Forums › Frequent flyer programs › British Airways Executive Club › BA to prevent UK callers ringing US
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I’ve just read that BA will soon stop UK callers ringing the US call centre, mainly to prevent people from ringing the US call centre at midnight for reward flights and clogging the lines up. This will be done by having to enter your executive club number and filtering out UK ones.
Anyone else heard this?
I was actually told to phone the US number a few days ago when trying to make a reward booking over the phone and their systems were down. The guy said they had been told systems not coming up any time soon so the only way is to call the US, but he wasn’t allowed to tell me the number, so directed me to where on the website to find it.
If that means that on-demand reward flights will in future be bought online instead of by phone, surely that has to be an improvement for both BA and punters?
If that means that on-demand reward flights will in future be bought online instead of by phone, surely that has to be an improvement for both BA and punters?
For return voucher bookings you may need more points in your account than would otherwise be required. If they fixed website functionality to allow an unused voucher return to be added, nobody would need to call.
It also creates a race in which US Avios holders have an advantage, as call centre in the US. An immediately hold a ticket at midnight. That’s completely unfair – they need to ban all midnight redemption bookings on the phone to level the playing field IMHO.
Perhaps there are (much rumoured) changes to redemption flights that mean there would be no mad scramble to book by phone……
Please tell us where you read this so we can assess the source.
Please tell us where you read this so we can assess the source.
Just rumours floating around, (including previois comments on here) no particular sources. Just putting 2+2 together and making 6! Would make sense though
Perhaps there are (much rumoured) changes to redemption flights that mean there would be no mad scramble to book by phone……
The suggestion that the US call centre might stop taking these calls has been around for a long time so I wouldn’t be trying to create some conspiracy theory!
The whole thing is something of an absurdity, not a very fair process, a complete pain for the US staff and detrimental to access for US passengers so it wouldn’t be surprising to see them stopping these calls.
Easiest way for BA to solve this would be to change the reward seat release to midday uk time. I’ve seen some suggestions they’ll try and screen uk callers, but one could envisage a number of work arounds for that.
Please tell us where you read this so we can assess the source.
looks like a recent post on Flyertalk along these lines
I read exactly the same thing this morning on an BA Exec Facebook group.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/186TtYftCf/?
You never really know if there is any substance to these posts as you have no idea who is behind the post in reality.
Easiest way for BA to solve this would be to change the reward seat release to midday uk time. I’ve seen some suggestions they’ll try and screen uk callers, but one could envisage a number of work arounds for that.
Not if they screen them by BAEC number as suggested…
If that means that on-demand reward flights will in future be bought online instead of by phone, surely that has to be an improvement for both BA and punters?
For return voucher bookings you may need more points in your account than would otherwise be required. If they fixed website functionality to allow an unused voucher return to be added, nobody would need to call.
It also creates a race in which US Avios holders have an advantage, as call centre in the US. An immediately hold a ticket at midnight. That’s completely unfair – they need to ban all midnight redemption bookings on the phone to level the playing field IMHO.
This ‘fix’ may not happen as the rules still state you must book outbound and return at the same time.
Wasn’t it like this previously? You had to speak to your “home” exec club line . Seems a bit of a backwards step, I call the US because often the only time I can sit down and have time to ring up is after 8pm. Or I’m abroad so UK opening times do not work for me
If BA staggered the availability online versus via the call centre, they could stop all this nonsense which much be very disruptive for their operations. Moving as much as possible online is their stated goal.
Easiest way for BA to solve this would be to change the reward seat release to midday uk time. I’ve seen some suggestions they’ll try and screen uk callers, but one could envisage a number of work arounds for that.
Not if they screen them by BAEC number as suggested…
I’ve not had any need to do it, but assume I can very easily update my country of residence on ba.com
if you have an Amex (and maybe Barclaycard) and have a different country of residence then the miles will not post
if you have an Amex (and maybe Barclaycard) and have a different country of residence then the miles will not post
we’re clearly getting into a lot of hypotheticals here. My thought would be a temporary switch when needing to grab the seats and then switch back after booking, in a similar vein to the RJ status / BAEC miles process. Ultimately what I’m suggesting may not work, but it may be that BA doesn’t introduce the system suggested above either. Last time I had to do a t355 241, I booked both legs online.
By some distance, having to phone a call centre on the other side of the world at 1am (for half the year) is the biggest ballache of the whole points game. This year’s shennanigans took 4 nights on the bounce to secure a flight back from SIN, all on school nights. I hate it.
If BA shifted it to mid-day they would get the Nobel peace prize from our house.If BA staggered the availability online versus via the call centre, they could stop all this nonsense which much be very disruptive for their operations. Moving as much as possible online is their stated goal.
Would it not make more sense for them to improve their IT (no laughing at the back) so that online customers can ring fence seats when going through the booking process?
From reading articles, this seems to be the reason why people call up, because if you try and do it online you might not see seats because call centre agents have blocked them off.
@CJD – it isn’t a question of improving IT, it’s deliberately designed so that a customer has a different level of access/functionality vs an employee; that’s pretty standard for lots of businesses. There is already too much gratuitous T-355 booking so I’m not sure giving the passenger the ability to hold seats would necessarily be a positive.
One also needs to bear in mind that these calls (which should be chargeable) and/or adding a return, booking the outbound separately from the return etc. are against the terms, so are being allowed as a fairly generous concession that is very disruptive for the call centres. The trouble is that too many people now appear to be doing this so the last straws may be being placed.
If BA staggered the availability online versus via the call centre, they could stop all this nonsense which much be very disruptive for their operations. Moving as much as possible online is their stated goal.
Would it not make more sense for them to improve their IT (no laughing at the back) so that online customers can ring fence seats when going through the booking process?
From reading articles, this seems to be the reason why people call up, because if you try and do it online you might not see seats because call centre agents have blocked them off.
Nearly all other airlines work like this- they create the PNR and then try to take the payment and issue the ticket. If it fails then you either have to call in or wait for the reservation to auto cancel and try again.
BA online I believe does auth-ticket-settlement so if the ticket doesn’t issue the auth just stays pending but the availability is still there. Which is probably better in most scenarios and why they’ve purposefully designed it like that
This week, I attempted to book rewardflights for Jan 2026. Two night running, went through the entire booking process (within 1.5 mins), got the security text from Amex to confirm the transaction – and it failed. (Likely due to call centre grabbing and holding the seats)
I wonder if a deliberate policy which had the effect of disadvantaging some nationalities but not others would square off against UK equality legislation.
I wonder if a deliberate policy which had the effect of disadvantaging some nationalities but not others would square off against UK equality legislation.
Yep, I believe there’s already quite a queue of these cases piling up at the door of the European Court of Human Rights – “but I wasn’t able to book my first class flights because the US agent told me to phone back at 8am…sniff.”
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