British Airways evouchers for cancelled flights are arriving – and it’s a mess

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• Sussex Bantam says:

  27 Mar27 March 14:59

  I try to stay away from BA bashing – but this really does just look like they are intentionally making it as hard as possible.

  I know it is tough for all companies at the moment – but people will remember how they acted in this time and going out of your way to frustrate is not going to win any friends at all.

• JJ says:

  27 Mar27 March 15:10

  What about if the refunded flight was Avios + cash :/

• SimonW says:

  27 Mar27 March 15:10

  I’ll pay 60% face value for any vouchers.

  • Ian says:

    27 Mar27 March 15:13

    What are you talking about?

    • Nick says:

      27 Mar27 March 15:25

      I assume SimonW is offering to buy vouchers from people to use as credits for future flights at a 60% cash value to voucher value ratio! I.e A voucher for £100 – he will give £60 In cash!

      On a side note, I always knew that a voucher from BA would never work and considering they can’t even get their website and mobile apps working properly – a cash refund was the only option! Appreciate not everyone got that option as flights weren’t cancelled right away.

      Anyone to take a voucher now after the government won’t bail out BA would be making a mistake.

      • David says:

        27 Mar27 March 16:19

        I assume it’s a joke because they don’t have any face value, there’s no value on the vouchers at all.

    • sayling says:

      27 Mar27 March 16:20

      60% of a face value of zero? 😂

• Jess says:

  27 Mar27 March 15:24

  The email I received looks quite different:

  We have received your voucher request and have cancelled your British Airways Holidays booking accordingly.

  You have £XXXX to use towards a future booking, please visit ba.com when you are ready to make your new booking and complete payment with a credit or debit card as usual.

  If you pay a deposit on your new booking, we will reduce the balance due by the above amount. Alternatively if your booking is paid in full we will refund the voucher value back to the payment card you used for your new booking.

  If there is a difference in price from the original booking, any increase is payable by you at the time of re-booking and any decrease is refundable with a further voucher. Please refer to terms and conditions here

  It must be redeemed for travel within 12 months of your original date of departure.

  Please reply to this email with your new booking reference once made. Alternatively please call our contact centre to make a booking by phone, contact details here

  Prepaid seating refunds can be requested using this claims form, Please mention that your booking was cancelled due to COVID-19 when submitting your form.

  • JAXBA says:

    27 Mar27 March 15:51

    Yours is from BA Holidays, and was processed differently. You’ve ended up with the same kind of voucher in the end but it was created and communicated by a different team.

    • The Original David says:

      27 Mar27 March 17:16

      I.E. the BA Holidays team, which seems to be the only part of BA where the CS agents are actually empowered to do anything helpful.

• AB says:

  27 Mar27 March 15:28

  If you can do so much better, why don’t you contact BA (or any other airline you spend your days criticizing) and offer your apparent expert advice on this subject. I have no doubt this is an incredibly complex process which has been put together remarkably quickly.
  All you seem to do these days is moan about everything any airline does. Can’t you see they’re struggling just as much as we are.
  Fed up on this site now. Starting to wonder whether you get paid more for slating airlines than talking about loyalty points…

  • JohnG says:

    27 Mar27 March 15:40

    @AB And what exactly were you expecting extensive content about from HfP the best deals on rooms within your home to self-isolate in, future developments in home seat technology that you may be able to access soon, how in-quarantine catering compares between Wednesdays and Thursdays… Perhaps follow your own advice if you really are that fed up, rather than just grumbling, and try setting up your own travel blog with the content you think is appropriate and see how well you get.

    Thanks for keeping the content coming Rob; couldn’t agree with your summary of the voucher effort so far any more completely.

    • The Original David says:

      27 Mar27 March 17:19

      To be fair, I’m sure there are plenty of IT consultants who would be more than happy to help BA create a voucher system that worked.

      Unfortunately BA fired most of their IT consultants a few years ago, because they had to pay for them…

  • Rob says:

    27 Mar27 March 16:35

    All I am doing is responding to the inbox full of complaints about these vouchers which I have received in the last 48 hours.

