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Anyone got a contact email mail for me to try and recover avios following in from a downgrade back in April. I had treated myself and my wife to business class using avios from Aberdeen to Athens however BA cancelled our Heathrow to Athens flight and we were rebooked on a later flight in economy. I have e mailed the executive club many times and tried phoning without finding the right contact. I just want the difference that I paid in avios refunded. You would think it would be quite simple!!
That’s not what you are due. You are due 75% of the cost of the Business Class flight.
This is EC261 compensation so you need to fill in the EC261 form on ba.com.
They are slow – 3-4 months – but you’ll get what you are legally due with no bother.
(If your new flight was more than 3 hours after the first you are also due a fat chunk of EC261 cash compensation too for the delay.)
It is simple but as @Rob says you need to request the reimbursement in the right way and not just phone up or send random emails.
Based on the distance the reimbursement would be 50% of the cost of the LHR-ATH (plus possible a fee quid for any BA surcharges) flight based on the distance of the downgraded sector.
Complete the form on the BA website. But for heavens sake keep any comments to the minimum. The person dealing with the claim doesn’t care that you wanted to treat yourselves they just want the facts.
The form you need can be found on this page
https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/delayed-or-cancelled-flights/compensation
Why shouldn’t the OP put that they wanted to treat themselves? The CS might not care but BA should know the impact their decisions have on their customer and the reputational damage of the way they have treated OP since.
@TGLoyalty – three reasons – a) it’s likely to delay consideration and payment of your claim, possibly by an extended period, b) it will be totally ignored and c) it won’t get you any extra compensation. For all relevant purposes, this is a business transaction and should be treated as such. You can get paid in days if you don’t elaborate.
If you wish to make a complaint over and above a compensation claim, it should be made entirely separately. You may still be banging your head against a brick wall but if it has a therapeutic effect for someone, fine.
Because it’s irrelevant to the claim and the person dealing with the claim isn’t going to start sending emails to colleagues in other departments about it – their job is processing claims and that’s it.
Besides BA already knows that when someone is downgraded they are going to be disappointed.
If you want a claim dealt with quickly – whether it’s for compensation, reimbursement, insurance etc then always keep it simple.
Best piece of advice i can give is to go onto the BA section of flyertalk – a very comprehensive sticky with what to do to claim compensation, including for downgrades.
What I find annoying is why no one at BAEC replied to one of the emails @Leddachjack sent explaining what they need to do.
And why should we even have to chase BA?
It also seems unreasonable that BA leaves you to your own devices to work out how to claim what you’re due. I thought BA had a duty per Article 10 of EC261/2004 as transposed into UK law to institute a downgrade reimbursement within 7 days of the event.
“ isn’t going to start sending emails to colleagues in other departments about it” obviously not but any good CRM system should be backed up with decent reporting that can pull out the verbatims or the handler can add a quick now that can be picked out but it is BA so god knows what they’re doing and how bad their systems might be.
But adding a paragraph at the end of your claim saying how you were affected should have 0 baring on how quickly it’s dealt with or paid out. That’s complete nonsense to suggest it’s even the case.
Being concise about your exact claim is good advice saying you can’t add anything about your thoughts and feelings is terrible advice.
Also completely agree with AJA. I actually really hate the anti consumer tone of some of the advice handed out in some of these posts. JDB and BA flyer are both knowledge posters but remember you’re dealing with people here not robots.
TG I’m grateful BAFIS and JDB are so factual when they advise. And they provide details which are not posted by many advisers and commenters.
Some newer people do need a strong steer and the key facts, for many this is easier for them to take in.
I also like the punchiness of some of the other posters as in “,Why worry about that? Just do this” (such as yourself) which is what some posters really need. We’re all different.
@LL 100% their knowledge is amazing and they spend a lot of time helping people either get a good outcome or just not waste their time.
I just completely disagree that adding the impact of the delay/downgrade etc is superfluous information. It is critical information for any good customer relations management to understand the real impact of on their customers.
I know the impact verbatims can have in getting things changed especially in large organisations with multiple levels of management. It helps to get issues further up the list of things to be dealt with when the financial impact is similar “high hurts” rather than just “high cost to us” I don’t think it’s outside the realms of possibility that lots of claims coming in with nothing but cold hard facts of I require compo is seen as “well the customer was compensated and they didn’t complain they must be happy with the resolution” so then the only consideration starts to be costs not impact.
