Flight booked BY Avios which I cannot cancel

[loonie]

BA executive club refunded Avios for a downgraded trip . Then took 101,000 miles for a BA business trip to JFK in January 2025.
No one in the household booked this, we do not want it but BA refuse to cancel it as they state it does not exist!
Emails back and forth but no success. Phone call – no success. Recorded delivery letters but no success. I want the avios back pLUS the various “adjustments” in AVIOS favour. I now have less avios than before the refund. HELP!

[executiveclubber]

Though it may at first look confusing, it’s likely they will have refunded you the partial amount by manually adding a fake flight; they do this often. If the calculation is wrong you should know by how much – the calculation for your refund is typically 75% of the Avios you paid plus 75% of the cash fare you paid, so they should have taken 25% of the cost of the flight.

[NorthernLass]

It can be hard to make sense of transactions in a BAEC account, but as above, you should be able to work out if you have the right number of avios in your balance. Have you tried “cancelling” the phantom flight yourself in MMB? If not, see what happens and what message you get.

101k miles doesn’t sound like BA pricing so I doubt this is a real booking, and presumably you have no record of being charged any cash for this?

[loonie]

No the refund was 137,000 then adjustments taken of 76.000, and 3,160 – returned 45,488 then flight of 101,875, Consequently I now appear to have less avios than before the refund! Is there anywhere I can appeal – BA seat refund say they refunded so not them, BA executive club say they cannot help and cannot cancel the flight and i have no booking reference either so who can help me?

[Sean Mc]

Are you in a household account?

[NorthernLass]

I assumed that the mention of household in the OP referred to a HHA.

@loonie – what is your total HHA avios balance, and what do you think it should be? What adjustments are showing on the other members’ accounts?

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

What is the routing of this mystery flight?

My betting that along with there not being a booking reference that it’s between two airports BA don’t fly to and is there as a placer to allow another booking to be refunded.

Also if you’re in a HHA then any refund is distributed back to the members of the account who paid for the flight in the first place – even if you’re the one that’s been downgraded.

[NorthernLass]

Would that not be all the members though as avios are taken pro-rata on any booking? Hence I asked what the total HHA balance is.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

@Northern Lass yes that’s correct but I was also trying to reflect the situation if there has been a change in the HHA since the original booking

[JDB]

@loonie – in order to get this resolved, you need to go back to the beginning. I’m afraid that your posts are very muddled, and BA thrives on muddle to the detriment of the passenger. Various helpful posters are essentially unable to help because you haven’t set out the facts in any intelligible form, so everyone is guessing.

You need to show the information in a form easily digestible to someone entirely unfamiliar with your case:-

A) The total Avios, cash and any voucher used for the downgraded leg only
B) A deduction for actual cash disbursements
C) Show 75% (per Article 10.2(c) of the Avios and resulting cash per person and total
D) Show what BA has/hasn’t refunded and what they now owe you in Avios & cash [they may have simply given you the difference between classes, but you should be able to work out if that’s what they have done].

Keep it simple but crystal clear.

[loonie]

Thank you for your advice. I will try to set it out as suggested but with so many random deductions, it is a headache – it is a household account but no relevant avios has been refunded to any other member.

Total Avios, cash and voucher paid – AVIOS 137,500 + companion voucher plus £780
REFUND processed for amount of GBP 208.00 to AX card ending in 1000 on 15 Mar 24.
The refund was processed for downgrade avios 137500 to avios account on 15 Mar 24.
then after various deductions and refunds
dummy flight CLUB EUROPE to JFK 12/01/25 BA0117 at a cost of 101,875 avios

Who can we appeal to in order to get this sorted? I presume BA executive club as seat refund state that they did make the refund?
Interestingly avios do move randomly from one account to another – is that usual?

[NorthernLass]

So is the £280 a refund for seat selection? In which case you’ve had no cash downgrade reimbursement? What exactly did you claim?

I’m assuming you were downgraded from CW to PE, but it might be helpful to tell us the route and when this happened. Did you submit a claim for 75% of the avios and cash paid? This is known as downgrade reimbursement.

What you’ve posted above doesn’t include the other “adjustments” you mentioned previously, so it’s not showing that you have fewer avios than when you booked the flight, which you included in your earlier post.

