Unable to merge itineraries and apply companion voucher on return flight
Discuss today's stories:
-
We have recently needed to book return flights 355 days in advance, therefore we had to book our return separately so couldn’t use our companion voucher.
Your article “How to use a BA Amex 241 companion voucher to book an across flight – a beginners guide” dated 28 August 2022 states that:“You can call BA at a time convenient to you to merge the two itineraries, apply your companion voucher to the return flights and get half your avios refunded”.
However we have spoken to 2 separate BA call centre advisors today who have both told us this cannot be done. They both claimed the companion voucher must be used on the outbound flight booking or else they cannot be merged.
Can you offer advice please?
The answer to this is covered a few times in the same article – I’ll steal @NorthernLass reply:
‘don’t ask for anything like “linking bookings” as this doesn’t happen and you may get a refusal, just say you had to wait to book your inbound flights as they hadn’t been released and can they kindly refund the avios due to these being the return legs of 241 bookings’
It sounds like you did not use the companion voucher on the outbound flight, but booked the outbound and inbound separately without using the voucher at all? Then the agents are correct, you cannot apply the voucher to existing bookings (you would have needed to use the voucher on the outbound flight booking).
They both claimed the companion voucher must be used on the outbound flight booking or else they cannot be merged.
Can you offer advice please?
And they are correct.
Let’s say your trip is LHR-SIN-LHR
You must book the LHR-SIN leg first using the voucher and then call to get half the avios back when booking the SIN-LHR. The bookings can’t ever be merged.
You cannot book the SIN-LHR leg first and then add the LHR-SIN for an earlier date.
The only option here is to cancel the flights, hope the seats go back into the itinerary, and (quickly) rebook the whole thing with the voucher. The upside to this is that you don’t have to talk to BA! Unfortunately, you’ll be charged 4 x £35 to do it (if it’s a long-haul booking), but you’ll know for next time.
It isn’t fully clear from your original post, but are you trying to add a Barclays upgrade voucher?
If not, and it is a regular 241 voucher, could you clarify why you weren’t able to use it while booking the outbound leg?The only option here is to cancel the flights, hope the seats go back into the itinerary, and (quickly) rebook the whole thing with the voucher. The upside to this is that you don’t have to talk to BA! Unfortunately, you’ll be charged 4 x £35 to do it (if it’s a long-haul booking), but you’ll know for next time.
Could the OP keep the flights already booked.
Then at some time in the not to distant future, book the “return” of the voucher for a outbound LHR flight to somwhere exotic ?Obviously, theu would need a separate ticket home. But this could turn into another trip 🤔
But they haven’t used the voucher at all so far, from what we can gather. You need to have booked the outbound with it to be able to use it for the inbound, whichever way around you travel (i.e. starting from the UK or not).
I’m not 100% clear on your methodology here though!
Oh, my bad, I thought they had booked outbound with avios only, then booked the “return” online using voucher and a avios.
So my question would be in this instance can the voucher be used for a flight sometime in the future. Effectively have a 1,2 3,4,5 6,7 etc month layover in London etc.
Until the OP comes back to clarify, we’re not 100% sure, but it sounds like they’ve tried to have a voucher applied to a outbound and inbound sectors they have already booked.
You only have to return within 12 months of the outbound date, so it’s very flexible.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
