British Airways now charging £35 cancellation fees – not £1 – on short-haul Avios flight tickets
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British Airways started offering short-haul Avios redemptions for as little as £1 in taxes and charges last year.
As we have covered numerous times on Head for Points, the £1 deal is a bad deal. If you look at the sliding scale of Avios and cash combinations you are offered the best deal is usually the one which one is nearest to the old-style £35 taxes (or £50 for Club Europe) option.
The easiest way to work out the best deal is to apply your value of an Avios point. I value them at 1p, which is conservative but sensible. Applying a 1p valuation, the six options above turn into £176, £153, £130, £120, £132.50, £137. The best value is the fourth – ie the ‘original ‘ £35 taxes option.
There was one positive upside though, which benefitted everyone ……
The trial came with one upside – £1 cancellation fees
It is meant to cost £35 per person to cancel an Avios booking.
Because of limitations in the British Airways IT system, however, this was never really the case. Because ba.com was not set up to demand more money from you when cancelling, the reality was that you paid ‘£35 or the taxes you paid, whichever is lower’.
When the £1 trial started, BA had to make another tweak. Online cancellation for short-haul Avios bookings was set at just £1! A one-way flight was just 50p.
Importantly, this was irrespective of which payment combination you used. Even if, in the example above, you had booked the 8.500 Avios + £35 combination, you were still only charged £1 to cancel. You got £34 back in cash.
You can no longer cancel Avios bookings online …..
For the last three weeks, we have been encouraging people to try a couple of workarounds devised by readers to get refunds from British Airways. These allowed you to ‘force’ ba.com to show you the page for online cancellations.
This method now seems to be dead, at least for people using a PC. I see the occasional success for Mac users.
Cancelling a short-haul Avios redemption now requires a call to British Airways.
…. and British Airways is charging £35 on the telephone
In recent days, according to reader feedback, the British Airways IT system has been changed. It is now impossible, even if the agent wants to do you a favour, to cancel a short-haul Avios redemption without paying a £35 per person fee.
You need to pay the £35 in cash to the agent. Your existing booking is then cancelled and the entire fees and taxes you paid are refunded. Even if you only paid £1 tax in the first place, you need to pay £35 to get the refund.
(To be fair, the avios.com system always worked like this in the days before the Avios Travel Rewards Programme was closed. Few people knew it because, unless you were trying to cancel a one-way booking with £17.50 of tax, it never came up as an issue.)
Some people will have to pay £70 per person
It gets worse. For anyone who booked their redemption as 2 x one-way flights, you will be charged £35 each way.
Imagine that a family of four had booked 4 x one-way flights on Avios to Amsterdam and 4 x one-way flights back. They were expecting to pay a grand total of £4 to cancel them all (8 x 50p one-way cancellation fees). Instead, British Airways will now ask for a whopping £280 (8 x £35).
Is there any way around this?
Not that I know of.
All I can suggest is that you hold off cancelling as late as you can, in the hope that either:
online cancellation returns and you can again get away with paying just £1, or
British Airways cancels or substantially retimes your flight, in which case you can request free cancellation
One of the readers who contacted me about this had booked reward flights to Spain for most weekends in the Summer to lock in the seats. His plan was to cancel most of them for £1 and just fly a couple. They were all booked as 2 x one-way tickets. He is now facing a very expensive raft of cancellations ….
How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)
As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!
In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.
You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:
Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard
Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review
Barclaycard Avios Mastercard
5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review
There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:
British Airways American Express Premium Plus
25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review
British Airways American Express
5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review
You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.
American Express Preferred Rewards Gold
Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review
The Platinum Card from American Express
40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review
Run your own business?
We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.
SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.
Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa
Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review
You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.
British Airways Accelerating Business American Express
30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review
There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.
American Express Business Platinum
40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review
American Express Business Gold
20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review
Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.
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