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Quick question – looking for some advice.
Made a booking over the phone as I couldn’t get the website to work with the combination of Barclays vouchers and points. All confirmed and in my BA account to manage and update. Lots of e-mails from BA about getting ready for my flight etc etc. Manage to check in on-line but not all the way and told to complete at airport.
At check in it transpires no ticket in place and the transaction didn’t go through (I don’t check my Amex statement or Avios points regularly but had enough when booking).
Frantic calls and a god send of a BA staff and I’m on my way – missed the flight and took off 2 hours later and an additional 70000 points for the pleasure. They have admitted the mistake and are talking about a refund of points even though I had to purchase the points at the airport to top up my account.
For those with any experience of something similar
Can I ask for a £ refund?
Should I be due anything for the delay to the flight?
Anything else I haven’t thought of?Thanks in advance
@Jamie1975 – if your scheduled arrival at your destination was no later than two hours after the original scheduled arrival, you wouldn’t be entitled to denied boarding compensation (which is the one you would possibly be eligible for rather than delay compensation) but you should be refunded all the extra costs in cash or Avios you incurred as the ticketing error lies with BA and is unfortunately an all too regular occurrence.
Sorry to hear this! This happens a lot. I am not sure on where you stand legally here. Usually they will take the Avios at least. If neither Avios not cash were debited, then I am not sure really. I would potentially argue it’s on you – rightly or wrongly. 🙁
I’ve only learned its a regular occurrence since its happened – I took comfort it was in my BA account like any other flight I have booked.
There are some bits missing from this story, I feel.
If you were short of points, that means you spent the points twice over? And 70k is a lot, so you were probably aware the deduction hadn’t been made. The idea you weren’t would only fly if you had a massive balance in the first place.
So I can’t see why you (or anyone at BA other than someone wanting to fob you off) believe you are due a refund, as you weren’t charged twice. The fact the BA system was sending you “ready to fly” emails is odd if there was no ticket in place so there may be an argument for a few miles to be offered here but it sounds like you got a very good outcome, as presumably no e-ticket receipt was ever received and as I recall the call centre will say “we’ll send you an e-mail….” after the transaction completes.
If you were short of points, that means you spent the points twice over? And 70k is a lot, so you were probably aware the deduction hadn’t been made. The idea you weren’t would only fly if you had a massive balance in the first place.
I had the original 170000 in my account for the booking in January but not 240000 in April at the check in desk – as said I don’t check until I had a booking to make.
People have plenty else these days to do, than to check BA’s homework for them
As soon as I receive a confirmation from BA in email or even if I can just see the booking online, and particularly if I receive other emails later on the things you did I assume the job’s been done by BA. This is perfectly reasonable. I have too much else to think about.
Insist on the money back, not avios, unless you have a dire need for avios at the price you were forced to pay on the spot to fly, because BA didn’t do their job. If BA wanted to give you extra avios as well as the cash refund I’d insist on, then I’d suggest 15,000 avios as well as all your cash. 30k would be rather generous, 10k after the shock and inconvenience caused to you when you were at tbe airport ready to fly, would be a we-really-don’t-care-and-we’re-not-sorry amount.
“Sorry” just isn’t good enough. Remember avios don’t cost BA as much as cash does and they can change what you could or could not get for any particular amount of avios, at any time. Tell BA “Show me the Money” ie make them refund you.
Whilst we are waiting for JDB I’ll give my two pennuth. I do think it’s rather careless not to check that you’ve got an email with a ticket number and to be unaware that you’ve not paid anything nor had points deducted. Caveat emptor.
Whilst we are waiting for JDB I’ll give my two pennuth. I do think it’s rather careless not to check that you’ve got an email with a ticket number and to be unaware that you’ve not paid anything nor had points deducted. Caveat emptor.
I get into trouble here for posting what you (correctly). I did post more sympathetically above.
For those of us who were dragged up in the olden days of paper tickets, I never quite understand why the move to e-tickets removes the concept of checking you have a ticket or indeed noticing whether you have paid or not.
PTM – passports, tickets, money. Same if setting off to any transportation or event requiring a ticket. Sometimes old school reflexes pay off…
I recently booked some JAL flights with avios on the BA website.
Never got an email or anything. But it was showing on my bookings thankfully as I wouldn’t be able to retrieve the booking otherwise.
I then cancelled the booking online (easy es enough, you go to MMB click cancel, enter your name and address and email).
Booking was indeed cancelled but never received the avios back. Had to call to get that refunded.
BA’s IT works in mysterious ways.
For those of us who were dragged up in the olden days of paper tickets, I never quite understand why the move to e-tickets removes the concept of checking you have a ticket or indeed noticing whether you have paid or not
Because when the airline tells you that there will be no paper ticket, only an e-ticket and is is given a booking refence made up of letters in that email, a normal mortal has no concept of that booking requiring a 125- ticket number. It’s very simple for the customer to assume from that wording that the booking reference is the ticket.
