Cancellation runaround

[UKFlyer]

Hello – new person here so I’m hoping I’m not being a noob.

I have a flight booked from LHR to NYC, outbound in First and back in Business on AA.

The flight cost just over £3800 and the cancellation options on MMB say

If the booking is cancelled before the first flight, a cancellation fee of £150 per direction applies. At any other time there are no refunds except for any government & airport taxes.

However, when trying to cancel online I’m just offered £2016. I called and was told the same and YouFirst were very rude I’m sorry to say and I was told only the flight in First could be cancelled. The cancellation options give during the booking process were identical to what I’ve written above.

I am really at a loss – the flights are in about a fortnight and I don’t really want to lose £1500 or so because BA are refusing to stick to their own booking conditions. But I worry that if I don’t cancel and end up having to go to CEDR or Small Claims (I’ve done my homework) that I risk losing everything. If I was to cancel could I still go down CEDR or Small Claims ?

Does anyone have any insights about this because I really feel very caught in a difficult situation.

Thanks for any help !

[Ihar]

IANAL but yes you can cancel (under duress) and claim the remainder via MCOL (not sure if CEDR would handle this). If you have the cancellation text then it’s a slam dunk. It won’t go to court as BA will just pay you – in any case you can do it all online.

I would first go back to BA with a completed (but not filed) MCOL submission – should focus the minds.

[JDB]

@UKFlyer – do you have a copy of the cancellation terms for your two flights? If you don’t, you need to get hold of these ASAP. As above, I’m not sure this type of dispute comes within the scope of the CEDR rules but in any event you can’t open a case there until you have reached deadlock and it doesn’t sound as though you have yet got far along any process. Once you have the terms and if those terms confirm your case, it should be extremely easy to address getting the right refund promptly without recourse to CEDR or MCOL.

[UKFlyer]

Hello both and thanks for responding.

The cancellation terms in MMB are exactly as I typed above and are identical to those displayed during the booking process. I did a dummy booking with identical tickets/airports and saw the same terms.

In MMB, under cancellation, what I see is:
—
If the booking is cancelled before the first flight, a cancellation fee of £150 per direction applies. At any other time there are no refunds except for any government & airport taxes.
—
IANAL but I can’t see how this can be viewed any other way.

I would be inclined to just cancel then and go through MCOL because it’s hard to see how BA can claim that only 1 leg is refundable, which is one story I’ve been told and given 1 figure (£2166), or that if I cancel online / via the Exec Club line I’m entitled to £2106 as a refund. I am not sure CEDR would be able to look at this and I would need some sort of deadlock later or to wait 8 (?) weeks anyway.

[JDB]

@UKFlyer – you really need to get the original terms otherwise you risk going to MCOL and being blown out of the water with costs if BA can produce the relevant evidence. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to have different terms on different legs if you were in the same class (but different fare buckets) on the same airline but here you have two different classes and you imply the outbound in F may be on BA while the return is on AA. They may be in a JV on this route but they do still have their own terms and conditions. The sentences you have quoted look unusually short for them to be the full terms.

[UKFlyer]

Where else can I get these ? I’ve looked at my eTicket receipt and there is literally nothing there about cancellation. I’ve looked really carefully.

When I try to ask for an eTicket receipt in MMB it generates an error saying it cannot display it because of the payment method (I used AMEX) so I can’t get another one to try and compare.

Under MMB, under cancellation, the lines I’ve typed is all that is displayed when I click on “Cancelling your booking”.

The outbound (LHR to JFK) is on BA in F, yes, and the return is on AA in Business.

I honestly don’t know what else to do. How on earth is someone supposed to know that the cancellation terms are not actually what is displayed ? That seems really disingenuous to me.

(Not having a go at you, but it’s very frustrating that a simple sentence in plain English seems to not actually be what is meant by BA at all)

[JDB]

@UKFlyer without seeing the fare conditions that applied to your specific booking at the time you made it, one can’t be sure. BA shows this after you have selected the flights. I have tried to recreate about the same fare BA F / AA J and found the conditions:-

“Refunds
Heathrow to John F Kennedy
If the booking is cancelled before the first flight, a cancellation fee of £150.00 per direction applies. At any other time there are no refunds except for any government & airport taxes..

