British Airways issued a notice to the travel trade on Sunday evening to warn that the call centre in Delhi has been closed down by the Indian Government.
This is part of a coronavirus clampdown.
The closure has taken out a chunky percentage of British Airways call centre capacity. It is having “a big impact on call waiting times”.
The airline continues to ask that customers only telephone if they are due to fly within the next 72 hours.
(Of course, BA could reduce call centre volumes by putting back the option to receive a cash refund for cancelled flights – instead of a voucher – on the website. Luckily we have a workaround which will allow you to hack the BA website and trigger a cash refund payment.)
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I received notification of my cancelled Helsinki flight for May half term today…. Cash refund or rebook! Instantly available on manage my booking.
Does the link to refund actually work, this is what was there before but the link took you to the voucher page…
Is there a workaround to ask for a refund for onbusiness point redemption flights? I don’t want to call them…
You can do most changes online. Log into OnBusiness then select to manage booking.
It won’t work if you are logged in already on another tab as a non-OnBusiness user. Make sure you log out of any other BA login first and you might have to delete cookies. Then OnB will let you log in. (Unless it’s having one of its lets-make–everyone-change-their-password times, which it used to have frequently in the past).
If you can’t log in you’ll have to call OnBusiness on their specific number but it’s really much easier to change things online.
Very poor business continuity planning, I work for a business that has all of its thousands of service desk colleagues working from home, including those in India.
I don’t understand why most call centres still seem to operate from offices. Ideal function for home working.
Yes, Amex staff work from home a lot. Often just chatting to staff, they might say they are WFH, not just recently. Seems sensible. But BA will cut costs this way, of course. And the longer people hold on the phone, more likely to give up and accept the voucher.
Unless….they are now allowing the cash refund on line. Without the workaround.
Guessing in some countries, not every worker has the conditions for good internet, telephone or even electricity at home so need an office environment. Also probably their clients require strict measures such as cameras etc to avoid credit cards and other financial details being misused
You realise the refunds team is also probably in India, right? So even if the button is put back on the website, how are they going to process them?
A different office in Mumbai, but yes, they are in India.
I’m not getting my open jaw, previously reissued Avios 241 tickets refunded any time soon am I? Poop.
MMB won’t let me, even with workaround, as it no longer recognises the original card used to pay.
Nick better start asking your country government to encourage people to work so the call centres won’t move to India.your government can’t afford to pay for call centres in your own country as people are lazy and you don’t have funds to pay them anyways as majority wants to live on benefits. ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS MATE.
If BA invested heavily in building a website that allows you to make and or amend any type of booking using their website, then their call centres would’ve probably been nowhere near as big they were before the Covid-19 outbreak. The fact that a lot of Avios bookings require you to call up in the middle of the night to try and make a booking is to be honest ridiculous, why you can’t do something like this on the internet, and you have to call up is something that BA is being intentionally (or not) blind-eyed towards. If people could make all these types of bookings using the internet, then their call centres might not need to be staffed in the middle of the night
I wish Opodo closed its India call centre because it’s useless anyway – after a 2-3 hour wait you are told to call back in a few days re your booking / refund / whatever