Reply To: Booking Qatar Airways through BAEC

[Aston100]

Thought I’d update this thread.
It has been quite difficult to get BA to make changes to my QR flights.
I booked an open jaw using avios.
I wanted to push my return journey back by a day (there were reward seats available).
Took several phone calls to BA across a 10 day period before I finally got an agent who was able to make the change.
Overall, it took more than 2 weeks to get re-ticketed.
Several agents felt that I would need to pay additional taxes & charges – anything between £1112.79 to £1650.16 on top of what I’d already paid, plus the change fee, plus the service charge.
The difference between the last agent and all of the previous ones was vast. To the point where it felt like the last agent was the one in the wrong because she did not at any point mention these additional taxes & charges, only the change and service fees.
Two of the previous agents had agreed to waive the £100 fees (£35pp + £15pp * 2) on the basis that it isn’t possible to change open jaw / multi city reward booking online and you are forced to phone up. However, the final agent disagreed.
I sent in a query to BA and they upheld the decision that the £100 worth of fees were applicable and weren’t interested in what two agents had said about waiving them.

Overall, I am unhappy with the experience. I think it must be due to BA agents not really understanding how to handle date changes for partner reward seats, with further complication due to multi city/open jaw. On several of the call, the agents stated I would need to wait for the back office to calculate additional charges and I would need to call again.
It also didn’t help that some agents were not blocking the seats that I needed, while others released the seats again the following day. There was a risk of someone else coming along and purchasing the flights that I needed. Luckily that didn’t happen, despite the whole process taking over 2 weeks to complete.

In future, I will look to book directly with Qatar Airways and find some other way to get the correct amount of Avios into my QRPC account, be it through exchanging some of my Amex MR or purchasing the difference in points.