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I think the solution is simple
When you buy a ticket all you should have to do is check you get eticket receipt email , with a eticket number .
When you make any changes , to different flight you should get another eticket receipt with eticket number (it may be the same) . If you don’t follow it up.
You should check you get these emails. You should have to do anything else more complicated .
No, it’s not the customer’s responsibility to do these checks. Their ticket notifications should check whether the PNR they are reporting on has related e-ticket records and if not, send an email along the lines of “Your reservation has been held while we process your payment. You will receive further confirmation of a valid ticket within X days.”
No customer-friendly organisation should send misleading confirmations if they know there is a significant risk of confusion.
What do you mean customer shouldn’t do this very basic check. All I am saying that they check the get the confirmation eticket email. When they buy or change a ticket. Surely when you buy anything on line you check the confirmation email.
I’m not saying they go into complicated checks on other oneworld airlines to retrieve eticket. Just they read the email receipt.
I think the solution is simple
When you buy a ticket all you should have to do is check you get eticket receipt email , with a eticket number .
When you make any changes , to different flight you should get another eticket receipt with eticket number (it may be the same) . If you don’t follow it up.
You should check you get these emails. You should have to do anything else more complicated .
No, it’s not the customer’s responsibility to do these checks. Their ticket notifications should check whether the PNR they are reporting on has related e-ticket records and if not, send an email along the lines of “Your reservation has been held while we process your payment. You will receive further confirmation of a valid ticket within X days.”
No customer-friendly organisation should send misleading confirmations if they know there is a significant risk of confusion.
The problem is that BA isn’t currently a “customer-friendly organisation” and I wouldn’t expect that to change in the near future. It pays to know what sort of creature you are dealing with so one can act accordingly and take one’s own precautions to avoid the types of airport incidents reported on these pages all too often.
@JDB it’s been pointed out to you repeatedly why your stance isn’t reasonable on the subject of flight ticketing.
Well, I’m happy to invest the couple of minutes it takes to make up for BA’s ticketing shortcomings!
Some people are tripping on this forum lately … well … the same one as always blaming the OP for not checking he was properly ticketed because of course that is a skill all of us BUT the person doing the actual airport checkin and working for the airline should know.
When you buy a ticket these days you provide email and phone numbers. However it now seems we need to follow the airline schedule and aircraft changes, become expert in their systems and proactively chase them to fix stuff.
People may spend time researching about their seats, food and all that because it is the bit they enjoy and can understand. Why some expect passengers to have to proactively make sure their existing ticket has not disappeared in BA’s IT ether is only known to them.
PS: BA sent me today an email for a future flight inviting me to order food or other extras. When you click on any of the link my browse opens with the message “link is invalid”. But I am supposed to be able to know my ticketed fight has not been incorrectly amended. Give us a break!
@yonasl – well, as it happens, I’m not one of those blaming the OP although I too noted several people have so I trust you are referring to them not me, your bête noire.
I’m afraid I make no apologies for checking all my travel plans well before departure to make sure everything is correct and that would include (re)checking the flight ticket(s) and times as well as other types of tickets, hotel and car hire bookings, restaurants etc. With so many cultural venues now requiring pre-booking that’s an added layer of things to check. From the tone of posts, that’s obviously a totally abnormal thing to do!
I’m currently on a very busy Balkan trip that I decided was beyond my organisational abilities and I’m delighted that the organiser has been checking every few days that all is well and reconfirming all the various arrangements for the following couple of days. Obviously he’s HfP abnormal as well, but I think he’s just very thoughtful and professional which is why I booked with him.
I always check that I get confirmation emails for airlines, hotels , car hire , every element I buy. I read them in detail to ensure it’s what I bought. I do this again if I make changes.
However that’s all I do and all I think that you need to do.
From the tone of posts, that’s obviously a totally abnormal thing to do!
It is — @Garethgerry’s approach is more typical. Having worked in user centred IT system design for many years it is wrong to be blaming the customer for failing to understand your business or navigate your systems. Make things simple for the user — “do the hard work so the users don’t have to” is the mantra at gov.uk. This approach is standard practice for competently run businesses and public services.
I have a friend who started work for BA/IAG a few weeks ago. She says the internal facing systems have reduced her to hysterical laughter between fits of rage and slack-jawed disbelief. I am not in the least bit surprised.