[loonie]

I thought that the refund was for the downgraded aspect of my journey – I did not enquire!
The route was LHR to Grand caymen – I did make the claim for 75% of the avios and cash paid. I presumed that the avios refund 137,500 (for the whole amount) allowed for the companion card as well. Downgrade was from PE to economy.
On the same day as the refund, 76,000 was transferred to my wife’s account , 45,000 was also transferred to her account then deducted from there plus an additional 3,800 was removed. On the same day the dummy flight to NY was taken 101,875.
Total awarded 137,000 refunded
Total removed 45,000 + 3,800 + 101,875 Thus 150,675 was removed
I am now “avios poorer” by 13,675
Avios keep ignoring emails and phone calls and I cannot cancel dummy flight!
Anyone know where I can try next?

[marks7389]

There’s still some missing information here:

Were you downgraded in one direction only, and if so which direction (to or from the UK)?
Was the 137,500 Avios + £780 + voucher for a return trip for 2 people? The amounts sound like it should be but just so we’re not making assumptions…
What was deducted/credited to each member of the household account at the time of the booking? That will allow us to see which transactions are reversals of those made at the time of the booking and what adjustments have been made in addition.
Is there any description against each of the account transactions. If so, what does it say?
It might be helpful if you listed each transaction that could possibly be relevant to this on each member account so we can help you unpick it.

@JDB is right. We can help you piece the information together and work out what you should be claiming, but only with all the information. You’ll then need to clearly present that through the BA complaints process in the first instance.

[loonie]

Flight was booked in name D J HASLAM 137,500 plus £750 plus companion voucher – return trip to Grand Caymen – whole amount deducted from that BAEA account on 7th FEB 2023 taken 13 Jan 2024 08:50 Heathrow (London) Terminal 3 13 Jan 2024 16:55 Grand Cayman
outgoing flight for both passengers was downgraded from WTP to WT
Return flight was CLUB as booked.
CONTACTED SEAT REFUND DEPT and get an email stating that 137,500 would be returned with £280 – money was received.

On 15th March
Refund of 137,00 miles plus £280 so went to book another flight.
BUT then it gets very messy! All “household redemption contributions”.
Same day (15th March)
-/+ 76,127 (redeposit contribution received) moved to my wife’s account (redemption contribution sent )
+ 1,378 deposited (redeposit contribution received)
– 3,180 removed from my account (redeposit contribution received)
-/+45,000 deposited in mine household redemption received but removed from my wife’s account (household redemption contribution sent)
then Reward flight Heathrow to NY Club Europe 12th Jan 2025BA0117 TAKEN 101,875 taken – not booked and BAEC member DANESH said it could not be removed but could not explain why. No booking reference received.
An additional movement Of 28,688 and 9,095 appears to have deposited and removed at various intervals with contributions and removals into my own AND my wife’s accountas household account but I believe these all even up!
I would be happy to receive the refund or EVEN the flight to New York. I cannot follow all the contributions which come and go, sometimes with 4 months between them. I have emailed, sent recorded letters etc with all the receipts and emails but to no avail. Even to have you READ my problem encourages me! It makes me despair of having collected AVIOS with a paid credit card.

[NorthernLass]

I’m still not clear about what BA has done here, but if you were downgraded from WTP, I think you were owed 35,625 avios x 2 plus the same proportion of the cash element (75%).

You still haven’t said what you claimed though.

[JDB]

@loonie – I would genuinely like to help. I enjoy addressing the thorniest aviation cases, but I can’t make head or tail of the information you have provided and I’m reasonably experienced at bringing some order to confused cases. If I, and other posters, can’t understand the issue you have no prospect of getting the issue resolved with BA, CEDR or MCOL. You present the information in a fairly random format when it needs to be crystal clear to a third party with know no prior knowledge of the case. It doesn’t really matter what was credited/debited from each member of the household account. It’s the totals that matter and it would be better to put this in a simple table that would make matters clearer. With the information provided, I’m not sure if you know youself what has happened.

[marks7389]

NorthernLass wrote:

I’m still not clear about what BA has done here, but if you were downgraded from WTP, I think you were owed 35,625 avios x 2 plus the same proportion of the cash element (75%).

I concur on the Avios. For the purposes of compensation, including the use of the voucher in lieu of Avios for the second person, the outbound flights in PE were 47,500 Avios each (the other 90,000 is the CW inbound).

The compensation due is 75% x 47,500 = 35,625 each or 71,250 Avios in total for both people.

Given that the full Avios amount paid was refunded, I would expect 137,500-71,250=66,250 Avios to have been taken back by BA.

What’s actually happened is that they’ve only given you back the Avios for one person, taking their usual line of assigning no value to the voucher. As a result they’ve taken back 137,500-35,625=101,875 Avios, i.e. the deduction for the dummy New York flight.

