BA forced by the courts to refund £5,000 of non-refundable tickets – unreasonably?

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• Bettie says:

  2 Mar2 March 09:21

  I’m not sure why there is a reference to Which? being irrelevant? Clearly in this case it wasn’t. Buyer simply sought took their advice and won their case. Whether that judgement was correct is another matter but nothing to do with Which? I agree that T&C are probably never read but if it said non-refundable and non-changeable as hard as losing £2.5k is that is what was signed up for; although this is a very unfair system in my view but that is a different matter………

  .

  • Callum says:

    2 Mar2 March 11:00

    The system is completely fair, the only relevent thing in my view is whether the system is adequately explained to the customer before purchase. With the added caveat that a seeming majority of the country is stupid and/or lazy, meaning important terms need to be made very clear.

    I’m pretty sure it is now, but maybe the fare descriptions were less prominent back then?

• r* says:

  2 Mar2 March 09:49

  Imo no flights or hotel bookings should be allowed to be sold as non refundable, maybe within 30 days of the date would be ok to lower the risk of a flight being empty if everyone cancelled the day before but current no change or refund policies are too much in favor of the airlines.

  • Callum says:

    2 Mar2 March 11:01

    Why?

    There are refundable options if you want it, why should I be forbidden from buying cheaper options just because you apparently don’t want it?

• Michael L Wright says:

  2 Mar2 March 10:19

  The judgement is fair. Coincidentally I looked at the cost of booking Business class seats on BA’s website yesterday, having just booked them via Avios, and after I closed the window I actually thought: I wonder weather those were non-cancellable tickets? So BA has not learnt the lesson. BA needs to stop thinking that it was hard done-by by the judge and change its website so that a warning pops up on every page saying that these are non-refundable and non-changeable tickets. If it doesn’t then one can only think that it cynically has a business model to deceive the consumer; this is not how things work after the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and previous legislation. In the bad old days “let the buyer beware” was the legal norm; this now applies only to B2B transactions.

  • Chris says:

    2 Mar2 March 12:26

    If you did a search / dummy booking for business class seats the BA website asked you if you want in/flexible tickets when you selected business class.

    • Michael L Wright says:

      3 Mar3 March 16:01

      I have just done the dummy booking again, albeit I put in Economy class initially and then chose Business class for each flight. There was no warning and I had to access “By submitting continue I agree to the fare conditions” which was under the total price for all flights and above “Agree and continue” in order to find that the flights, which were not cheap, were non-cancellable. They are currently transferable to a different date, probably due to Covid-19 special rules.

  • Callum says:

    2 Mar2 March 12:31

    Where do you draw the line between “buyer beware” and “treat the buyer like an idiot”?

    The information isn’t hidden in small print or behind links, directly underneath the total price is a short paragraph describing change conditions. I’d agree it could be a bit clearer (I’d put it in the drop down bit that describes the inclusions when you first select a flight), but it’s hardly deceptive.

  • Sam says:

    2 Mar2 March 12:38

    Callum There is nothing wrong to, and there is nothing to stop the business to treat the buyer as idiots (if you would like to put it that way). It is for their benefits for an avoidable dispute and I’m sure we as customers won’t complain about clear and precise reminders on the terms and conditions of the ticket rather than a tedious small print.

• sunguy says:

  2 Mar2 March 10:30

  I’m a bit on the fence on this one – I very much see both points of view – this was a retirement present to Hawaii (so, they were older and not necc. savvy travelers – £2500 is about normal pricing for a basic business class ticket)….

  To Joe public, £2500 is a HUGE amount of money to spend on a plane ticket – AND they were going on BA – the UK Flag carrier and not some bargain basement airline(we all here know better in some cases, but we are talking average Joe here)….also, its business class – “all businesses need flexibility, right – so, we have to be able to change the reservation”….its also booked 8 months in advance and around 2 months later finds they need to change it – STILL 6 months out from when the original flights were due to depart.

