David lost his Airpods inside a Qantas terminal. So began a month-long saga to get them back which travellers say highlights a major problem with the airline's customer service

A man who lost his headphones at the airport believes Qantas' customer service never even attempted to look for them in the month they were missing.

David accidentally dropped his Airpods at Terminal 3 in Sydney's International Airport in February but only noticed they were gone once he'd left. 

He checked the location tracking feature on his phone to see that he had dropped them at the Qantas terminal so called the airline's lost-and-found to tell them where they were.

The traveller was shocked when an automated answering machine picked up his call.

'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,' he told 7News.

David left a message stating the exact location that he had dropped the Airpods but never heard back from anyone from lost and found. 

He was convinced that nobody even listened to the voicemail because if they had, his item would have been easily retrieved. 

'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 added.

Two weeks after the Airpods first went missing his phone stopped showing the live location of the device, presumably because the battery went flat.

He marked the Airpods as missing on his phone which creates a pop-up when someone else tries to use them, informing them that they are lost.

The pop-up message includes the owner's contact details so that strangers are able to return them easily.

David took to social media to share his dilemma and several people offered to help, with one of them going to the airport to retrieve them for him. 

In a response to 7News, Qantas denied David's allegation about its customer service and said its team worked diligently to reunite owners with their items.

'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,' a spokesperson told the publication.

Other travellers, however, claim that they have had similar experiences to David's.

One person claimed to have been told by a customer service member in Canberra when they picked their lost property up that the voicemails are rarely checked.

Another person recommended that people need to physically return to the place they lost the item and ensure they talk to someone in person to resolve the issue. 

A second traveller agreed, claiming they only got their car keys back by heading in to check the desk themselves after already waiting for three days for a response. 

Others argued that Qantas was doing the best it could and returning every single lost item in an airport was an impossible feat. 

The owner of a small bar explained that he often tries to return the lost property of customers but that the items misplaced by 100-strong crowd every night must pale in comparison with an airport. 

'I can only imagine what a massive rectal pain it would be dealing, at scale, with Qantas customers,' he said.

Daily Mail has contacted Qantas for additional comment.