The Chaser Report - QANTAS: The Spirit Of Selling Out

Episode Date: September 3, 2023

We swear we'll delete this episode if Qantas give us access to the chairman's lounge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Jacea Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, I've got to say, Qantas is in the news. Quintus is not the most beloved brand. And Philip Adams was saying on Twitter this week that he was the one who came up with the concept, The Spirit of Australia. That was his line.

Oh, wow. And he wants to take it back. So badly have they alienated, I don't know, Australia. Every Australian except Australians who own shares in Qantas. They were quite happy. Yes. But everyone else, including the ACC, despise them. The ACC has called for the largest fine in Australian corporate history.

$250 million. We'll explain for what in a moment. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold any. anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month.

Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. God, I hope none of those ads were paid for by Qantas channels. But if they had, frankly, they're fucking O-U-S and every other Australian. I've flown Qantas in the past few years. It's so expensive. Yeah, I feel like instead of the spirit of Australia, what Australians need is lots of spirits in order to deal with Qantas.

That's true, they really should be passing out mini-bar stuff. Oh, they described that years ago, the free drinks. Yeah, free, absolutely. Well, you know, there's one place where you can get free drinks. The Chairman's Lounge, in the Chairman's Lounge. Well, didn't they give a Chairman's Lound membership to Anthony Hoverney? He's his son Nathan the other day? Yes, because he's a very respected senior business.

Yeah, so 23-year-old CEO. But I don't like, I don't like Charles. I think Polly's families are not. not fair game. I don't think we should mention his name or what he did, unless he gets free Chairman's Land Commission. Exactly. You know, if our jealousy isn't clear at this point, it probably should be. You know, you know that my sister had Chairman's Lounge for a while? Did she? Yeah, because she was a minister. She was the Minister for Education. Oh, and as soon as someone becomes a significant politician, Pontus buys them off. Yeah, they'd buy them off and they, and it works, right? In the

chairman's lounge, there's not apparently who can grill steak any time you want. Oh, really? But you know But no, but the funny thing is that when she became not a minister, they wrote to her and told her she was dropped. You're of no use to us anymore. No, they're brutal. They're absolutely fucking brutal. And now that your sister's very senior in another field, she might get it again because they've, apparently, they're such shits. They've just written to all these people and said, yeah, you can't be a chairman's land member anymore unless your organisation signs and exclusivity deal with Qantas. They've just been completely brutal about it.

They're just saying if your employer order, it might be, doesn't basically commit to particular dollar targets per year on spending on Qantas, $10 million or whatever it might be, i.e. one flight. You can't have Chambers line. So they're just basically saying, if you want your sweet free champagne, give us this much money or you're gone. It's an extortion record. And the funny thing is, isn't the whole reason that Qantas is in trouble,

is because they don't have the flights. Like, explain this to me. Like, they've been selling flights that don't exist or something. There are quite a few things Kwanis has been doing. The Aadryl C is quite interested in. And bearing in mind that there is not genuine competition in the Australian airline industry, right? There's two players plus what's the new one called Bonzer or something? Yeah, Bonza.

I'm a member of the Bonza chairman's lounge. Yeah. It's just a tished. You get free Doritos. Free Doritos. Yeah. And a Bacardi Breezer, probably. That still exists.

I don't even know. So anyway, so basically. To read the news article here, the ACC reckons that Qantas disrupted the travel plans. They saved hundreds of thousands of people between May and July of last year. They advertised sales on 8,000 flights. So I was thinking it was 8,000 seats. No, no, 8,000 flights. They advertise sales on them.

Now, sometimes when I click on a Qantasail, I expect there to be no seats available. That's just standard. Click on a sale in general. I have occasionally, you know, I've got a sale fare, but very rarely. Usually, it's completely unavailable. But in this case, the flights had already been cancelled. Two weeks earlier, Quintas had cancelled the flights, which is their favourite thing to do. Wait a minute.

And they sold, and they advertised flights after they were cancelled already. Look, Dom, I know this sounds like unusual behaviour for an airline. Yeah, right. But when you've been in the airline industry as long as me, it's just standard practice to sell tickets to flights that don't exist anymore. Really? Yes. Oh, yes. I thought the sound of practice was, as you and I found, last time you and I caught a plane together. It's true.

Yeah. You turn up to the airport and then they cancel it. Yeah. And they tell you, oh, well, the next flood is tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Good luck. I missed my daughter fucking trick-or-treating last year for operational reasons. Oh, yeah.

And, Charles, had you not been, you know, someone with quite a lot of points on Virgin for your tour, I'd still be in Melbourne. No, Adelaide. We're in Adelaide. We had to go home via Melbourne. I know. Imagine being stuck in Adelaide. Yeah, it was, and this is the whole thing. In the EU, if you, there happens, they've got to give you a hotel. They've got to give you all this money.

