background all day.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Publisher – Unmade

tim@unmade.media