First booking with Companion Voucher

[faulty85]

Hello,

I just wanted to seek some guidance here to see if what BA have told me is correct. I was trying to book an outbound from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur and return Singapore to London Heathrow.

When I priced this up using my voucher as two single journeys online the taxes were coming out lower than when the BA agent booked this as a return. I assume this is because the taxes out of Singapore are cheaper.

Anyway the agent said nothing they could do so I left it and booked two single journeys, outbound using my 241 voucher and then inbound with full avios. I then rang BA to get them combined and they said this was only possible if the inbound was not available so they could not do it. In the end I had to cancel my booking and call back and let the agent do it as a one way and pay the extra tax. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

[faulty85]

Sorry I meant I had to let the agent book it as a single booking not a one way!

[AJA]

I’m not sure that you were told the correct thing by the BA agent. It is true that your method of booking the inbound separately online and then calling to get half the Avios returned is really supposed to be used when booking 355 days out where the return flights have not yet been published and technically you cannot apply a voucher to an existing award booking but it should be possible to do this even when booking closer – you should not be charged a fee in the first scenario (booking 355 days out) but should pay a change fee if not. Sounds like you spoke to two agents – did you try HUACA?. I think in reality it is better to pay more and have the flights all in one booking – the main thing is you were able to book the flights.

[NorthernLass]

Separate bookings wouldn’t be combined in any event, you’d still have been left with 2 PNRs. Requesting the 50% avios back is a different issue and yes, official BA policy is to only do this if your inbound leg hadn’t been released when you booked the outbound. There’s lots of references to and discussion around such bookings on this site.

As always, you might get a BA agent who either doesn’t know the rules, or is uncommonly helpful, but you can’t rely on it!

What did the agent actually do here, add the inbound leg to your outbound booking? If so, you should have the whole journey on one PNR, but as you say, you’d have to pay BA’s full surcharges.

[faulty85]

Thanks for your help. I did HUACA and got the same thing. In the end I had to cancel my outbound booked with companion voucher and cancel my inbound booked with avios and get the agent to create a whole new single booking London to KL and Singapore to London and pay the higher tax rates. Luckily there were still flights.

Thanks again!