Got a British Airways eVoucher? You may be able to demand a cash refund

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• Lady London says:

  21 Mar21 March 14:07

  Rob I can see in your wording that you’ve done your best to spare BA, at least for any novice reader, or readers that are not necessarily able to read between the lines. A very well crafted piece.

  You did wave a red flag for alert readers upfront “in an attempt to [avoid/dampen/confuse] legal action”. I admired the craft of your diplomatically putting “perhaps” in front of the words about legal action.

  You were fair, in pointing out that BA only being willing to give cash for vouchers they’ve withheld the cash value of, for more than already 2 years, is “arbitrary”.

  Just like BA’s arbitrary restriction of trying to restrict passenger choice of reroute dates to, say, 3 days before their flight BA cancelled or only up to 14 days after, is also “arbitrary” : invented by BA for their own convenience, in contravention of passengers’ rights.

  Putting “legal action” and “arbitrary date restriction” together gives the true picture.

  BA’s clearly trying to only give back passengers’ cash they illegally retained, in tranches that suit them. Hence refunding only small cash value FTV’s and still retaining FTV’s with large cash values. And now, willing to refund vouchers where they’ve kept the passenger’s money already for at least 2 years, at the risk of the passenger and without paying the passenger any interest.

  Why is BA refusing to allow vouchers to be used to pay ‘taxes’, which are mostly BA’s own (often exorbitant) charges kept by BA, and not taxes at all, on new avios bookings? The voucher contains cash the passenger had a right to have had refunded to them within 7 days of BA’s cancellation of their original flight. In many cases, BA would be judged in any fair trial to have refused to refund passengers the cash they had a right to and forced a voucher instead. So having denied passengers their cash, BA is refusing to accept its own instrument that they forced the passenger to take instead which contains…the passenger’s own cash.

  “You couldn’t make it up.” But BA did.

  I salute you Rob, it was an excellent fair article that said the truth but light handling of BA.

  • Ls says:

    22 Mar22 March 04:36

    Nice read

• The Streets says:

  21 Mar21 March 14:26

  I had a Finnair flight using Avios which I cancelled and asked for a voucher. They processed and just redeposited the Avios and gave a full refund. Same happened for an Air France flight I booked with Virgin points. I’m wondering if this is normal for using airline points with other airlines or just got lucky

• Pdah1980 says:

  21 Mar21 March 16:50

  Question for Lady London.. Before I ask can I just say I think you’re great and the advice you give is amazing.. But I’m curious.. Do you ever fly BA? Or do you avoid at all costs?

  • Londonsteve says:

    21 Mar21 March 16:59

    +1 her advice is invaluable, isn’t it?

    • Jill (Kinkell) says:

      21 Mar21 March 17:36

      Needs her own page!

  • Lady London says:

    21 Mar21 March 18:02

    Yes, and I skulk and hide when I fly BA and hope like h*ll no one hacks my IRL ID from HfP.

    I’m a bit unfair because as @Dougzz99 pointed out to me yesterday, BA is actually better on passengers’ rights and the occasional nicenesses done for passengers, than a whole lot of other airlines. But of course most of the cases we get on HfP are BA.

• Simon says:

  21 Mar21 March 18:07

  I got some e-vouchers from flights that I part-paid with avios and cancelled in August 2021 (back when you could get 2p per avios). I used the vouchers for a flight that BA later cancelled. BA refunded me the cash portion of the cancelled flight and the (very small) cash component of the e-vouchers but did NOT refund the avios used to generate the e-vouchers. This seems to be a shitty hybrid between “old” and “new” policy.

  Any suggestions on the best way to get back the overall cost of the cancelled flight (ideal) or the avios contained in the e-vouchers (less ideal)? I tried calling BA, spent 4 hours on the call in total where they said they’d refund the avios, but that was a week ago and no sign as of yet…

• ChrisC says:

  21 Mar21 March 18:28

  “(What is not clear is what happens if you voluntarily chose to take an eVoucher at a point when your flight was still operating, but the flight was later cancelled.)”

  If the flight was due to operate when you voluntarilarily took the voucher what does it matter that the flight was cancelled later?

  What matters is its status when you cancelled not what happened later.

  • Lady London says:

    21 Mar21 March 19:39

    Exactly.

    If you were still booked on the flight when it was cancelled you have the statutory rights which go beyond and supersede anything the airline says, if what the airline says is less, or more restricted than, what a governing statute would give you.

    If you took advantage of something BA offered you, eg BWC or any other feature of BA’s terms and conditions, to move or cancel or do anything else with the flight or your booking so that you were no longer on a flight at the time it was cancelled then you have to live with what you voluntarily switched to. If what you switched to doesn’t then have the airline cancel a flight (any) on it, then you have to live with what the airline offers or what’s in the ts and cs you bought under.

    • Rob says:

      21 Mar21 March 22:29

      Whilst obviously true my question was more about whether BA’s IT is that good if you request a refund.

• Candice says:

  21 Mar21 March 21:51

  Can anybody offer advice please:

  I booked IB flights using a gift card last March for late Jan 2022.

  IB cancelled my flights and only offered a voucher or rebooking. They had auto rebooked me on an earlier flight that I would not have made so I requested a cash refund as the flight number was new not just a schedule change that they claimed it was.

  The agent agreed that the flight was a new flight number and agreed the refund and asked me for my card details. I said that I had paid using a gift card and he said that in that case a new gift card would be emailed within 24 hours valid for a year. I said I thought that I would be entitled to a cash refund per EC261 and that if it was going to be a gift card then I’d like to rethink rebooking at a later date but he had already cancelled the booking. There was a bit of a language barrier during the discussion of my options but once I realised they would not refund in cash it was too late as the agent had already pressed the cancel button!

  The problem was the funds were applied to the original giftcard with expiry March 2022 and not a new gift card that he had suggested would be emailed to me separately. I phoned back a few weeks later as I’d been on holiday and thought there was just a backlog in sending out the new gift card via email and the agent I spoke to was the rudest agent I’ve even had the misfortune to talk to! However, I then realised that the funds had been re-applied to the original ‘spent’ gift card.

  The original giftcard was totally used up so I never checked up on it as the agent who cancelled the booking clearly said that a new one would be emailed to me separately!

  I feel that I used the original giftcard within the timeframe and would have flown on the flight I booked so why should I be left with a giftcard with less than 2 months validity?

• ChasP says:

  21 Mar21 March 23:05

  Still compares poorly with Virgin who immediately offered an upgrade voucher if you took an open ticket rather than a refund and promised a full refund if you later changed your mind before rebooking

• NigelthePensioner says:

  22 Mar22 March 06:33

  Refunds to your BA AmEx card don’t increase the amount you have to spend from £10k or £20k to that sum PLUS any refunds…..it simply means you have to spend that refunded sum, again………..and not have it refunded.

  • IanT says:

    22 Mar22 March 08:11

    Rob clearly made the point that it’s £10k or £20k NET spend (ie after any refunds are taken into account), which is entirely correct.

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