Reward Flight Saver anomaly

[jimothy]

I have already made a booking using an amex 241 premium voucher and wondering if I have made a mistake…

– I booked myself online outbound LHR-GRU offpeak CW on 28/3/25. 100,000 avios + £550

– I called yesterday to add on GIG-LHR peak CW return on 11/4/25. 110,000 avios + £550

– I had made a dummy booking for the return GIG-LHR peak CW return and the option was 220,000 + £16.80 (or 110,000 + £17.14 with a 241). The agent said this wasn’t an option on his screen so I reluctantly went along with paying the £550.

Question:
Should I have made the return booking myself online for 220k avios, with the lower taxes and then asked them to refund half the avios? Should I have done a second booking with my ‘spare’ 241 voucher for 110k avios and then asked for the voucher back after merging them? Would they have allowed either of these options? Presumably it is too late to try and claw £500 or so back?

[NorthernLass]

If you’d read the thread on booking the return, you’d know all about this! Basically yes, if you had booked it separately you could have got away with paying the lower surcharges, though they might have been a bit higher than £16.80 by the time you got to the payment page.

However, using another 241 would have mucked it all up, so don’t do that.

[jimothy]

Ha ha I thought I had read most of that thread … clearly I did not read it thoroughly enough!

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

GRU = São Paulo = Brazil where there are laws preventing airlines charging surcharges on tickets that originate there.

That’s why the fees are lower when you search for prices ex GRU.

[ekposh]

But as mentionned, you’d be making separate bookings so would not have been able to use the 241. So whether you made a mistake or not, depends on whether you value the miles more than the cash.

You would not have been able to merge them back together, they’d have recalculated it and you’d have been in the same place.

[NorthernLass]

There’s no merging or recalculation if you book separately. You stick with what you’ve paid (unless you get a very arsey CS agent). I did this recently with a mixed F/J cabin booking where I ended up booking the inbound separately to avoid the tax “recalculation” but still got the 50% avios back. People have mentioned doing the same with destinations like GIG/GRU in the dedicated 241/avios threads.