Yeah. Not in Australia. So that's one thing they did. In Australia, not only did they not give you a hotel. They give you Adelaide. They said, why don't you go and spend some time in Adelaide? It's like, is that a threat? And if they let you into the lounge, in the unlikely event, they'll let you into the lounge,

just to make you feel better because you're so cross. You got to sit next to Nays and fucking open easy. What are you doing here, buddy? I'm sure he's lovely. But he shouldn't be in the lounge. the Chairman's Lounge. Anyway. Do you think in the Qantas Chairman's Lounge, the chef can cook you a

fresh packet of Doritos? Probably. So that's one thing they did. The other thing that they did. Now, this is Qantas doing a good thing, but only under intense pressure. You know all those flight refunds they gave? A people who... Ah, yeah, my wife had tons of those. So if you're

booked a flight... They've just gone. Yeah. If you booked a flight, right, this is what happened. Booked to flight then got cancelled due to COVID. Yeah. They gave you a credit. Yes. which was then un, that was irredeemable. So they gave you a credit, which to use, A, they would have had to have availability, which they didn't.

No. Well, they didn't even have the flights. So they didn't have the flights. They just pretended to have the flights. But also, the flights cost two or three times as much. I'm not even exaggerating. They were far more expensive. So the credit was far more expensive.

So it was a classic bait and switch, which is you bait them with flights that actually exist. Yes. And then switch it into vastly more expensive. expensive flights that don't even exist. Why, you still want to fly? That I'll cast you three times as much. I want to get Alan Joyce to work for the chaser shop. Can you actually send them a better?

He won a job in a few months. Possibly sooner, it turns out. Anyway, so what they did was, it's not Qantas's fault there was a pandemic, although it wouldn't surprise me. I think Sherry Markson will reveal that Qantas was behind the... Alan fucking Joyce. The COVID outbreak. You heard of you first.

They probably were doing it to sort of speed up their... Baggage handling. Yes. It was, yeah. If we, it was an efficiency measure to kill off. If we get pangolin to handle the baggage at all work. Oh, no,

it wouldn't it be? So we didn't have to pay them redundancy? Like if we wipe out half the baggage crew. Oh, that's what it will have been. Yes. And they will have, they will have just taken some sort of side deal to transport uncovered animal cages. From, from PRC.

Anyway, okay, so there's one more thing to mention on the flights. Can you get pangolin in the chairman's? lounge. Freshly made pink. I'll tell you what. If a now, remember the Albanese family wants it, they go out that they can kill one for sure.

Actually, actually, if Nathan's listening, can you let us know whether you can order pangolin? And can you get us in? I'd love to see the chairman's house. By the way,

we retract this entire rave if we get given chairman. Yeah, imagine you'd get into the chairman's lounge and you'd see CEOs in like Hamish Blake or something. Anyway, all right.

So just back to the cancellation. Because this is important, right? So what they did was that there were no flights, they were vastly expensive, and huge numbers of their customers had credits. Right. So they got the money back in some, in most cases, they got all the money back as a credit, not as a cash refund. Yes.

And then Qantas said, but after whatever it was, 12 months, I think they extended it once, the credits will expire. Yes. So vast numbers of people had credits. Yes. And they were just cancelled. Specifically, $570 million worth. of credits.

Yes. And so Kronis has now said, no, we're going to make them indefinite. Well, this is the thing that Bernie made of. I've always said Bernie Madoff made a huge mistake. Oh, yes. When he set up his Ponzi scheme by not having the investments that people made expire. Yeah. Well, he should have just done.

He said, oh, yeah, you give me like a million dollars. And in two years time, it'll expire. And you just don't have any money there. Yeah. Yeah. See, that would have been a better scam. Like, it would have been a more sustainable scam than the way he did it, whereas he accumulated all these, you know, oh, I'll owe you everything.

Whereas Quondas is smart. They learnt from Bernie Madoff. And they did a scam where they went just, no, sorry, it expired, right? There's an amazing example. And now the ACHOC, those wishy-washy, woke economists at the A-Truple-C are wanting to stop him from. them from learning. They're against education. And the A2C are so boring.

Yes. They say that a credit is where a company owes you money because you spent money and they didn't give you the service. Yes. And they can't just cancel that unilaterally. Which, Charles, we were the first. We were along before Qantas. Yes.

We decided to stop doing our newspaper. Yes. And a lot of people had paid us because our newspaper was kind of a pyramid scheme. I think that statute of limitations has expired on that now. It was definitely a pyramid scheme. And so all these people, we owned newspapers too. It was a Ponzi scheme. It was a Ponzi scheme.