FT report of a very minor improvement. Instead of the passenger only finding out their flight was unticketed at the airport, BA somehow detected it and emailed the passenger about 12 hours in advance, so getting it sorted was slightly less stressful than it would have been.
Flight was a 241 where the return was added separately at T-355, outbound was ticketed normally and flown. Inbound was not ticketed because the card authorisation had expired by the time BA back office got round to attempting to charge.
Let’s distinguish between ticketed travel that has changed (and needs to be re-ticketed) and travel where Avios/payment hasn’t been taken. I think the former is a BA issue, and the latter an issue both parties are responsible for identifying/resolving.
It can’t be rocket science for BA to issue emails that says “here’s your ticket number” and another that says “your reservation has not been ticketed yet”. In the same way companies send a “your order has been received” email followed by “your order has been dispatched”.
It seems problem nearly always occurs on phone , when payment isn’t taken immediately. This is something I don’t understand.
Scenario one, agent quotes a price , Avios plus X cash. I don’t see why payment isn’t taken immediately, that’s what all other business do. If it’s adding a return, you should get a confirmation email.
Scenario two. Complex ticket, agent says I’ll have to pass this to someone to work out. You should expect call back , then payment taken immediately. If no call back worry
Once payment taken all responsibility is with BA.
Where it’s a change, often BA initiated, then it all BAs responsibility, but a sensible passenger would worry if no new confirmation emaip
Agreed apart from the final paragraph. A change may or may not require a new ticket.
A two hour schedule change with the same flight number would keep the same ticket. A one hour change to a different flight would probably get a new ticket. The ‘Important information about your flight’ email you receive would be the same format in both cases, you don’t get a new ‘e-ticket receipt’.
The average punter can’t possibly be expected to understand the nuances of the airline ticketing system.
Sorry I should have been clearer, and said a change involving a change involving of flight number.
As an infrequent air traveller, how would one check that their BA flight has been ticketed?
Look at the summary page for each flight in the app, NOT the detailed MMB pages.
At the bottom it shows the 125-nnn ticket number. That’s the crux of the different opinions – BA never actually show you the actual ticket and make it very hard to see even the ticket number.
It seems problem nearly always occurs on phone , when payment isn’t taken immediately. This is something I don’t understand.
Scenario one, agent quotes a price , Avios plus X cash. I don’t see why payment isn’t taken immediately, that’s what all other business do. If it’s adding a return, you should get a confirmation email.
Scenario two. Complex ticket, agent says I’ll have to pass this to someone to work out. You should expect call back , then payment taken immediately. If no call back worry
Once payment taken all responsibility is with BA.
Where it’s a change, often BA initiated, then it all BAs responsibility, but a sensible passenger would worry if no new confirmation emaip
If you just give your card details to the agent for another person then to do the ticketing, payment has not been taken, so the responsibility doesn’t lie with BA at that point. You may have some 261 rights established but you may not have a contract.
It’s almost always on making changes that these problems occur, particularly if the agent doesn’t reissue within the seven day lifetime of the CVV record or worse the shorter ticketing deadlines imposed by IB, QR, JL etc.
It seems problem nearly always occurs on phone , when payment isn’t taken immediately. This is something I don’t understand.
Scenario one, agent quotes a price , Avios plus X cash. I don’t see why payment isn’t taken immediately, that’s what all other business do. If it’s adding a return, you should get a confirmation email.
Scenario two. Complex ticket, agent says I’ll have to pass this to someone to work out. You should expect call back , then payment taken immediately. If no call back worry
Once payment taken all responsibility is with BA.
Where it’s a change, often BA initiated, then it all BAs responsibility, but a sensible passenger would worry if no new confirmation emaip
If you just give your card details to the agent for another person then to do the ticketing, payment has not been taken, so the responsibility doesn’t lie with BA at that point. You may have some 261 rights established but you may not have a contract.
It’s almost always on making changes that these problems occur, particularly if the agent doesn’t reissue within the seven day lifetime of the CVV record or worse the shorter ticketing deadlines imposed by IB, QR, JL etc.
If the person you give your card details to works for BA then nevermind the length of the chain it’s BAs responsibility to get it right.
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