Forums › Payment cards › American Express › Two companion vouchers cause headaches for BA traveller
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On the Times money site, a woman explains how she is unable to use two Companion Vouchers as they are different versions.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/avios-and-amex-killed-our-holiday-to-mexico-2wk9p8xb8“My husband and I have an American Express credit card which we use to collect vouchers and Avios points to use with British Airways. Over the past two years we have accumulated tens of thousands of Avios points and two companion vouchers. We planned to use them on a special family holiday with our two children to Mexico in August.
In the past we have used two companion vouchers in my husband’s name to go on holidays that we would otherwise not be able to afford. However, when trying to use our vouchers to book BA flights for this holiday, we were unable to.
After more than two hours on the phone to BA, we were eventually told that American Express had changed its companion voucher system. We have one voucher from the older system and one from the new system, but they cannot be used together to get four flights on the BA website. As the voucher holder, my husband must be named on each booking. We were then told the issue can only be resolved by American Express.
We phoned American Express and were initially told this could be fixed by changing the name on the voucher from my husband’s to mine. I was told it would take 24 hours, but this didn’t happen, so I called again. Since then I have spoken to several people at American Express who have made promises that have then been broken.
As the situation stands we will not be able to go on this dream holiday because flying to Mexico at peak time in the summer holiday would cost about £900 a ticket. There appears to be no good reason for the inability to use both vouchers on the same booking other than the nature of the system.”Spoiler: Despite getting 20k points for complaining, they don’t go to Mexico.
As habitual users of 241s,they would be aware of the voucher holder having to travel on the reservation? Or was that not the case? And why only vouchers in his name? Don’t these people refer?
Bit harsh Polly. In the past they’ve done what many people do, book 4 people using 2 x 2-4-1 vouchers in the same name, which has always been allowed as long as the cardholder is one of the 4 passengers. Now Amex have changed the rules and they can’t do what they’ve been able to do before, it would seem solely because their/BA’s IT is useless rather because there is some principle involved here. I’d be miffed too if I was them.
There haven’t been changes to actual rules or system. The old and the new companion vouchers are different products and BA’s IT can’t deal with the complications this causes. But there have been IT issues using the vouchers for a very long time so it shouldn’t come as a surprise really that there are problems like this (e.g. not being able to use the vouchers in 2 parts for outbound and inbound).
I might also submit a complaint for 20k euros as it annoyed me that you can’t use the “extra availability” feature for more than 2 people and this wasn’t made clear either!
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