BA not giving refund for Avios on open jaw booked with 241

[buchanan101]

Booked LHR>Lisbon with 241 in club (13,500 Avios + £50), then booked 7 days later (355 days out) a return from Porto>LHR (27,000 Avios + £50).

Just now on BA site chat, I was told that I couldn’t get a refund of 13,500 Avios because the flights were to/from different airports.

Searching on this site, HfP seems to claim otherwise…

(I have the same query in through twitter chat, but have had no reply in over a day)

[To dare is to do]

I had something similar happen on Tuesday, tried through chat and a phone call to get my 17,750 avois points returned. The CS agents just seemed completely untrained and had no idea what to do. I gave up in the end and have put in a complaint. I’m points and vouchers rich but it’s the principle of the matter.

[buchanan101]

Who did you complain to?

Maybe reading through HfP you have to ask for the flights to be combined on to one booking?

If I’d known that they wouldn’t refund (seems that HfP thinks they would, maybe BA have changed) I would have used my cash evoucher (which has about 16 months to run) as the cash prices are €211 each at the moment.

€422 v 27,000 Avios + £50…quite a close comparison especially as the flights would earn a couple of thousand Avios. I usually check cash prices before using Avios but thought the price would be 13,500 Avios + £50

[buchanan101]

So tempted to cancel the Avios booking, lose my £50 but use just about all the cash vouchers I have left…

Or.. book two tickets alongside the Avios ones (can you do that – have two tickets in the same name on the same flight?) and then if I do get an Avios refund cancel the cash bookings and get a refund evoucher on those (does that happen)?

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[To dare is to do]

I used BA online complaint form.

You could always do exactly what you did, book outgoing using voucher then book returns when they became available. You still can I just think that some staff are badly trained have no idea what’s going on. Which doesn’t help us getting our points refunded. I was told I had to use 2 vouchers … no I don’t. Then different agent told me to cancel points booking and book with cash, with that completely wrong and terrible advice I ended the call.

I’m only grateful it was for a relatively small amount of points if it was for a long haul booking and 100k worth of points I would be dedicating my week to getting those returned.

[buchanan101]

Thanks. I have a long time to sort, so will put a complaint in. And I am quite points rich anyway, but it’s £110 at Nectar exchange rate, so…

(I may well yet get a response to my twitter DM)

Maybe save the cash voucher to go to Oslo next summer to see Springsteen… would go to Gothenburg but it’s exactly midsummer and Swedish hotel prices are obscene then (it’s the place to see him though; they had to strengthen the Ullevi stadium as the Swedes got so excited). Anyway I digress! Thanks

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[NorthernLass]

No need to put a complaint in, wait for a response to your Twitter message. It will take up to a week for them to reply but they will refund the 50% avios. I have done this on my last 3 x 241 bookings, including one which was MAN-LHR-IAD returning MIA-LHR-MAN. They only want the booking reference numbers and security info.
But in any case, open jaws on the 241 have always been permitted so this seems to be the usual BA garbage.

[buchanan101]

NorthernLass wrote:

No need to put a complaint in, wait for a response to your Twitter message. It will take up to a week for them to reply but they will refund the 50% avios. I have done this on my last 3 x 241 bookings, including one which was MAN-LHR-IAD returning MIA-LHR-MAN. They only want the booking reference numbers and security info.
But in any case, open jaws on the 241 have always been permitted so this seems to be the usual BA garbage.

Thanks! I’ve given them security info and refs. Do they add the bookings in to one?

[NorthernLass]

No, they haven’t done that for some years now. You’ll be left with 2 PNRS but this has pluses and minuses.

[Lady London]

Should we offer BA a training course?

[NorthernLass]

It’s a bit of a grey area though – we know that BA will refund the 50% avios if asked, but I don’t think it’s in the Ts and Cs that they have to do so, so really it’s a goodwill gesture. This wouldn’t even be an issue but for the limitations of the 241, e.g. can’t book an open jaw online or use it in 2 parts to book inbound and outbound separately. But I think we’ve seen very recently that BA are only intent on making it more difficult to get value from avios so maybe this is a tactic they have been told to pursue, possibly unofficially?

[JDB]

NorthernLass wrote:

It’s a bit of a grey area though – we know that BA will refund the 50% avios if asked, but I don’t think it’s in the Ts and Cs that they have to do so, so really it’s a goodwill gesture. This wouldn’t even be an issue but for the limitations of the 241, e.g. can’t book an open jaw online or use it in 2 parts to book inbound and outbound separately. But I think we’ve seen very recently that BA are only intent on making it more difficult to get value from avios so maybe this is a tactic they have been told to pursue, possibly unofficially?

Yes, technically, one needs to book outbound and return at the same time, but it is a term (quoted below) that isn’t currently enforced.

“15.10. For return journeys, outbound and return flights must be booked at the same time. Travel to one destination from a point of origin and returning from another city to the same point of origin (or vice versa) is permitted”

[NorthernLass]

My last 50% avios still haven’t been credited to BAEC, a week after Twitter told me it was being actioned. I will chase it up but I’m now wondering if this is indeed a new policy like the one involving the gold upgrade voucher which @Rob ran an article on this week. Ah well, the sooner I burn through my avios, the sooner I’ll be moving to and VS and other airlines which serve the regions better than BA does.

[To dare is to do]

Lady London wrote:

Should we offer BA a training course?

This ! I said on Tuesday in my post about this that both agents were woefully undertrained.

[NorthernLass]

They’re not undertrained – they are actually in the right here as there’s nothing in BA’s Ts and Cs which allow for the refund of avios if the inbound leg is booked separately. A lot of people read this site and fall into the trap of assuming that everything mentioned is official BA policy whereas a lot of the techniques discussed are just workarounds which BA allows but can, in fact, withdraw when they choose. As per Rob’s article on the gold upgrade voucher this week, BA seems to now be implementing policies to significantly reduce the value of avios and the recent experiences of readers who haven’t been able to get their 50% may just be a taste of things to come.

[NeilP57]

What a great thread as I have become very frustrated recently.

Booked open-jaw Club Europe Heathrow to Marseille and then Lyon back to Heathrow a week later. Using Avios and a 241 voucher. The booking was done back in March for flights in August (so both flights booked at the same time) and the agent said she didn’t understand why the two lots of Avios had been taken. An overpayment of 17,000 Avios (value £136 at Sainsbury’s). She said that she would raise a query with the back office team to sort out.

A month goes by and northing happened and no refund of Avios.

Impossible to contact BA customer service to discuss, waiting over an hour a few times and then the call just went dead. So a letter was sent setting out all the information and requesting a refund of the 17,000 Avios.

Another month has gone by and no response. Cannot speak to anybody at BA Customer Service. My Blue membership phone number just doesn’t allow you to get in a queue to speak to anybody about such matters.

It would appear that I need to try the twitter route as this may have had some success.

Rob – are you able to confirm with your contacts at BA that open jaw tickets and 241 vouchers are compatible. We have used 241 vouchers previously on an open jaw flight to Jo’burg and Cape Town, without any problems.

Any other suggestions on how to get my 17,000 Avios back welcome.

[NeilP57]

Well a few months have passed and still no progress on a refund of my 17,000 Avios.

Decided to try and contact BA customer services and despite a few misdirections on the phone system finally spoke to the right person (Gareth).

He understood the issue, tried to fix it by contacting the correct back office team but no joy. He said leave it with him and it will be sorted.

24 hours later, all sorted and 17,000 Avios re deposited into my account.

I so wish I hadn’t wasted so much time over the summer trying to get this sorted. Glad the phone gets answered at BA these days.