Over £500m worth of e-vouchers still unused (IAG)

Andrew J wrote:

Sounds like a further extension to expiry dates is on the cards.

Or £533 million in pure margin.

I hope virgin extend their covid vouchers too

I’ve got £800 of those BA ones. If I end up booking a pointless flight somewhere and they end up extending them I’ll combust with rage.

At 31 Dec 2022, the IAG group reported €911m of vouchers outstanding. This year has, so far, seen significant redemption and little issuance. Analysts forecasts suggest €250m-€300m will ultimately remain unclaimed. When cash refunds were always an option, it’s difficult to see who took a voucher a couple of years ago and hasn’t been bothered to spend it, but then there seem to be a raft of people who went to a lot of effort to pull the 2p trick without any plan to use them now complaining about being cashed out at the original value.

JDB wrote:

but then there seem to be a raft of people who went to a lot of effort to pull the 2p trick without any plan to use them now complaining about being cashed out at the original value.

Agree with you there. I only made bookings that I knew I would take unless restrictions later made them untenable. The only gaming I did was to use BWC to cancel and rebook if the price went down.

I didn’t make any “maybe” bookings. I didn’t make any cheap bookings for popular destinations at unpopular times of the year hoping for a cancellation so I could rebook for half term or Christmas.

Data point: someone I know today called BA to make a booking post September (new York marathon dates in November) but the voucher wasn’t allowed online. So in case you have use for it over Xmas,etc, you can possibly book over the phone and redeem the voucher. Online doesn’t seem to work post 30 sept.

Roberto wrote:

Ba refunding evouchers if you ask.

Is there further information on this anywhere on here. I have contacted via chat to be told that they are non-refundable.
My wife and I both have an e-voucher that we will be unable to use before September. They are together worth around £200 which I would prefer not to donate to BA’s profit.

Depends when your voucher was issued,

There is this on that linked page

“You can request a refund if you received an eVoucher email from us after your flight was cancelled during the period of 9 March 2020 to 19 November 2020”

No one will be “donating” money to BA.

Imagine the bad publicity if they just said “nah we’re keeping it” in the media and in Parliament

There’s probably more than a few MPs and their staff (let alone constituents) who have vouchers for starters.

And using them for seat reservations you wouldn’t normally pay for IS donating the cash to BA.

Patience is a virtue. People need to practice it.

JDB wrote:

BA Flyer IHG Stayer wrote:

No one will be “donating” money to BA.

Imagine the bad publicity if they just said “nah we’re keeping it” in the media and in Parliament

There’s probably more than a few MPs and their staff (let alone constituents) who have vouchers for starters.

And using them for seat reservations you wouldn’t normally pay for IS donating the cash to BA.

Patience is a virtue. People need to practice it.

Does the same apply to vouchers issued by M&S, John Lewis etc. that are left to expire? Why on earth did people accept vouchers in the first place if they weren’t planning to spend them in the next two years?

With BA, I imagine because everyone hoped the pandemic would be over in a few months, or in summer ’20 assumed it was nearly over as numbers seemed much lower.