Booking QR redemption – large difference in taxes

[Isherwood]

Hi all,

Found some interesting QR avios award flight redemption issues / wrinkles in the new partnership whilst looking for our big honeymoon redemption

Itinerary is fully QR metal, LHR to AKL via Doha
No award availability on BA.com
Award availability on Qatar privilege club

Call up BA and they can see the award availability and are not sure why it is not loaded on BA.com

As per your recent article – Qatar online quote to book is 180,000 avios pp + about £600 in taxes (a steal!)

However to book the itinerary via BA phone lines they wanted 180,000 avios pp + £1,697.34 in taxes

I know that the new alignment of avios scheme is not perfect…. but that’s an extra £2000 in taxes for 2 of us if we book with BA! CRAZY! For exactly the same flight, same itinerary etc

Is this correct? Are BA really charging unsuspecting people an extra £1000 on their flights per person for some itineraries?

The issue I have is I need to pool our household avios as I am about 23k short from being able to book both of us via my account (already done the max 27k gifting for £15) -> transfer all to Qatar -> book with them …. annoying! Think I will need to just buy the extra 23k avios

[AJA]

I’d just buy the Avios you need. That’s going to be far cheaper than buying via BA

[OldFashioned]

I have had these issues before with Qatar flights via BA, I ask them to send the fare to the back office to be checked and it always comes back cheaper! Best way is look at the cost if you were to book the sectors separately on ba.com and if its a lot cheaper than what you are being quoted usually means the system has it wrong! I got £1750 reduced to £600 a couple of weeks ago.

[Isherwood]

Thanks OldFasioned – I just rang them up again to check the taxes quoted, and I asked them to verify it but they said “it’s system calculated taxes” so there is not anyone to check it with –

I think I will just buy the avios needed as AJA said!

[kaconym]

Qatar have a family programme, that allows the main account holder the “option of pooling Avios earned by nominated family members into their account”.

Presumably this includes avios you transfer from BAEC, however having never done this I’m not 100% sure. To try each member of the family would need their own Qatar account added to the family programme under a ‘main account’ holder, transfer their avios into their account and then the main member can try and ‘spend’ them together.

More info here:
https://www.qatarairways.com/en/Privilege-Club/family-programme.html

[Matt]

I had similar recently for Iberia flights (EZE-MAD-LHR) I was booking with BA. On the Iberia site it showed £311 of taxes and charges for the 2 of us. The BA agent first said it was about £1000. I queried it and he looked again and came back with the same answer. I told him what IB showed and he went away to speak to someone. After a few minutes on hold he said it was £326, but no explanation of the differences.