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British Airways scrapped its ‘Book With Confidence’ guarantee last night

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British Airways ended its ‘Book With Confidence’ policy at midnight yesterday, Tuesday.

There was no advance notice given to the public, although we were able to get an article up on Tuesday afternoon after we were told in advance.

Any flight or BA Holidays bookings made from Wednesday onwards will no longer be covered by the policy.

Booking a flight to the US is now risky unless you have good travel insurance, since there is no sign of the requirement for a negative test within one day of travel being removed. Even Avios bookings carry some risk due to the need to cancel within 24 hours of departure.

What were the ‘Book With Confidence’ rules?

Until last night, any British Airways cash flight booked for travel by 30th September 2022 (this is the date by which your entire trip must be completed, not just the outbound) could be cancelled at any point – up to an hour before departure – for an eVoucher.

You could also change the details of your ticket (time, date) without any change fees, although any fare difference was payable.

The eVoucher would be valid as part payments towards any new BA flight booking, on any route, for travel up to 30th September 2023.

If you had made an Avios booking, it could be cancelled for free – no £35 fee – up to one hour before departure. You did not receive an eVoucher. All cash, Avios and any relevant vouchers were returned to your Executive Club account.

If you have existing BA bookings, nothing changes. You are still covered by ‘Book With Confidence’ on the terms above as long as your trip is completed by 30th September.

What happens for bookings from today?

Normal pre-covid service has resumed:

  • non-refundable cash tickets will, once again, become non-refundable (taxes and charges can, technically, be refunded but the administration fee is usually higher than the amount due)
  • Avios tickets can be cancelled up to 24 hours before departure for a fee of £35 per person

Whilst I initially thought that BA Holidays may continuue to have a version of ‘Book With Confidence’, it is clear this morning from the covid pages of ba.com that this is not the case.

Caveat emptor.

Is BA making a mistake here? It is possible that the airline is seeing revenue leakage from business class tickets, with corporate travellers booking ‘cheap’ tickets because they know that they can be refunded if plans change. The gamble is that increased revenue from forcing business travellers back to flexible tickets offsets the lost revenue from leisure travellers who now choose to book elsewhere.

You can see the new policies on ba.com here.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (88)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Nick says:
    8 Jun8 June 08:25

    Thanks for the heads up yesterday Rob! We booked September BA flights to Munich to visit family last night.

  • Nick says:
    8 Jun8 June 08:27

    This has been planned for a long time, since well before the rail strikes were announced. If there are BA strikes then the usual CB4D process will kick in so no worries there.

    There’s no underhand reason, it’s really just BA’s equivalent of the newspaper headlines yesterday… ‘the party’s over’. Rev man (who own the policy) hate being generous and they’ve decided it’s time for customers to start paying again.

  • Clayton says:
    8 Jun8 June 08:31

    With VS having already discontinued their own version of BWC there wasn’t much commercial incentive to keep it in place.

    Add to that the fact they’re cancelling left right and centre and removing it makes even more sense ( I do concede that ‘making sense’ isn’t necessarily their forte).

  • shd says:
    8 Jun8 June 08:52

    Anyone know if you can *write* to BA OnBusiness to get them to refund OB points and cash for an existing booking? I’ve wasted far too long trying to get through on the phone without joy.

    OB points bookings are supposed to be flex but MMB insists on offering me a future travel voucher, which I really don’t want.

    • Rob says:
      8 Jun8 June 08:58

      You won’t get an FTV because they no longer exist. Haven’t for months. You either get an eVoucher for a cash ticket or all the points back.

      • shd says:
        8 Jun8 June 09:14

        I cancelled an OB booking in March and definitely got a FTV rather than a proper refund, and I’ve no idea what it really represents (the original booking was 1600 OB points + GBP 35.07)

        When I pull up MMB then Cancel Booking for my OB points booking, logged into my OB account, it says this.

        “You can only apply for a voucher if your booking was made before 8th June 2022 for travel up to 30 September 2022.

        Enter your details below to apply for a voucher equal to the value of your flight only booking. If your application is successful, we’ll issue you with either an eVoucher (please see our terms and conditions for eVouchers) or a future travel voucher (please see our terms and conditions for the future travel voucher). ”

        No thanks, I want my points and cash back!

    • Spurs drive me mad says:
      8 Jun8 June 09:00

      I’ve taken to writing letters to companies including Amex and DWP had a much quicker and efficient response than waiting hours on the phone. You’ve got nothing to lose than about 10 minutes of your time writing and posting it give it a go.

  • Will says:
    8 Jun8 June 08:56

    Would it really have cost them much to give say 1 weeks notice of it being withdrawn?

    • JDB says:
      8 Jun8 June 09:13

      Why on earth would they want a whole raft of flaky bookings to be made in that week? I don’t think it was ever realistic to expect much notice.

      • Will says:
        8 Jun8 June 19:39

        The rationale behind some notice would be to give the customer a chance to act on the changes. I’m a believer that if you treat your customers fairly, you’ll get more than 1 transaction today out of them.

        Let’s face it the booking window was already fairly small and it’s not like BA isn’t getting the revenue, the refund was a voucher from BA not cash so there would certainly be a limit to how flaky the bookings would be.

        As a customer, who wanted to merge some e vouchers, I appreciated the notice.

    • Brian says:
      8 Jun8 June 13:52

      Yes it might have

  • Jan de W says:
    8 Jun8 June 09:07

    KLM/Air France is still offering book with confidence booking terms.

    • G says:
      8 Jun8 June 09:31

      What about Iberia? If Iberia are offering them; makes sense to try get on an Iberia codeshare given that Iberia/BA are just different liveries.

      • Michael C says:
        8 Jun8 June 14:27

        …but note that Iberia no do include the option of “cancelling just because I want to”.

  • G says:
    8 Jun8 June 09:30

    For my sanity’s sake:
    I have four current bookings (all made before 7 June) for travel with BA:
    One for travel to be completed by 11 September – covered by Booking with Confidence.

    Two for travel by end of October/start of November – no longer covered by BwC.

    Avios/Amex BAPP Voucher to Australia next February in Club World – still retains original 24 hour avios redemption flexibility minus a £35 fee per person.

    I’m looking at booking a flight to Milan in November – if I were to book tonight or in November this is now no longer covered by BwC?

    This is a big shame really, BwH is a valuable thing – and e-vouchers had become a really useful tool. I can understand retiring it for European flights; however, as you say Rob, for some destinations where covid testing requirements are 24 hours (or even some 48 hours for longer haul destinations) – having the flexibility to cancel was always welcome should one get covid etc.

    • ChrisC says:
      8 Jun8 June 09:36

      Your October / November trips were never covered by BWC because it only applied to trips up until 30th September.

      • G says:
        8 Jun8 June 09:38

        Yes, I see that now. So only booking 1 (September) retains original BwC.

        BwC was originally due to end in August – but they did extend it. I’m surprised they didn’t extend it until early next year to cope with the Christmas rush.

  • Carlos says:
    8 Jun8 June 10:02

    Will other airlines follow this rule?

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