Sorry, yeah. It was pyramid-shaped. And so what happened was we owed all these people's subscriptions until, I don't know, edition number 130 or something. Oh, that's right. And there was one poor woman, I won't say who she was. Every single time she got a copy of the newspaper thought her subscription has expired and paid again. So we don't heard copies the newspaper until about, I don't know, the year 20, 2070 or something.

And we just said, oh, we can't do it anymore. Do you want to, like, get merchandise instead? And so we tried to fob them off. Oh, really? Or we just said, do you want to just donate it? the money out of sheer pity. And a lot of them did, bless you, whoever you were. That's very sure.

That would never happen under my leadership of the judges. Yeah. It happened under your leisure. Oh, was it under my leisure? I think it was. I think it was drunk at the time. On subscribers' money. Thank you for your patience.

Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? Fizz is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So anyway, so this is the thing.

So this is going on. And people are now saying, okay, Qantas has done an amazing job of driving down costs. They have. I mean, they deliver a huge value to... Except for flights. Yes, yes. Well, that's the best way.

The best way to make money as an airline is to not have to cancel your flights. Take the money for flights and not provide the flights. And Qantas had, let's not forget, a $2.47 billion profit, which, how much did they get in JobKeeper again? Yeah, it was $2 billion. Yeah, $2 billion. So if you take that money back the way it really should be, why the fuck didn't we renationalize Qantas in the pandemic? I just think this business model, like, it's clearly one of the best performing stock in the ASX, right?

It's incredibly profitable now. I think other companies should learn from Qantas. Like, I think, you know, Bunnings should sell your stuff that they don't have. Yes. And then cancel any store credit that you get. That's a very good idea. Yeah, and same with Woolworths. I think that would work very well with Woolworth.

You walk in. Yes. You go, oh, I saw milk on sale. Yeah, I'd like some milk, please. I'd like to milk and they go... You prepay for the milk. You prepay. And then it gets to the check out and they go, oh, sorry, but don't have any milk.

We'll give you a credit. Yeah, we'll give you a credit for the milk. And then, in a year's time, cancel the credit. I mean, I can't believe other businesses haven't struck upon this. But, Charles, it's in the terms and conditions. You've agreed to it when you buy a quant ticket because it's all in the terms of conditions. No, exactly. So that's, that's Qantas.

The problem is they've destroyed their brand, right? Quantis, I mean, you've been selling quant-ass merchandise for years. Well, we've sold out of them. It's pop because it's popular. People fucking hate it. Not even the children's choir can save them now, Charles. No. Not even the singing kids can save Lange's business.

They should set up a frequent liar. Club. The frequent light get into frequent froth. I think we should probably stop the podcast there. No. So he's now waltzing off. There's a new CEO. It's a very, very slow transition.

A woman. I bet you it's a woman. I bet you a billion dollars it's a woman. Yeah, because that's the glass, what's it called? The glass cliff. The glass cliff. When you've fucked up this badly, you just have to get a woman in. Yeah.

Look, and it's a six-month transition to the new CEO whose name is, Vanessa Hudson, who's the current CFO. So at least the new CEO is partly responsible. Like you can't tell me the CFO isn't involved in the, let's cancel the credits thing. Well, I think the good thing about this new woman is, as the CFO, her job was to be, you know, nickel and dime everyone and just be across money above everything else. Whereas Alan Joyce was just all about the pangling in the chairman's land, wasn't he? You know what I'd like to see, because Alan Joyce has earned enormous bonuses for himself. The problem is that they aligned his bonuses to profits.

rather than not making everybody in Australia hate you and completely destroying your airline's brand. If they'd factored that in. But it's the perfect griff because by giving all the politicians chairman's lounge thing, they can then get all this political advantage at it. They're basically a protected airline. They're too cushy to fail.

They're too corrupt to fail. What's just happened is that they haven't allowed Qatar airways to have all these extra landing slots, even though that would drive down prices, presumably across the sector. Because they worry about the impact on Qantas. It would apparently reduce air flights, international air flights, by an average of $1,000.

Yes, but think of what it would do to Qantas's bottom line. They wouldn't be able to extort us anymore. They'd have to start selling actual tickets. They'd have to have more flights. They'd have to actually have to serve customers. So what I'd like to happen is, I'm an Australian. What I think should happen is that when Alan Joyce comes to get his bonus, I should say, Alan, I'm terribly sorry.

I'm terribly sorry. We've cancelled the bonus, but here is a credit. Here is a credit for the several million dollars Oh shit, it's expired. Sorry, mate. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Fuck off. Our gear is from Road. We are part of the Iconicles Network. And I hereby promise that we will delete this episode from the feed and never speak of it again in return for two memberships to the chairman's lounge. Yep. I hear they've got pangolin. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

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