BA call centre cannot see extra reward seat availability

[GBT]

Hello all. First time poster, hoping for some advice.

I just came off a call with a friendly BA agent who could not help me book Extra ReWard Seat Availability for an open jaw.

I have booked the outbound leg one way using my 2-4-1 voucher and I could see availability for my return leg from my second city. However, the agent cannot see this on her system.

All she can see is regular Avios seats. She has advised booking the return flight online for full Avios but they will not be able to refund me 50% for the 2-4-1. This won’t work anyway, as I can no longer see the return leg without my vouchers.

Has anyone else experienced this? I searched in the forum but couldn’t identify a similar discussion. Any advice is welcome. Thanks.

[Rob]

Another readers who was emailing me had this issue recently and could not get it resolved.

I don’t know if this is part of BA’s new IT shake up or not.

[LittleNick]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Another readers who was emailing me had this issue recently and could not get it resolved.

I don’t know if this is part of BA’s new IT shake up or not.

Oh this is frustrating and will put a spanner through the works with my plans.

[GBT]

Thanks, Rob.

I called again an hour ago and talked through the issue with a second agent. That agent identified an IT issue that is preventing the Extra Reward Seats appearing on their system. Instead, the seats show as commercial (i.e. cash) options only.

The agent characterized this as a new situation and an IT bug that is being worked on. Given that there was no timeline for a fix, I canceled within my 24hr period.

[Yaronk972]

Yes, same happened to me 4 weeks ago when wanted to book an open jaw 241 voucher in club.

Representative didn’t see any club availability in both cities n the US and consulted with BA’s back office who didn’t see any availability either.

When I insisted the rep spoke to a colleague of her who knew how to “trick the system” as encountered a similar issue 2 days ago and she managed to book me, not after saying that booking might not pass the payment stage. However, she eventually managed to help me. Unfortunately I’m not entirely sure what she did, but it was possible.

[craiguk58]

I didn’t have an issue last week when amending an existing booking. The agent mentioned there was no standard availability but when I mentioned the extra availability using the voucher she knew what to do to find it with no issues.

[GBT]

I called back late on the same day and the third agent was very helpful. She said she knew how to pull the tickets in for booking. 20 minutes later it was all booked – this time I let the agent book both legs.

It sounds like there is a workaround that cannot be done by all agents, whether it is know-how or an authorization difference between agents I couldn’t say.

Thanks for the comments.

[BBbetter]

GBT wrote:

Given that there was no timeline for a fix, I canceled within my 24hr period.

After you cancelled the original booking, were you able to view the extra seats on the return leg using the voucher?

[1958]

This typifies the BA circle of doom: Due to IT issues and complexity of ticketing / cost, BA can’t let customers use the website for some transactions, resulting in reliance on phone calls. But the churn among phone staff is such that many of them don’t know how to deal with complex questions.

[Amy C]

I had this while looking at Cairo about 18m ago. Wasn’t even extra voucher availability but normal avios seats. The agent eventually found the seat ‘hiding among the revenue tickets’ and was able to book it.
This was back when I seemed to regularly get British call centre staff on the phone. Now I only seem to get heavily scripted Indian call centre staff who I dread to have to explain this to.

[desh36000]

Am concerned that this will affect my upcoming 241 attempts, as the last time I went through a call center for redemption it was mayhem and lost flights at 355+. I am assuming USA call center is not affected as much, or is it all the same thing? (as seems to be partly the luck of the draw as to which agent you get)

[NorthernLass]

The USA call centre is often refusing to make these bookings full stop now, have a look at the “Booking the return” thread for the latest on that.

[GBT]

BBbetter wrote:

GBT wrote:

Given that there was no timeline for a fix, I canceled within my 24hr period.

After you canceled the original booking, were you able to view the extra seats on the return leg using the voucher?

Yes, the agent stayed on the line as the cancellation was processed. The Avios and vouchers reappeared immediately. Once the vouchers were back in my account the seats were visible as ‘Extra reward seat availability.’ He noted this but was still unable to help.

Incidentally, it does occur to me that letting the agent book both legs is better in this situation. It shortcuts the distracting suggestion from the agent that the seats were taken in the 10 minutes since I saw them and booked the first leg. With the vouchers in my account, I can authoritatively state that the seats are available.

Similarly, you can watch the seats disappear from your search when an agent does successfully pull them into the booking which is satisfying on your 3rd call.

I should say, each agent was friendly, and as helpful as they could be; so, I’m pleased with that.