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I’m getting ready to book some CW flights to GIG in a few days, using a 241. I was looking over prices to decide how I was going to do the inbound booking – online and refund vs phoning. I was under the impression, having read various articles here, that if you phoned to add the return onto the booking you would end up paying a bit less cash, as the fees for a return are less than for two one ways.
However, a return to GIG is £1,100 in fees for two people, whereas two one ways is £550 for the outbound, and ~£457 for the inbound. Obviously this is less than £1100! Is this normal, a mistake, or what?
Brazil has some laws about no or low surcharges on flights that originate there (which a separately booked flight to LHR would be). If you look at the fare breakdowns of a return v separate it should show which isn’t being applied or is reduced. Could also be an airport fee issues as well.
But booking separate legs means should you later decide to cancel the trip then you’d have to pay two lots of cancellation feee which would eat into the £ 93 saved!
Thanks. When you select the seats for the return flights, it actually says “Fees £17”, but then on the next screen it adds on another £440…
OK, so I found this article
https://www.headforpoints.com/2021/03/19/british-airways-brazil-avios-overcharging/
and I checked on avios.com – it does only want to charge me the £17.80! The big question is, if I book the return on avios.com, can I still call up and get it added to my outbound, with the 241, and get half the avios back?
I thought CW flights were now subject to RFS pricing (with various other options to choose from)? But whatever the case, you can’t use the 241 on avios.com, so I doubt very much BA would refund your avios if you did that.
Thought people may be interested in what happened here. I booked both legs online, and then called to have the 50% avios refunded for the inbound – this was fine. At the same time, I asked the agent about the erroneous taxes on the inbound leg. He came up with quite lot of bluster, including at one point telling me the Brazilian law didn’t apply to me because I’m not Brazilian. In the end I gave up.
I then called back a few hours later, and got a much more helpful man. To cut a long story short, he cancelled my original inbound flight, then rebooked it with the correct taxes (£17.80 instead of £438), then linked it to my original 2-4-1 booking, and refunded half the avios.
So I’ve ended up with two return flights to GIG for 210,000 avios and £567.80, which I’m very pleased about. Happy ending!
Brilliant result, and well done on persevering after being on the receiving end of the BA BS! It’s this kind of nonsense that makes me avoid calling them if at all possible. They will seriously spend longer feeding customers this kind of garbage than it would actually take to fulfil the original request. It’s like dealing with teenagers.
Hang up and call again until you get someone who knows what they are doing is the best way forward.
He came up with quite lot of bluster, including at one point telling me the Brazilian law didn’t apply to me because I’m not Brazilian.
I’ve read so many examples similar to this – not just from BA but from other airlines, companies too. I don’t know why it’s so common for agents to just make something up (in other words, tell a lie to the customer) if they don’t know the answer. I’m sure when they are trained, they must be told not to do this. Very frustrating and surely illegal for a company to financially benefit by wilfully misleading customers.
Most recently a Finnair rep was adamant that my BA Silver card doesn’t allow me to select seats on Finnair premium economy booking because BA Silver is equivalent to Oneworld Ruby. After I corrected him that it’s Oneworld Sapphire, he didn’t acknowledge his error, but said that Finnair doesn’t have to follow the rules of the alliance regarding seat selection and that I have to pay to select a seat. No apology for the mistake and no movement. In reality, it was simply an IT glitch that was fixed a few days later as I could then select the seats myself – not Finnair policy at all. The agent just made up a reason why it wasn’t working, and then when disproved he made up a second reason.
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