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We arrived and being split wasn’t really that bad so the statutory refund will be a welcome bonus.
@lady London – that was 90k avios plus £225 each, each way.@jill you make a good point but I doubt BA care about that Symantec.
It won’t have been booked in I class at t355 as I only used 1 241 voucher.
What’s annoying is another J seat was empty for 90% of the flight reserved for the flight crews rest area.
Anyway, the holiday starts now!!
That’s a positive way of looking at it. Hope you have a great holiday
Hi Jonathans, hope you enjoy the holiday.
I would be tempted, after I put in the downgrade claim, to send a separate letter to customer services saying how disappointed you were that – on a special occasion, ie the actual date of your 40th birthday – your family was split up when two of the party were involuntary downgraded.
Since you booked 355 days before the flight, you find it hard to believe that you were the lowest priority customers booked in CW.
You never know, BA may thrown you another 20-30k avios – they seem to be throwing around avios at the moment!
Just to be clear, as there was a little confusion above, the Avios amount you are claiming is 135,000 in total for both downgraded passengers.
You paid 90,000 and the voucher is worth another 90,000 for the outbound sector alone, so it’s 75% of 180,000.
It is likely that BA will try to fob you off with half that, assigning no value to the voucher but there have been many successes in challenging that through CEDR so don’t accept it if they do.
BA state they guarantee 4 club 2 PE and 8 economy seats available for avois bookings on every flight .
I agree they should honour those, but if someone is willing to pay full fare… 🤔 Avios hasn’t changed the dynamics of “the biggest wallet gets the seat” as much as offering F/J at a large discount when they are available. I would hope that lifetime tier points, how many Avios you have, spend are factored in.
BA state they guarantee 4 club 2 PE and 8 economy seats available for avois bookings on every flight .
I agree they should honour those, but if someone is willing to pay full fare… 🤔 Avios hasn’t changed the dynamics of “the biggest wallet gets the seat” as much as offering F/J at a large discount when they are available. I would hope that lifetime tier points, how many Avios you have, spend are factored in.
My point is that in a full CW cabin, 4 of those seats are guaranteed to be occupied by avios redeemers and they should be protected. Any other seats up for avios beyond the initial 4 are fair game. But… how is anyone to know?
My point is that in a full CW cabin, 4 of those seats are guaranteed to be occupied by avios redeemers and they should be protected. Any other seats up for avios beyond the initial 4 are fair game. But… how is anyone to know?
Much as it would be great for the majority of the HFP readership, the reward seat guarantee is not intended to protect those bookings in an overbooking or equipment change scenario. It also doesn’t say anywhere that it does.
Except where people are happier with the compensation, they will of course want to argue it shouldn’t be them. However the reality of life is such that it is BA’s commercial priorities that dictate what happens.
At least UK/EC261 provides a strong incentive to minimise the frequency and impact of these occurrences and provides for generous compensation. However, I do think it would be better if airlines were required to ask for volunteers in the first instance in return for the relevant statutory compensation before selecting their own victims.
I agree to that point. Recently UA offered to 3 volunteers a $2.500 amount at UAL923 to London to give up their seats to the crew and get downgraded to economy plus. So that would be the ideal compensation in circumstances like that, that would also avoid the necessity at least for the most of compensation/reimbursement cases.
Happy birthday to our friend. I hope your family trip will leave you unforgettable and wonderful memories.
At least UK/EC261 provides a strong incentive to minimise the frequency and impact of these occurrences and provides for generous compensation. However, I do think it would be better if airlines were required to ask for volunteers in the first instance in return for the relevant statutory compensation before selecting their own victims.
My point is that in a full CW cabin, 4 of those seats are guaranteed to be occupied by avios redeemers and they should be protected. Any other seats up for avios beyond the initial 4 are fair game. But… how is anyone to know?
I’ve managed to get 3x LHR-SFO LAX-LHR in F for £7k equivalent (inc double TP and car). Same seats (MY seats) were selling the week before for £51k. Who are you going to downgrade…..? 🤔
I don’t travel for business anymore, but I’ve caused my share of people to be downgraded/bumped. Unfortunately that’s how the system works. Hopefully the crew look after you
How do i go about claiming for the involuntary downgrade please? I raised a case online and selected Bookings & Reservations and then refund, and got a templated reply back within a few days saying thank you for sharing your concerns with us, its really important and i have shared it with the necessary colleagues so we learn from it and the case closed.
I then raised a new case for seating and got a reply back telling me how to claim for pre-paid for seating assignments and again the case was closed.
On top of my original complaint, i feel like there needs to be a complaint about the complaints because they are clearly not being read. But for now, what is the best process to about claiming for the involuntary downgrade please?
@Jonathans – unfortunately this seems to be a new strategy by BA. I know of others who have had peremptory case closure without resolution and experienced it myself last week, but following a sharp response from me, it has now largely been settled. You need to show them you mean business!
I would reply to the closure message you received from Global Customer Relations and copy the BA legal team setting out the facts in the clearest, most succinct way possible. While you are theoretically entitled, following BA’s baseless peremptory case closure to escalate the matter to CEDR or issue proceedings in the County Court, such closure must have been erroneous, so you are giving the airline the courtesy of reconsidering the matter.
Remind them that the facts are incontrovertible – you were booked in x class and involuntarily downgraded to y class as their records will show and such involuntary is compensable on the terms set out at Article 10(2)(c) and to be calculated per the decision in CJEU case C-255/15 Steef Mennens v Emirates Direktion für Deutschland then set out that calculation for them and that the sum was due within seven days per Article 10(2).