    In fact, virtually every article on this site calling out airlines and hotels is in response to reader complaints. Don’t shoot the messenger.

    • Vit says:

      27 Mar27 March 17:00

      Exactly! Especially when people got upcoming flight before GOV ordered non-essential travel, then you either lose them all or vouchers! And if you’ve got flight a couple week or so, just sit tight and wait for BA to cancel. Happened to me today for my ABZ-LHR flight. Rob made it very clear!

    • callum says:

      28 Mar28 March 01:21

      While I don’t share their initial criticism as such, how exactly can it be “fact based” when it’s literally him just guessing about what it would have taken? I doubt he could do much more as I’m sure BA have much more important things to do than describe processes to Rob, but many people on here do take his guesses as gospel/fact a lot of the time. They’re well educated guesses, but I’ve seen many pretty inaccurate ones over the years (vastly outweighed by the accurate guesses of course).

  • Bagoly says:

    27 Mar27 March 16:50

    If BA did consult Rob or similar expert customers about the details before launching various things, they would have much happier customers, higher income (from happier customers), better PR, and LOWER costs because:
    (a) Rob does not have the attitude of “consumer should always benefit instead of the airline”
    (b) they will end up with knock-on costs they have not thought about (in this E.g. case higher use of call centres)
    (c) I am sure the amount he would charge would be immaterial compared to those knock-on costs.

    BA could still maintain a difference of opinion with Rob E.g. about giving cash refunds.
    But it on the details such as mentioned here, everybody would gain.

    I guess part of the problem is that because airline employees get Staff Travel, they have little understanding of what their customers experience during booking and amendments processes.

    • Vit says:

      27 Mar27 March 17:01

      You forgot to include Rob’s consultation rate there!? Might come up worse off for BA! 😉 haha

    • Vit says:

      27 Mar27 March 17:02

      Apart from that, everything else is spot on though! 😛

  • Nick says:

    27 Mar27 March 17:32

    Sadly AB, what you sadly appear to miss, is that this is the latest in a stream of total, and utter incompetence, from BA, over the past few years.

    Quite frankly, it’s absolutely no surprise to me, and many other frequent fliers, whatsoever, from a company who’s management appear to know very little about, and indeed understand very little about, their market, largely as a result of working from a typical, out of touch, corporate, ivory tower!

• Jerry Schurder says:

  27 Mar27 March 15:29

  Anyone got any idea how long we might have to wait until we receive refunds of cash + Avios for flights which were cancelled and for which I requested a refund online? It’s over two weeks now. One of them was an Amex 2-4-1 flight which expires in May and I hope to see it returned to me with the promised 6 month extra period before expiry – but it’s just silence from BA.

  • alan wan says:

    27 Mar27 March 16:15

    I had a 2-4-1 Amex Avios redemption. BA cancelled the outbound and I receievd an email with alternative flight or refund and I took the latter. After waiting 2 weeks, someone in FT suggested I needed to chase it up with BA. I called the Gold Line on Tuesday and the avios and voucher was refunded straight away and saw it in my account within minutes including the six month extension. The agent said the money could take a few weeks. Looking at FT a lot of people got their refund within a couple of days. I haven’t recieved my cash yet but it has only been 3 days.

  • essjay2009 says:

    27 Mar27 March 16:22

    I cancelled mine on Sunday. Avios were back in my account instantly. The 2-4-1 and cash both appeared yesterday. So four days for everything. It seems very inconsistent though.

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      27 Mar27 March 16:52

      Did you get all money back ie: £35 fees and seat selection fees?

• Anon says:

  27 Mar27 March 15:30

  Nobody should have taken the vouchers in the first place. Is BA opening themselves up to a class action lawsuit for misleading people about their rights?

• Aston100 says:

  27 Mar27 March 16:19

  Sounds like they are trying to compete with Easyjet for the most frustrating refund experience.
  Easyjet were miles ahead, but looks like BA are catching up!

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