John F Kennedy to Heathrow
There are no refunds except for any government & airport taxes”

I’m not saying that’s what applied to your booking, but it’s not impossible. If you have the booking classes, you may be able to look up the conditions on ExpertFlyer. They ought really to be on your emailed e-ticket receipt and it may help to get a copy of your actual e-ticket on another OW airline site if BA won’t display it. Ultimately, if your booking confirmation/receipt doesn’t show these terms, BA will find it quite difficult to enforce them. The agent you have spoken to is presumably just reeling off what the system says when they try to cancel for a refund.

[UKFlyer]

Hello again.

That’s interesting because I did a ‘dummy booking’ like you and I saw the same conditions as I’m seeing on MMB. It’s really weird.

I had a look on the FinnAir website and it was not able to display the eTicket for me – I tried with the eTicket number and the 6 character code and neither one of them worked. I wonder if it’s the same reason I can’t see the eTicket on the BA website.

Another strange thing I’ve noticed on my eTicket receipt is that in the payment information section it shows the taxes/fees and so on as “£2616 + £1200 as Tax/Fee/Charge” but further down it displays GBP0.00 under taxes fees and surcharges. So I wonder what is correct as it’s contradictory.

I am so confused now – I can’t believe how difficult and byzantine this all is. I wish I’d never started !

EDIT to add: the return leg is on AA but with a BA codeshare if that makes any difference.

[nectar collector]

Re the fare rules – try accessing your booking via the Royal Air Maroc site…..at the top of the Manage Booking screen for your flights it should say something like ‘you can review the purchase conditions’ and when you click that it shows you the detailed fare rules

[UKFlyer]

Thank you for that suggestion – I have had a look on Royal Air Maroc (didn’t know you could look here) and I was able to see the detailed fare rules through that link.

It’s a bit ‘wall of text’ but it does look as though the outbound flight can be cancelled but the inbound flight cannot.

I imagine this is what the BA staff can see that I cannot, although I’m still really confused – how hard could it be for MMB to indicate this and save all this running around and having to look in the most convoluted ways to see things.

Thanks to all for your help – sounds like I’m on a hiding to nothing here.

[AJA]

@UKFlyer
It sounds like the return portion of the ticket in Business is an inflexible ticket

Instead of giving up perhaps ask if you can move the entire booking to a future date? There may be a restriction on that too and it might require paying any fare difference but it may be worth it rather than losing £2,106.

[Lady London]

If all of the rules applying to the ticket were not very clearly provided to you and if it’s significant stuff like conditions of cancellation that were not provided to you in full then they can’t enforce anything that was not made clear..

Normally providers cover themaelves by either providing all the details onscreen in the buying process, or a link or links to the rules, and importantly they ask you to tick a box in the buying proceas to say you’ve understood amd accept them.

They do get another chance to provide full terms promptly after tbe sale, commonly by an email confirmation. This should always be checked and an immediate rejection made to the seller if something, especially something very important, appears in the confirmation etc., that you hadn’t been informed of and wouldn’t have accepted if it had been drawn clearly to your attention when buying.

I’d take a look at the email confirmations to see if the differing conditions for the different legs are clearly pointed out. I can believe it’s possible it wasn’t made clear.

For a similar example, I get fed up with how hard it is even to be sure you are aware of the fact that if there’s a codeshare flight in your booking then it could be with an airline with different luggage allowances – which you may or may not (depending on alliance and ticketing rules) be subject to. Lots is often not clear when it should be made clear, and in the UK that’s a legal requirement, but it’ll be effort a lot of people wouldn’t make to persist in a challenge and get my money back.

[Ihar]

If the booking is cancelled before the first flight, a cancellation fee of £150 per direction applies. At any other time there are no refunds except for any government & airport taxes.

Slam-dunk. You can’t hide further conditions in the blurb. If you’ve got that in email / MMB then you’re good. BA should just pay up

[UKFlyer]

In actual fact I have changed the ticket now – it suited me better to switch it for next April and to fly to DFW instead. Very helpful person at YouFirst sorted it all out for me and the actual change fee wasn’t that bad considering it’s a much longer sector.

I know it’s annoying when people – especially newbies – don’t update with the end result so here it is.

Once again, many thanks to everyone for their help.