Please therefore ensure xx Avios per person (total xx) and £xx are credited to my BAEC account and original credit card used within 14 days, no later than 16.00 on Friday 6 December failing which you will issuing a claim for the Avios at the full purchase rate of 1.7p (?), plus court issue and any eventual hearing fees for each claim, plus interest starting seven days after my initial claim.
I would bother complaining about the complaints process!
@Jonathans – unfortunately this seems to be a new strategy by BA. I know of others who have had peremptory case closure without resolution and experienced it myself last week, but following a sharp response from me, it has now largely been settled. You need to show them you mean business!
I would reply to the closure message you received from Global Customer Relations and copy the BA legal team setting out the facts in the clearest, most succinct way possible. While you are theoretically entitled, following BA’s baseless peremptory case closure to escalate the matter to CEDR or issue proceedings in the County Court, such closure must have been erroneous, so you are giving the airline the courtesy of reconsidering the matter.
Remind them that the facts are incontrovertible – you were booked in x class and involuntarily downgraded to y class as their records will show and such involuntary is compensable on the terms set out at Article 10(2)(c) and to be calculated per the decision in CJEU case C-255/15 Steef Mennens v Emirates Direktion für Deutschland then set out that calculation for them and that the sum was due within seven days per Article 10(2).
Please therefore ensure xx Avios per person (total xx) and £xx are credited to my BAEC account and original credit card used within 14 days, no later than 16.00 on Friday 6 December failing which you will issuing a claim for the Avios at the full purchase rate of 1.7p (?), plus court issue and any eventual hearing fees for each claim, plus interest starting seven days after my initial claim.
I would bother complaining about the complaints process!
And what should be the OPs response, when BA respond saying that as a 241 voucher was used there is zero Avios for that person ?
How do i go about claiming for the involuntary downgrade please? I raised a case online and selected Bookings & Reservations and then refund, and got a templated reply back within a few days saying thank you for sharing your concerns with us, its really important and i have shared it with the necessary colleagues so we learn from it and the case closed.
I then raised a new case for seating and got a reply back telling me how to claim for pre-paid for seating assignments and again the case was closed.
On top of my original complaint, i feel like there needs to be a complaint about the complaints because they are clearly not being read. But for now, what is the best process to about claiming for the involuntary downgrade please?
I got the runaround from Customer Relations as well following my downgrade from last month – they twice confirmed that it is NOT Customer Relations who handle downgrade reimbursement – it’s Executive Club (at least, where the flight was paid with Avios – I guess it might be different for cash bookings?) but CR can’t speak to EC to pass over the details so you have to contact a different team within the same organisation and start all over again.
In the end I tried tweeting and then DM’ing the British Airways Twitter account, who said they’d sort it out. A few days later – and without any communication from them whatsoever (no email, letter or phone call) – they credited my Executive Club account with the Avios reimbursement. No sign of any reimbursement for the cash fees, so I tweeted them again, and they’re looking into it – but that was a couple of weeks ago without any acknowledgement, so it’s probably fallen into a black hole somewhere (along with my claim for faulty IFEs on _both_ seats on the return flight…)
@e14 – BA will only attempt the zero value companion seat argument if you let them! The response I would give is that the companion seat is not in any sense ‘free’ for either the Avios or cash elements of the total payment. The voucher was valuable consideration for the purchase of the ticket(s) so BA accepted xx,xxx Avios, plus a voucher equivalent to that number of Avios, plus RFS for both passengers. Neither BA nor Amex’s marketing suggests the second ticket is free. In essence, if you pay a £300 annual card fee and spend £15,000 on that card, BA will provide you with a voucher with a value of/matches the same number of Avios paid by the voucher holder.
@Raskolnikov – you are right that Global Customer Relations don’t handle these downgrade compensation claims directly but they do (or at least can) instruct the BAEC team to make the reimbursement and the basis for doing it and that’s usually quite quick. Unfortunately they instruct a different team for the cash element which is very slow. I wouldn’t allow them to fob you off by telling you to contact another team – it really shouldn’t be up to you to have to navigate their weird CR handling. It’s basically part of a (rather successful) system to shake off as many claims as possible.The conclusion to this saga… after the November update above I gave Andrew Fleming one more try in mid December and then after a further week of silence I emailed Sean Doyle. A week after that (between Xmas and NY) I received an email from the escalations team saying they had issued the refund back to the original payment within 7-10 working days. There was also an apology for the way it had been handled and each (x4) of us were offered 30k Avios goodwill.
Day 9, I received the £££ element of the refund but it was about double what I was expecting (as calculated above) but no Avios yet. Day 12 I chased escalations team again.
Still not heard back from them but overnight all 270k Avios received for the involuntary downgrade plus 120k Avios goodwill for the delay and inconvenience.
Very happy with the final outcome but no idea why it’s taken around 10-11 weeks nor what the correct procedure is for the future.
@Jonathans – well done; I’m really pleased for you. While it was a chore and pitifully slow, you got a quicker and better outcome by holding the faith and doggedly pursuing BA.
Had you gone to CEDR/MCOL at the first opportunity as many recommend, you would have missed the 120k goodwill and there’s a very material risk that you wouldn’t have got the full 270k either as BA is very good at bamboozling CEDR on downgrades and in a recent case reported here, BA won at MCOL and wasn’t ordered to pay downgrade compensation for the second CV ticket.
Pleased it all worked out in the end. Hopefully the holiday didn’t suffer and you all had a wonderful time. Loved taking my kids there when they were littluns.
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