Nothing in the email tells them that they need one, and the ticket number if they do have one is completely masked in most of the BA electronic channels, i’e, it’s bloody hard to find even if you have one.
All BA’s and the customer’s problems with this could be solved if they re-worded the email that they send to the customer when a booking is confirmed.
For those of us who were dragged up in the olden days of paper tickets, I never quite understand why the move to e-tickets removes the concept of checking you have a ticket or indeed noticing whether you have paid or not
Because when the airline tells you that there will be no paper ticket, only an e-ticket and is is given a booking refence made up of letters in that email, a normal mortal has no concept of that booking requiring a 125- ticket number. It’s very simple for the customer to assume from that wording that the booking reference is the ticket.
Nothing in the email tells them that they need one, and the ticket number if they do have one is completely masked in most of the BA electronic channels, i’e, it’s bloody hard to find even if you have one.
All BA’s and the customer’s problems with this could be solved if they re-worded the email that they send to the customer when a booking is confirmed.
This subject drives me nuts.
Why on earth don’t BA reword the email, as you suggest, so that us lesser mortals know what to do.
I no longer think in terms of PTM, I think PBM Passport, Boarding pass, money and have done for years (hunkers down and prepares to get scolded).
I no longer think in terms of PTM, I think PBM Passport, Boarding pass, money and have done for years (hunkers down and prepares to get scolded).
PPE – Passport, Phone, Everything else is replaceable. 😏 I agree that you shouldn’t have to look for a 125 ticket (I didn’t until reading here) but not checking you’ve been charged/Avios deducted, etc is a bit lax.
Whose mistake is it??? Doesn’t matter. BA should share the blame and put the OP back in the position he was in before the error. The OP shares the blame by having been delayed, but it should not cost them further. IMHO.
Apart from checking that you have been ticketed, I just don’t understand people who don’t check their bank balances, or their Avios balances – Avios is a valuable currency after all.
True, I’m always checking my Avios balance and bank balance so I guess I would pick it up that way,
I know this doesn’t help OP but I do agree, not checking Avios or bank balance is crazy when you know you’ve made a transaction for goods you have yet to receive.
If you bought a product online and it didn’t arrive after xx time, you’d not expect it to arrive if your credit card wasn’t debited. So not sure why you’d expect to get on a flight. Saying that, the fact that BA seem incapable of issuing tickets when the caller has done nothing wrong is worrying. I also totally disagree with the notion that anyone should check for a 125 ticket – most people have no clue what that means and indeed, an email confirming your itinerary should be enough.
Anyway, this is discussed a lot – I do hope it gets sorted and you are not out of pocket.
I must be missing something. Why is everyone so worried about the OP being out of pocket? As i understand it, the initial transaction never completed so no money or a casual quarter of a million Avios were ever deducted.
The only issue I can see is that they were then obliged to buy the remaining miles at 1.7p each to make up the shortfall, but had already benefitted from the utility of those 70k miles through an additional redemption.
You could argue that there’s a loss of 0.8p per Avios as that could have been made good via the bonus boost scheme, but equally if the utility derived from the 70k miles was 3p per mile, then what?
Unless I’m missing something fundamental here, of course…
Just to update this.
Avios are saying they dont have a record of the call for the original booking and are unable to provide me with details of the calls made over the last week or so.
As far as I see it I have a few options
Ask for a subject access request although BA ask for an onerous amount of information such as times and extensions called
Write to BA and complain again although they have already said not us try Avios already
Go to the small claims court although without the call I cant actually prove the initial quote was 170000 points
Its really hard dealing with BA as you never speak to the same person and you are reliant on people leaving detailed notes which appears to not be the case.
I don’t understand why the amount changed? Devaluation? Error in the first place?
You should be able to find that online.How can I confirm what they quoted me in Jan 2025 on the phone if they can’t provide a copy of the call?
If the amount should always have been 240k, guess you really need the call recording.
How can I confirm what they quoted me in Jan 2025 on the phone if they can’t provide a copy of the call?
A dreadful lesson to learn but for these tricksy issues, one really ought to be recording the calls oneself
Taking what the OP says at face value and BA have admitted the error then there is a clear case for EU261 as he was denied boarding on the outbound flight having turned up in good time.
There is no need for a SAR you simply need to complain and when the do not respond take to CEDR who will then get all the information. If you are not satisfied with that your can take to MCOL, even if you lose at CEDR. This will be a long a frustrating process which I’d start today.
AS I say this assumes everything is correct about being delayed and bA admitting the error.
And also a small lesson, one should check receipts, hope you get it sorted @jamie1975
Calls from Jan may probably have been deleted as per retention/GDPR – you can ask via a SAR, and also ask for all the other data on their system related to your booking. An SAR is your friend!
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