  On the BA side, RULEZ is RULEZ….except where BA want to change them….I also suspect the passenger had no status, so was left mainly dealing with the front line call centre…Im not saying status would have made the outcome any different, Im just saying it may have been rather less pleasant of an experience than otherwise. Also, although you are right to mention about the airline not wanting to allow real fully flexible tickets to be devalued by making exceptions.

  This is one of these cases where a manager who is worth their salt, should have been involved and taken a pragmatic approach and looked at all the details and made an individual decision based upon the facts. On the top of it, this doesnt seem to be about a passenger trying to mess with the airline or its policies or trying to get something for nothing, it seems to be about an individual who was trying to do the right thing, and got royally mucked about by BA.

  I think the problem I have is more about the complete disregard for Customer Service that BA (and other airlines) have – its less about the customer and much, much more about grabbing as much money as possible and providing as little care as they can get away with.

  I fully agree it makes a mockery of some of the more silly decisions that the arbiter and BA have made – this comes back to my point of managers worth their salt – not just following the rules, but being (and allowed to be) pragmatic. A genuine mistake, by someone booking the trip of a lifetime with the UKs Flag carrier airline in business class is very different from some uppity business passenger trying to get something for nothing.

  • The real John says:

    2 Mar2 March 11:17

    Great comment

  • Rob says:

    2 Mar2 March 11:21

    They clearly were NOT flying wholly on BA, of course, since BA doesn’t fly to Hawaii. This part of the story isn’t discussed but is also important.

    • AJA says:

      2 Mar2 March 15:41

      Does that really make a difference though? You won’t actually fly on BA metal all the way but you can buy BA code share flights on all sectors ie for all intents and purposes you are flying on one ticket as if BA operated flights to the ultimate destination. And with the transatlantic joint venture BA and AA share revenue on the transatlantic sector anyway.

• AJA says:

  2 Mar2 March 10:33

  The thing is this case highlights the dangers of booking a non-refundable and non-changeable ticket a long time out.

  That said the original argument wasn’t that Robert Glen wanted a refund. He wanted to change the dates but BA said no. BA said he must cancel and rebook. All he was entitled to was a refund of £450 in taxes.

  Which Legal contend that BA should have been able to resell the original seats given the date change request was made 6 months before the flight.

  The judge also said that ‘He made a booking for something. He opted not to use it. On the face of it (subject to any administrative expenses that British Airways might have incurred), he ought to be entitled to a refund.’

  I think that’s a fair comment as really how much would BA lose by allowing the change for a fee?

  And this ties with an expectation that seat reservation fees should also be refunded. I find it odd that Rob thinks that seat reservation fees should be refunded but thinks the overall fare should not be.

  That said the Which article also said: ‘the judge in Robert’s case implied that had British Airways managed to prove that its terms and conditions clearly highlighted ‘no refunds’ when he bought the ticket, he might have ruled differently.’

  In other words the T&Cs should be much more prominent. I think we all agree on this.

  • Rob says:

    2 Mar2 March 11:18

    Let’s be clear. BA would rather scrap all discounted fares than be forced to make all tickets refundable. This is the logical thing to do to maximise revenue.

    You also do not want to live in a world where people book seats on every flight on particular days, months in advance, thus depriving others of seats and cancelling the 95% they can’t use at the last minute.

    We saw this in action when Gold members could cancel Avios tickets for free, and people would block-book seats on certain routes, eg book multiple weekends away for every weekend of the Summer and then cancel all the ones they didn’t want at the last minute.

    • marcw says:

      2 Mar2 March 11:44

      well… all BA tickets (even the most “discounted” fares – what that means is a whole different thread) are now fully flexible and refundable (in the form of a voucher).

    • zebrum says:

      2 Mar2 March 15:17

      There are technical solutions to that, e.g. same person, via account, name, address, payment info, can’t book 2 seats on same flight or another flight at the same time. BA simply want to profit from non-cancellable, it’s lazy business practices. On Southwest all tickets are refundable but their booking system is much more advanced than others.

