Amex 2-4-1 used for single person (Open Jaw) – inbound flight Avios refund issue
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Hi all,
I trawled through the various forum posts to make sure I did everything correctly, but I have come up with an issue getting 50% of the Avios used for my inbound flight refunded.
To help explain the issue, below is the exact process I followed including word for word interaction with BA…
– I booked my outbound flight from MAD-MVD in economy via BA.com (for late February) and used my Amex 2-4-1 voucher to get this flight booked at half the Avios.
– I booked my inbound flight from GRU-LHR-MAN in economy via BA.com (for early April) at the full rate using 40,000 Avios.
– As mentioned many times on these forums, I then sent a direct message to BA via X stating the following “Hi there, I hope all is well. I’ve just booked my inbound Avios flight (booking reference: xxxxxx) for 04/04/2024 on BA.com. Please can you refund me half the Avios on this booking as this is the return journey of my open jaw flight (booking reference: xxxxxxx) using the other half of the BA companion voucher. I understand the taxes and fees element will remain the same. Many thanks!”
– I received the following reply from BA “Hi, there would be a 20,000 Avios refund and £50.00 change and service fees to split your Companion Voucher across the two bookings. Please let us know the best time (morning/afternoon/evening) and number to contact you and we’ll arrange a call to take payment.”
– I then went back to BA and said “Thanks for getting back to me. Can I possibly just query the £50 charge as when originally trying to book my tickets, ba.com does not allow you to book an open jaw ticket, so had to book my inbound flight from GRU-LHR-MAN separately to my outbound, hence requesting a refund of 50% of the Avios used for that booking. Hope that makes sense?”
– To which BA replied “The £50 fee would apply as the return dates were not outside of the system range, and we could have booked this for you over the phone as one booking.”
Did I overlook something or made a mistake in the process that I have followed above, or have I been unlucky with the agents? I’ve not read of anyone else being charged when getting in touch via direct messaging. If I have done everything in the correct way, could somebody (Hello NorthernLass 🙂 ) possibly advise the next step I should take to get the 20,000 Avios refunded and not have to pay the service charge. 🙂
Many thanks in advance,
JThe issue is that BA only offers this concession if it wasn’t possible to book the return flight (because it was too far ahead) when booking the outbound. As BA says, the correct route would have been to call and have the return flights added to the original booking, for which you would again have been charged unless those flights were out of date range.
You have presumably done this in order to obtain the benefit of the lower taxes/charges out of Brazil, so you can’t expect to have it both ways. So, re the 20,000 difference, you need to think about that quite carefully in case they are right.
Yes I can see what’s happened here. As @JDB says, it’s about when you made these bookings. In the 241 threads there are numerous posts advising that the norm is for BA to refund the 50% avios *because* it wasn’t possible to book the inbound leg at the time you booked the outbound – i.e. the inbound hadn’t been released. As the agent said, they could have booked this over the phone in one go.
Reasons for booking the inbound separately online are because it’s not available at the time of booking the outbound OR you want to avoid complications with surcharges, but BA will generally only refund the 50 % in the first set of circumstances, and not the 2nd. To get round this, you need to make each booking as near as possible to the avios seats being released.
What’s not 100% clear is whether BA intend to just cancel and rebook your inbound leg or the whole trip, in which case they would also recalculate the surcharges?
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