Spend points for business reward, but get downgraded from A330 to 737

I recently redeemed points for a business seat on VAs A330 from Brisbane - Perth.  The flight was subsequently downgraded to a 737 and retimed 20 mins whilst retaining the same flight number.  Of course that meant going from one of the best business products to arguably one of the worst in Australia - I booked the upgrade based on flying the A330 only.  I made a complaint to VA regarding the change.  

Complaining about something that happens all the time in the industry shows your lack of travel experience, don't be expecting anything, basically too bad so sad.

Apart from the actual seat is there that much difference, food and drink will be the same, wine etc, still rather be up the front than down the back

Always disappointing but aircraft changes do happen and that's a particularly cruel one. Not sure there's much they'll offer in compensation because they're pretty careful with stipulating it's a possibility the plane will change. 

Happened to me too (Velocity business reward Per to Mel for 4 pax). Luckily for us, our schedule was flexible and we had points to make the changes. I just called the call centre and got the flights changed. Here's hoping they don't change it again...

About half of QF flights between BNE and PER are now 737s, so I would be surprised if there haven't been similar experiences with QF.  The underlying problem is that both QF and VA treat their 737 and A330 J products as interchangeable, when clearly they are not the same product.   If it was a schedule change, then you should have been given options such as a free change to another flight.  Did you even get notification?

Happened to me on an Etihad flight which was supposed to be Dreamliner, but last minute was changed to an A320. 

I think it's more than fair for a passenger to expect some compensation for such a downgrade of the experience: going from either the latest Qantas or Virgin Australia A330 business class seat to a Boeing 737 business class is a marked drop in every respect.

Yes, the airline's primary duty is to get you from A to B in safety and in the class you booked; and yes, aircraft swaps fall into the category of "sh*t happens"; and yes meals and service should be the same or equivalent.

But paying for the experience of those advanced spacious fully-flat 1-2-1 business class seats and finding yourself on a Boeing 737 business class is, to me, sufficient to expect some recompense (especially if you were on a  red-eye flight!) in the same way that you pay for one service but are delivered an inferior one.

As with bl5965, I was on a flight last year which was swapped to the 737 and I was pro-actively credited 30,000pts to my velocity account. As it happens, the guy sitting next to me had had the same thing happen to him recently (poor chap - two flights in a row) and likewise, he had been credited 30K pts. So I was all set to lodge a complaint and request for recompense but the points hit my account before I got around to doing so.

I feel for you and have had similar experiences, both positive (the exact opposite of your situation) and negative (Upcoming flight to HK being changed from A330 to 747).

Sorry about doublplatinum's rudeness (and sense of entitlement I suspect), it's a perfectly reasonable question.  We had the same experience and they moved our seats to row 1 - I don't actually like row 1 as it's noisy but at least they thought they were being nice.