Payment for changing 2-4-1 booking on cancelled Amex

[ns]

I used a BA Black Amex card to pay the taxes and fees on redeeming a companion voucher booking in PE many months ago. The card has since been cancelled because we won’t be spending much over the next year to justify the £250 cost. I do have other Amex cards though.

I have since seen J availability on our booking become available and so called up BA to upgrade. They took the additional avios from my account immediately and said the £35 change fee would be applied within the next 7 days (there will actually be a partial refund of the taxes given the recent RFS changes). I gave them my new Amex card number and they said no problem. But they have since tried to take payment for the £35 fee on the now cancelled BA Black card. That has obviously been declined and they have not been able to issue the ticket. I called up again to (again) give them my new card details; once again they’ve said no problem but I’ve just had a notification from Amex implying that they’ve once again tried to take payment from the cancelled card!

Has anyone else has this happen to them? Any advice would be appreciated.

[Scott]

Do you know that it’s a term of the 241 that the fees must be paid with the BAPP on which the voucher was earned?

In practice this isn’t enforced when the booking is made however there was a reported case of someone in a similar situation to yours who paid a change fee using a non-Amex and then effectively had the voucher invalidated so was hit for the additional Avios that were saved on the original voucher booking.

Not saying this will happen here, as at least you’re still trying to pay with an Amex, but I’d be wary of drawing attention to myself in a situation like this.

[NorthernLass]

As per @Scott, BA’s poor IT makes it technically possible to pay the fees on a 241 booking with any Amex, but some CSA’s are well aware of the Ts and Cs and are likely to call you out if they spot any breaches.

In terms of change fees though (as opposed to paying an additional amount of actual surcharges), I’m not sure why they didn’t just charge the card provided as I would have said this is a separate type of transaction? Your original card could have quite legitimately expired since you made the original booking and the replacement would have a different number.

[ns]

Thanks both – I get that taxes and fees are supposed to be paid with the original card (and mine have been). I was thinking my situation was similar to that mentioned by NorthernLass – the card was cancelled long after the ticket was booked and paid for. So where you need to make a change after you no longer have the specific card (such as where a card naturally expires) I would have thought there must have been a way to pay the change fee with a new card.

[Froggee]

Mrs Froggee had exactly that (during Covid when it was a nightmare to get through). She had cancelled her BAPP so was using her supplemental card on my BAPP to pay. Twice she had the same problem as you. The third time she explained in detail that both previous attempts it had defaulted to her old BAPP card but it was no longer valid. “Please, please could you use this BAPP as I’m worried that I’ll lose the seats if they aren’t ticketed”.

Whatever the third agent did worked.

For @JDB’s benefit, at no time did Mrs Froggeee lie to BA and her card was cancelled as we couldn’t see us needing many more 241s any time soon. BA cancelled the flights that were booked using the 241 she was rebooking so terms and conditions, schmerms and renditions say I. She ended up losing that 241 anyway when she decided we weren’t gonna go to Singapore after all.

[ns]

Thanks Froggee that’s helpful.

[ed_fly]

I’d suggest you try the old HUACA approach and hope you get through to someone who will put the payment through. Your situation is slightly different to froggee whose flight plans were impacted by covid.

It’s a good reminder to anyone who cancels their BAPP to not touch their flights, as a condition of the voucher is that you’re a BA cardmember at time of travel.

If you’re not getting any luck in getting the change fee paid, depending on the expiry date of your voucher, you could cancel the flights, swallow the cancellation fee and the voucher should return to your account. And then you could use any Amex to rebook another set of redemption flights.

[ns]

Thanks ed_fly – certainly something to consider if it comes to it.

[Froggee]

It really isn’t that different to what happened to Mrs Froggee. A booming has a credit card associated with it which the system seems to default to when there is a change. It clearly needs some sort of manual override to avoid the original card being charged when additional payment is requested.

The key point is do not say to a BA agent that you have cancelled your BA Amex as that has never gone down well. Obviously don’t lie as that would make you a bad person but emphasise that your Amex card number has changed and therefore this problem has occurred twice now.

Good luck!