Can you believe it? I miss Qantas!

My big trip to New York and the rest of the world is on a OneWorld Four Continents 'round-the-world' fare issued by Qantas back in Melbourne. It's amazing value: For $2600 Aussies (+ taxes), I got my stopover in New Zealand, my flight to New York, a sidetrip to San Francisco (next week! woo hoo!), and stopovers in London, Singapore, and Bali on the way home. I get to use any of the airlines in the OneWorld alliance, and I can change my ticket after it's been issued for only US$75.

When I originally bought the ticket, I was a little annoyed about the US$75 ticket re-issue fee, but I thought "fair enough, they like to make a little profit out of you if you change your mind later on". Well, after going through the process of changing my itinerary, I've decided to re-label that US$75 as an incompetence tax. I believe most of the incompetence tax should be attributable to American Airlines, although the evidence would suggest that a small portion may indeed need to be allocated to our beloved national airline, Qantas.

The facts:

• The American Airlines web site lists two ticket offices in Manhattan. One of them is a construction site (which I discovered yesterday) and the other is a ticket office for all the major airlines located on Park Ave (next to Grand Central Station) - hint to other travellers: this is the place to go for anything travel related.
  
• It appears that Qantas did not originally charge me for my U.S. departure tax or my Canadian departure tax. American Airlines discovered this today, so on top of the US$75 'incompetence tax', I had to pay US$55 in other airline/airport taxes.
  
• Presumably because they involve a variety of airlines, RTW tickets are still 20th century paper-based tickets. On a paper-based ticket there is a space labelled 'Fare Calculation' which shows all the routings, airlines, and taxes that are included in the price. Apparently, my ticket was so complicated, that they had trouble fitting the details of the fare calculation into the field. How much trouble? Well, for something that should have been as simple as hand over some money and press print, the whole process took 2 3/4 hours!!
  

Now this would have been fine if I was dealing with a pleasant Australian travel consultant, but here in the USA, airline employees seem to have been to anti customer service school or something. They're a whinging bunch, generally from the 'older generation', who never smile, and never show any care for the customer (even if it's an act). It was a painful experience.

But I have my ticket now - ten coupons in total, for flights taking me through to the end of January. Five more flights on American Airlines, and then I'm in the hands of British Airways, for a couple of sectors, before getting on a Qantas 737 in Singapore.

Damn it! I'm a Qantas Gold Frequent Flyer. I expect equivalent service from your so-called 'alliance' partners!!