    • AJA says:

      2 Mar2 March 15:28

      I see what you are saying Rob but you can currently block book by buying fully flexible tickets each week. Obviously that would require you to spend a fortune. The reality is that most people do not pay £6k if they can pay £2k. The comparison with Avios reward bookings is a bit odd though as there are only a limited number of reward seats on each flight unlike revenue seats.

      • Callum says:

        2 Mar2 March 18:54

        Revenue seats do have a limit – the number of physical seats on the plane.

        Granted it’s much higher than the Avios limit, but so is the number of people able to use it. I could block book weekends for months in cash, but don’t have anywhere near enough Avios to do it – I’m sure many are the same.

        • AJA says:

          3 Mar3 March 08:03

          @Callum, have you ever block booked revenue seats on a long haul route let alone a short haul? Of course a plane or specifically a cabin has a limited number of seats but my point is that revenue seats outstrip reward seats availability. In reality block booking 2 flexible CW seats every week for 10 weeks would cost upwards of £70k assuming a minimum cost of £3.5 per seat. Even on short-haul 2 CE seats a week for 10 weeks would be somewhere in the region of £20k assuming a flexible fare of £1k for a seat.

          There are usually at least 3 rows of CE and often 12 rows. That means at least 5 block bookings of 2 seats per week. In theory it might happen but if it really did then BA would never offer inflexible tickets. Why would they? They would be more likely to put on a second plane or expand the CE cabin. Or even over sell the seats on a basis of a high percentage of no shows. The chances of all 5 block bookings all cancelling are very very small. As for CW with an average of 56 seats, do you really think all 56 seats would be block booked on fully flexible fares? Again BA would simply over sell or put on a second plane on the route. That’s just Club, the numbers of seats in economy are a multiple of that again. It’s a nonsense comparison.

• Sussex Bantam says:

  2 Mar2 March 10:57

  Isn’t the point here that the judge said the T&C were not clear enough. He didn’t rule that they were actually unfair in themselves. This seems quite an important distinction to me…

  • Memesweeper says:

    2 Mar2 March 19:24

    Although, if the T&Cs aren’t prominent it gives the judge an easy way of avoiding looking at the fairness. BA may have lost on that point too.

• Oliver says:

  2 Mar2 March 11:00

  BA’s seat booking prices and refund policy are an absolute disgrace and, as you say, should be challenged by every possible means. The lost claim you refer to shows that the courts fail. Likewise, I think the airline industry as a whole has to dispense this non refundable non changeable model post COVID . (It was always a disgrace and is why Which? remain a necessary consumer champion. Similar organisations exist in Europe .) . Lufthansa appear to have a fairly reasonable cancellation fee of €250 on long haul business flights. That allows any consumer to book way ahead for a special event and then cancel for any “life event” without breaking the bank or relying on a wheedling insurance company or a stingy airline. E.g. I’m sure insurers wouldn’t cover a couple separating as a reason but that couple might be young and book a holiday of a lifetime way ahead before they separate. Why should they be penalised so?

  • Lady London says:

    2 Mar2 March 12:34

    The seat fee claim was CEDR where you risk a perverse decision.

    I am certain that BA being trounced for refusing to refund seat reservation fees for a flight that BA themselves cancelled, is only waiting for this to be taken to court and BA will have to refund them all.

    I suspect BA knows this and as seems BA’s usual practice, is deliberately stonewalling regusing and wearing people down to keep passenger’s money as long as possible.

    Everybody : when thus judgment finally comes through, remember to claim retroactivelty and add the statutory interest of 8% pa from the date 7 days after the cancellation date that you are entitled to.

    The best comment about BA that I ever saw on here was that BA is a great airline to invest in but not to fly in. I have a sneaking admiration for BA on this but they should not be allowed to get away with this and they won’t once a judge looks at it.

• cinereus says:

  2 Mar2 March 11:02

  That’s why you don’t waste time with arbitration and always go straight to MCOL.

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