Reply To: The ‘How to book the return leg with 2-4-1 companion voucher’ thread

[BB8]

highnal wrote:

Thought I’d share my experience last night as I (hopefully) managed to bag 2 of the holy grail CW seats outbound to Male for the Easter holidays next year.

Called the Australian number (+61 130 767 177) at 12:50am UK time, took 2 minutes to navigate through a couple of automated menus. I selected the Avios booking option number 1 to begin with. Eventually connected with the Indian call centre. Took another few minutes to get through the security checks and then explained I wanted to book two seats for Apr 6th 2024 that were being released at the T355 mark (i.e. today). She initially wasn’t sure I had the right day and even checked the cash bookings to see if the previous day 5th had been released already. Even so, she said she would keep refreshing her page to see if seats became available on my chosen day. I was doing the same on my laptop and sure enough, at 1am the 4 guaranteed CW seats appeared on my screen, I told her immediately and she confirmed she could see the availability too and secured them for me. Success!

We then encountered a blip… once I’d confirmed the 75k Avios £860 taxes payment option, she tried to process payment but her machine was unable to confirm the amount in GBP, only USD. Some minutes on hold later, I was transferred to someone else who tried the same and failed. Was told the payment would need to be taken manually by the ticketing office. I was given the booking reference, told the seats were confirmed and had nothing to worry about. Payment will be taken and tickets issued with 48 hours.

And now I wait anxiously…

Something similar happened to me in Feb 22 when I was booking that route for Feb 23.
I did call the UK number back the next day to make sure it was confirmed and they went ahead and sorted the payment for me in GBP.
I didn’t want to risk waiting up to 48 hours.