So that’s the first point to challenge. In line with CEDR adjudications in similar cases they’ve taken back 35,625 Avios too much.

As for the rest of the Avios adjustments, I can’t make any sense of them though it is likely that they were attempting to split the Avios refund and dummy flight deductions across the household account. But, that being the case, they should net off across the household account members so I would ask BA to explain what they’ve done and highlight the ones that do not net off across household account members.

From a cash perspective you would have been due back the difference between the standard and reduced rate of APD. For the date in question, that’s £191-£87=£104 each, £208 for the two of you. I don’t think there is likely to be anything due beyond that as the cash paid for that leg is likely to be less than the £191 standard rate APD plus the airport fees. So a bit confused as to why you got £280. Did you pay any seat selection fees?

[marks7389]

The complaint form is here:

https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/help-and-contacts/complaints-and-claims

If you have already raised a complaint you can add information to it, otherwise raise a new one.

Focus on the two points I made above regarding the fact that they taken back 35,625 Avios too much on the dummy flight charge, and querying the other adjustments.

You’ll need to wait for a response, after which you can take it to CEDR – which you will probably have to to get the 35,625 Avios compensation for both seats irrespective of the voucher use. If you do that it is, again, very important that you clearly set out the basis for the dispute and what you are claiming.

[marks7389]

Do you have a third member of the household account with a low Avios balance that you haven’t mentioned by any chance?

[NorthernLass]

OP has mentioned seat selection a couple of times, this seems to be the only thing they have proactively contacted BA about according to the posts!

[marks7389]

NorthernLass wrote:

OP has mentioned seat selection a couple of times, this seems to be the only thing they have proactively contacted BA about according to the posts!

I see further up @loonie says the refund was £208 which would be right for the partial APD refund. I’d expect seat selection fees for WT+ to be lower, but they should absolutely be claimed back (and pursued if necessary) as well if paid.

[loonie]

Thank you all so much. Back to the drawing board for me – I shall take on all your amazing comments (no idea how you worked the figures but greatly appreciated) and rephrase my claim. Do ijust refer to household totals and ignore to whom they are attributed?
Is there any simple way of cancelling the dummy flight or is it only by arguing that the dummy flight avios is greater than they should have taken? Generally the account merely states AVIOS taken or AVIOS received from household account. I have never seen the dummy flight before.

[marks7389]

You can’t cancel the dummy flight. That is purely a means of recovering from your account the amount of Avios that they have calculated that you owe for your booking (having refunded the original amount in full), taking into account the compensation for the downgraded sector.

The issue is that they’ve calculated that compensation on the basis that you paid no Avios for the companion seat. As a result they’ve taken 35,625 Avios too much and you are asking for that back. I would present it as follows, borrowing some wording that @JDB has provided in another thread this morning:

“I note that BA has refunded the 137,500 Avios taken for this trip and replaced it with a deduction of 101,875 Avios against a dummy booking. However I do not accept that your calculation for the 101,875 Avios calculation is correct.

The cost of the trip was 137,500 Avios plus a companion voucher equivalent to a further 137,500 Avios and a cash payment of £750. Your records will show that we were booked in World Traveller Plus on the outbound sector and were involuntarily downgraded to World Traveller. In line with the decision in CJEU case C-255/15 Steef Mennens v Emirates Direktion für Deutschland, I have calculated that the following should be deducted from the original Avios amount:

Avios cost per seat for the outbound sector only (Premium Economy): 47,500 per person.
Reimbursement due: 47,500 x 75% = 35,625 per person = 71,250 Avios in total.

Correct Avios charge for the booking, taking into account the involuntary downgrade = 137,500 – 71,250 = 66,250 Avios plus the companion voucher.

In line with BA and Amex’s marketing, the companion seat was not free and the voucher valuable consideration for the purchase of the tickets, in this case equivalent to 137,500 Avios. Consequently, the downgrade reimbursement should be applied to both seats as per CEDR adjudications in similar circumstances.

Please therefore ensure that 35,625 Avios (101,875-66,250) are credited to my BAEC account within 14 days, no later than 16.00 on Friday 6 December.”

That obviously doesn’t cover whatever they’ve done with the household account adjustments that don’t net off. If you still think those are wrong I’d separately ask them to explain what they’ve done. Are there any other members in the household account?

[loonie]

Thank you so much – you have all been great . No idea how you do it but greatly appreciated.