Failed partnership

About a week ago, I received an SMS from MAS that my return flight had been changed. I checked it out on MAS website as well as their app and they both gave the same information: both the CBR-MEL flight operated by Qantas and the MEL-KUL flight operated by MAS were changed. What didn't make sense was that the Qantas flight would have arrived in Melbourne half an hour after the MAS flight would have departed!

What nonsense is this? I thought that by purchasing the entire leg of the journey from MAS, such problem shouldn't exist i.e. the changed flights should make sense!

According to the app, I had to call MAS in Malaysia to fix this. My sister helpfully offered her family's phones since at least two of them had healthy credits in their mobile plans. Fortunately, it cost only AUD 0.10/min to call Malaysia. However, there were huge connection problems when using their phones: conversation was choppy and at times I was disconnected. The first call to MAS ended with the officer asking me to call Qantas instead to get an earlier flight, after about 35 minutes of difficult connection.

Qantas said that there were only business seats in the earlier flight and they couldn't help me much with replacing the MEL-KUL flight since MAS was the "travel agent". Hence, after 15 minutes, they advised me to call MAS again and asked them to liase with Qantas Agency Connect.

At this point, I decided to put in AUD 15 credit into my mobile plan (it was the minimum amount, unfortunately) and hope that the line would be better. This time, at least the conversation wasn't choppy but it was a little laggy though. Twice I was disconnected but I was pleasantly surprised that the officer called back. Thank you!

The MAS officer also stated that there was an earlier Qantas flight but there was a waitlist. I was shocked because earlier, twice I checked on Qantas Australia website that there were seats on that flight. I'm flabbergasted as to why my case wasn't prioritised. Hmph!

So instead, with my agreement, she looked for alternative dates and, luckily, got the one that's two days earlier than the original departure date. There was an issue: the seats on Qantas flight. We paid more to get seats with extra leg room on both flights. The MAS officer said that I had to call Qantas to select seats and to make sure that those were the one with extra leg room. Argh, more things for me to do!

That interaction, with 2 disconnections, took about 25 minutes.

However, later on, on both MAS and Qantas websites, it was shown that we were allocated the exact same seats! Yay! I would be very cross if this is a glitch. FYI, I just checked on both websits and it's still true.

This entire saga is perplexing to me: I would have thought that MAS should act like a one-stop shop and fix any problems with my flights (and in a sensible manner!). So what is the benefit of doing it all through MAS? Well, aside of the convenience (vs purchase tickets on two separate websites), one rather significant benefit is that the fix was done for free, especially now that my flight was moved from a weekday to a weekend (reasonably assuming that a weekend flight is more expensive). Well, it's something to consider for the next trip.