-
After forgetting to pay BA holiday final balance (2 days late), have now lost my deposit and had flights cancelled. Will now cost an extra £700 to re book.
Called BA, got zero sympathy!! Disappointed they did not even send a reminder email. The t’s and c’s way we ‘may’ cancel the booking – they did that alright. Needless to say, I’m mightily pi**ed off. Any suggestions welcome for how I might recover the situation? ThanksIf you have status, call again.
‘May’ almost always means ‘will’ in all T&Cs that I know of. The only reason they don’t say ‘will’ is in the chance that there are genuine extenuating circumstances that would make the company more amenable in not following through (or reversing) their action.
Unfortunately in this case, there don’t appear to be any. It’s not like you, for example, attempted to pay on time but BA’s payments systems were down.
Therefore your approach will have to be one of mea culpa. There’s no point expecting sympathy for something that is your own fault (although it would be nice to expect empathy from BA).
My suggestion would be to make a grovelling apology and ask for the deposit to be used in a fresh booking that you’d like to do. I can’t see getting your original booking back to be honest, but you can always ask once the apologies are out of the way. BA Holidays issue their own versions of vouchers, so if you walk away with some of those to the tune of your deposit, I’d say you can call this a win.
Good luck!
I got a text a couple of weeks ago reminding me to pay for a booking in two days time. Didn’t need it as the date was in my diary to pay it anyway.
I did for a previous trip pay a day late (well about 8 hours as I did at at 8am) and that was OK but 2 is likely pushing it for them not to cancel as they have contractual terms with hotels to meet on when BA has to pay them.
As suggested try another call and say if they give you a voucher you’ll rebook using it.
As this is basically your fault credit card chargeback would be unsuccessful as BA holidays would point to your breaching it’s T&Cs.
I’m not sure how you are could have paid by phone when you couldn’t get through to them having tried for a few hours each day over the last few days 😉😎
I’m not sure how you are could have paid by phone when you couldn’t get through to them having tried for a few hours each day over the last few days 😉😎
They have this rather handy tool where you can pay over the internet.
I’ve found the text message they sent me earlier this month. It has a link to pay and clearly states if I didn’t pay on time the booking would be cancelled.
I didn’t use that link but twas easy enough to log into MMB and do the necessary
Well, one of the first rules of good internet security is to never click on any links sent over to you via text message (this is actually true, you shouldn’t do that).
The OP clearly received that message, remembered that golden rule, and tried to telephone BA, but never managed to get through.- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
Well, one of the first rules of good internet security is to never click on any links sent over to you via text message (this is actually true, you shouldn’t do that).
The OP clearly received that message, remembered that golden rule, and tried to telephone BA, but never managed to get through.Er read the post again.
This isn’t a case of calling and not getting through.
Not that you need to call to pay the balance as you can do it via MMB.
They forgot completely to do anything about paying,
I guess I should have added a winking smiley like Cranzie did…
Update – BA have agreed to refund the deposit (thanks for the suggestions above to ask for this), but wont budge on the £655 increase in flight costs. Tried the ‘I could not get through on the phones – fell on deaf ears!!
Moral of the story – be more organised!! Still don’t get why BA don’t email a reminder out to tell you to pay the balance!Glad you’ve at least got your deposit back, @duncan-c, but I’ve had numerous BA holidays in the past and always got email reminders well in advance of the balance payment being required. Have you checked that the email on your BAEC is the one you have been checking? That said, I will make a note about my next payment date in case they have sneakily stopped sending these out!
NorthernLass, I got an email reminder today to pay mine, 30 days before flying out.
Interestingly, the payment due date in MMB was yesterday (paid!), but this was from the original flights which were cancelled and rescheduled. I assume the reminder was a 7/8 day reminder for what should be the three week pre-departure payment date.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
