Aviation news international- When a customer advocate is described as “feckless” and a “dud” and receives a Choice shonky award for doing such a bad job, it should be a clarion call to fix it.
But two years after the Aviation Consumer Advocate (ACA) was labelled a “shonky impostor”, things are finally heating up.
In plain terms, the airline advocate is funded and run by the airlines. It doesn’t have the power to assess a complaint, make a decision or reverse a decision. And it can’t order refunds or compensation.
As Choice’s Rosie Thomas says: “The Aviation Consumer Advocate works like a post box, forwarding complaints to the airlines without any power to make decisions about complaints.”
In other words, it is toothless. Or as a spokesperson for Minister for Transport Catherine King says: a dud.
In a statement to the ABC, the spokesperson said:
“We’ve known for a long time that it is a dud but the previous Liberal and Nationals government failed to do any policy work in this space at all. We inherited a mess but are working hard to fix it.”
While the transport minister is working on an aviation white paper, which will look at consumer protections including an independent ombudsman or other models seen overseas, it won’t be making any decisions until next year.
It’s time for an ombudsman to handle complaints
As the aviation and travel industry battles a massive breach of trust among customers, the calls are getting louder for the federal government to urgently plug the holes in consumer protections, starting with an independent ombudsman to deal with customer complaints, a compensation scheme for delayed and cancelled flights, clearer rights for refunds and minimum standards for travel credits and customer service.
In June, the boss of the competition watchdog — the ACCC’s Gina Cass-Gottlieb — urged the federal government to establish an independent agency this year, not wait until next year.
The ACCC also wants the government to introduce fines for cancelled flights.
It is something customer advocate groups including Choice and John Berrill at Berrill and Watson — who is also a member of the Consumer Action Law Centre and a former director of the now-defunct Travel Compensation Fund — have been pushing for years.
The ACA was established in 2012, shortly after Qantas’s controversial October 2011 decision to ground its entire fleet, leaving tens of thousands of customers stranded all over the world, to break a deadlock with unions.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese launched it back when he was transport minister, touting it in a press release as Australia’s first airline advocate. “The creation of this independent position means that for the first time, airline customers will be provided with a real alternative when they are unable to resolve a complaint directly with an airline,” the press release said.
But the airline advocate was never independent. Besides being funded by four airlines — Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin and Rex — it reports to a committee made up of airline representatives.
This is in sharp contrast to an independent ombudsman, which is typically overseen by a committee that comprises industry and consumer advocates.
Indeed, most mainstream ombudsman schemes, such as the Australian Financial Complaints Authority and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, have the power to make decisions that are binding, whereas the little-known advocate’s role is to forward the complaint to the airline and ask for a response in 20 days.
Earlier this year, senior travel journalist Kendall Hill exposed the ACA’s “tortuous process” in an account of a 121-day journey that included unanswered calls and emails, then a decision to drive to the office in October 2022 in the hope that he could get a response to a query about the level of customer complaints for 2022.
His account, published in the online travel magazine Escape in January this year, recites a conversation with the advocate, who reportedly told him “she’d have to get permission first … her independent office is actually overseen by a committee of airline representatives”.
He followed up with a fresh set of emails between November and January 2023, only to be advised by the advocate that “the [ACA] committee … have responded advising that comment will not be available to the media at this time”.
Nine months after Hill’s article, the ACA’s 2022 annual report still isn’t publicly available.
ACA’s last published annual report was 2021. In that same year, it received a Shonky Award from Choice, which said “and just when we needed it most, this feckless advocacy service announced it wouldn’t be taking complaints on the issues people were experiencing in 2020: travellers being offered a credit instead of a refund (a common problem for pandemic-affected travel); poor customer service and delays in getting a response from airlines; and delays in getting refunds”.
The minister for transport was sent a copy of the annual report in early 2022, which is speculated to estimate the number of customer complaints had soared to almost 7,000 for 2022 — was another annus horribilis year for the industry.
She did not respond to questions about the report or the level of complaints.
The ACA did respond to questions. It said it hadn’t released its 2022 report because the ACA committee found inaccuracies in the data that had been used to create the draft report.
“An extensive review process has been taking place to prepare a verified final report for release,” it said, adding that the process was further delayed by a key member of the ACA leaving the business.
source:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-25/aviation-consumer-advocate-time-for-ombudsman-travel/102888622