Moderation keeps Rex’s skies blue
Myriam RobinColumnistJun 8, 2021 – 5.00amForgive us for returning to the topic, but Rex’s bombastic entrance into the domestic aviation market just keeps on giving.
Last week, the former regional airline booked full-page ads across the News Corp newspapers highlighting the ACCC’s June 2020 rebuke of Qantas after many customers complained the flying kangaroo was giving people credits instead of refunds for cancelled flights.
Rex’s bombastic entrance into the Sydney-Canberra market has ruffled plenty of feathers. Sam D’Agostino
Qantas responded then by contacting customers with refund offers, and says it currently processes owed money in six to eight weeks. But Rex still reckons Qantas passengers legally entitled to a refund “may be owed over a billion dollars”. And it made the point by publishing a colourful selection of recent complaints that have been directed at Qantas’ social media channels.
Mind you, a motivated look through Rex’s social media channels can also unearth plenty of gripes. And the most intriguing are those that disappear.
Sent a smattering of such, Rex responded with a statement saying it “makes no apologies” for restricting public access to comments deemed “abusive, vulgar, racist” or (even merely) “biased or unreasonable”. And that some comments may be restricted by Facebook itself.
In one now-invisible response on the very post sharing Rex’s eye-catching ad, a man asked how he could actually go about getting a promised refund from Rex. “Jetstar you click a button and it’s refunded or you have a live chat option. Rex ... on hold for over an hour yesterday and nothing ....”.
“Tried to contact all methods,” another silenced woman lamented. “Maybe try to look after the customers you have, before you start posting about other companies?”
Some noticed the erasures. “You cannot delete negative comments,” one insisted. “Talk about throwing stones. I hope you go to the wall, you deserve it.”
Others sent warnings. “I’ve set up an analytics program that records when each comment is made, its content and the time it is deleted,” one man wrote.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, where Rex cannot easily moderate what appears, complaints about call centre times are legion.
Something about stones and glass houses comes to mind ...