Qantas has responded to a disgruntled customer who slammed the airline over its handling of his lost AirPods.
David lost his AirPods earlier this year, when he was transferring to the international terminal at Sydney Airport.
“(The AirPods) must have slipped out of my pocket when I sat down at the transfer section in T3,” the WA man told 7NEWS.com.au.
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He checked the airport website, where Qantas was listed, along with a phone number, in charge of lost and found for the terminal.
“I call it, and it says to leave a message, and they’ll only call back if they find it,” David said.
“That’s right. You don’t even get to talk to a human or get any indication that they have heard your lost and found issue.
“What kind of customer service is this?”
Waiting a month
A month went past and David had still not heard from Qantas. David believes no one listened to his message. He said, if someone had, they would have found the AirPods because he detailed exactly where they were, according to his iPhone tracking.
“My iPhone tracks their location and shows me where they are,” David said.
After another two weeks, the location stopped updating. David suspected the AirPods’ battery simply went flat.
“Either they don’t check the messages people leave or they just can’t be bothered helping one of their customers for 10 minutes,” he said.
David also marked the AirPods as missing — a feature meaning anyone with an iPhone would be provided the information on how to contact him if they were found.
“That is all they (Qantas) had to do,” David said.
“I suspect they find lots of Apple products that have this feature and still don’t help people get their goods back.”
After David, who wasn’t able to go to the airport as he had left Sydney, posted on social media about the situation, multiple people reached out with offers to help.
Someone who was in Sydney used the Apple feature, went to T3 and found the AirPods, and returned them to David.
In response to the situation, Qantas said: “Hundreds of items are lost and found in the terminal and on aircraft every month, including about 100 pairs of AirPods, and our team works hard to reunite as many items as possible with their owners as quickly as possible.”
Similar experiences
Multiple travellers came forward with similar experience’s to David’s.
“I had this happen in Canberra,” one person said.
“And there’s a Qantas service desk where they (AirPods) were sitting in a cabinet full of lost and found.”
Some people said, in their experience, the voicemails were not listened to.
“They don’t check the messages, you have to physically go to the airport and speak to someone,” one person said.
“I lost my keys on a flight back from Melbourne to Sydney and waited for three days before I finally just went to the office.”
Another traveller had a similar experience, going back to the airport a few days after their flight.
“I just went up to the service desk and asked about it,” they said.
“The person pulled out a bunch of AirPods and asked me to see which ones would connect to my phone.
“Sadly none of them did, so I lost mine forever.”
Expecting too much
Some travellers argued people were expecting too much given the large volume of lost items Qantas would be dealing with.
“I own a small bar/restaurant … we might get 100 people on a good night, it’s tiny,” one person said.
“Lost and found for merely that is a f****** pain in the ass.
“No matter how grateful people are at the time, it does not influence how likely they are to return.
“So yeah, I can only imagine what a massive rectal pain it would be dealing, at scale, with Qantas customers.”