Believe me there’s situations where getting 250/400/600e compensation or 50/75% rebate is more than enough to make up for my loss (none) so I make a real factual claim and add nothing because I’m more than happy with the money for what was no real impact to my life. But when it’s had an impact I’m sure as hell adding that so it’s very clearly logged on their system I was inconvenienced far more than their compo is worth.
If you have a personal relationship with a company, then of course tell them. But BA don’t know me (or 99.99999%) of their customers from Adam, and don’t give a flying fox if you “never travel with them again” (even though you will, because you did before as it was cheapest/most convenient).
In any contract/legal dispute, KISS.
@Ihar personal experience of a well run large corporation or your personal opinion?
Because I assure you while I don’t think we have anywhere near the best CRM systems where I work even we manage to aggregate the types of comments and take notice and take actions on them. It’s no different to the comments made in surveys sent to 1000’s of people after each interaction the key themes and the extremes can and are picked out and used to make changes / improvements.
OP has also had a genuine issue with lack of contact or inability for the CS to send them to the right place to claim and that should be seen as a problem by the BA CS management, if it’s a consistent theme.
@Ihar personal experience of a well run large corporation or your personal opinion?
Oh absolutely managing a business and large scale marketing team (a few Bn) . BA definitely know your value, not just your previous trips but your earnings/wealth, future plans, etc. They treat you accordingly.
BA knows who’s paid your ticket, how much they spend each year, and probably the travel managers’ kids name and birthdays. If needed they’ll bump you you off at the drop of a hat. That’s what the Gold card says (even before you take other things into account)
So you know all/most that is available to BA but still claimed the organisation cares diddly squat about all but the top 0.00001% (I don’t believe that at all unless they’re run by the Tory party leadership) … the system goes as far as giving each customer a personalised score of their importance to BA, no idea if all CS can see it but gate and check in staff can do you would think so.
But in any case I wasn’t talking about the use of the comments or observations just in instances of personal issue escalation but for service improvement and things gone right/wrong assessments on a more holistic level.
Whatever the wrong or right of it, and however much you would like a massive company to care about you, in practical terms if you keep a claim concise, without any extraneous complaints and unnecessary detail, then you will get paid sooner. The people dealing with it are less likely to put it in the difficult pile if it’s only 2 lines. If you’ve written an essay on how BA ruined your honeymoon/life/holiday etc then it will take time to read and find the relevant parts, and so it will go to the difficult queue. They don’t have much time to deal with each case, and they really don’t care.
You can both keep your claim details concise and factual and complain that it ruined your flight/holiday/experiance they aren’t mutually conclusive events.
Considering claims are done via a special form which list out all the relevant details for them it’s not “hard” at all for them. Now if it then goes beyond the capability of their AI/Robot processing so takes slightly longer is a completely different thing. But there’s no way they should be skipping a claim that’s next in the pile because it’s harder. That’s just poor CS and I’m sure BA isn’t employing people and training them that that’s okay.
*mutually exclusive obviously
You can both keep your claim details concise and factual and complain that it ruined your flight/holiday/experiance they aren’t mutually conclusive events.
Considering claims are done via a special form which list out all the relevant details for them it’s not “hard” at all for them. Now if it then goes beyond the capability of their AI/Robot processing so takes slightly longer is a completely different thing. But there’s no way they should be skipping a claim that’s next in the pile because it’s harder. That’s just poor
CS and I’m sure BA isn’t employing people and training them that that’s okay.As previously advised, if someone particularly wishes to make a complaint in addition to a compensation claim, they should do that entirely separately at a different time if they wish is to be considered seriously. If you roll up complaints, compensation and anything else the complaint will be lost.
I think you have a rather rose tinted view of airline complaints handling in the modern era. BA has taken the route like our banks have of bunging £25/2500 Avios to £100/10,000 Avios even to rubbish complaints and that’s accompanied by a boilerplate response. No follow up or feedback. That’s extraordinarily and frankly unnecessarily generous. Try complaining to AF, LH, SK, QR, EK, SQ or AA and see what you get. The world has changed, notably for European legacy carriers but they just aren’t interested and in the UK consumerism has gone rogue with never ending meritless complaints vs the German smart complaints. Swissair used to be a world leading airline up there with Singapore and if you made a complaint, you would get a personal response from someone senior and you were a member of the SR Travel Club, from a member of the board. Try complaining or seeking compensation from the reborn Swiss today.
It’s so easy to slag off BA (and slagging off the flag carrier is a national pastime in many countries) but it really ought to be placed in context.
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