Appalled by cynicism of British Airways

[zafferana]

I know airlines are there to make money and all this Covid shit has a) made them lose loads of it and b) the constantly changing rules around travel must be a total nightmare to deal with. But ...

We have a 14-year-old and were due to travel to Spain for new year, so like every other family in our position we need to cancel that trip and rebook it for a later date when hopefully this particular problem will have been resolved.

So I called BA and asked to change our flights. I had the new flights and prices up on screen in front of me and told the agent what we wanted to change to. The new flights were cheaper, so we were owed £356. But the agent claimed she couldn't see the price I could and no, we weren't owed £356, we were owed £24. Not only that, but the flights she claimed she could see didn't include baggage on the return leg, which we'd have to book and pay for separately, whereas the flights I could see included baggage both ways.

She was eager for me to book the flights I could see and 'lock in that great sale price'. I told her I didn't want to do that, because I'd then have two sets of flights, 'Oh no, we'll give you a voucher for the new year ones and you can use it for any new flights up until the end of 2023', said she. 'Er yes, but since I don't yet have a voucher I'll have to pay for the new flights with cash so then you'll have two lots of my money. What I want you to do is honour the BA 'book with confidence' pledge and change my flights without me incurring a fee, since I'm only changing them due to Covid restrictions, and you return the difference to me, like I'd pay the difference to you if they were more expensive'.

She assured me that that simply isn't possible and that the price of changed flights on the BA system is different to the price of new flights I can see. Um yeah, but that only makes sense if BA is in fact charging for flight changes, doesn't it? And if that's not the case, why are the prices on their system ALWAYS more expensive than the one the customer can see, I wonder????

I ended up cancelling the flights and will re-book with vouchers, but I was appalled by the cynicism of this agent, who was no doubt just trotting out what she'd been told to, but she had clearly been told to offer a shit price for the changed flights so she could put pressure on me to buy new ones and if I'd been in a panic to book new ones because I was going to miss a special event or something I might have just done it. Kerrrrching!

Hmm, I had a very different experience a few months ago when changing a BA flight - the guy was very helpful, found the flight I wanted to change to, and we got £150 voucher back due to it being cheaper. It sounds like either your agent was particularly crap! How annoying. I was actually really impressed with their customer service, but maybe I just struck lucky. Hope you get someone better next time.

I'm glad you had a better experience @Pearlyqueen21. I used my voucher to book new flights today and got a new voucher for the £356 owed. Honestly, that agent I got yesterday should be fired - she was terrible

Why didn't you amend the booking online?

I've done dozens of flight changes over the past 2 years, some of them with BA, and never had this issue when doing the change online myself. The difference in cost was always the same after adding my existing balance, as if I tried to book a new flight.

Because the website was undergoing an upgrade and I couldn't @EileenGC. However, having learned my lesson this time, in future I will just cancel the booking, get an evoucher and rebook myself. There is no reason to call up, wait in the queuing system and get them to do what you can do yourself.

Easyjet do this as well. It's sooo frustrating. They claim you can change free of charge and just pay the difference in fare, but it's just not true. For example, I paid £130 for flights, but if I try to change them for flights worth £90, it doesn't let me. It's basically a scam. It only let me change for flights that are worth £60, so I just lost a load of money.

They should instead issue you a voucher that you can use, for the FULL amount you initially paid. I've realised it's cheaper to take a risk and book Ryanair flights and then just not use them and book new ones later than to avail of Easyjet's 'free change' policy.

Yes, we got stung by Easyjet last year too @megustalacerveza. We'd booked to go away in Oct half-term and then the country introduced a 5-day quarantine for UK visitors two days before we were due to go. They charged a re-booking fee though of, I think, £30 per person per leg, so for return flights for four people it was £240 on top of what we'd already paid, plus any increase in fare to a new destination. I just let it go, because we'd only paid about £160 for the first lot of tickets and I wasn't prepared to throw away any more money!

We wanted to move our USA trip to the summer. Price on website is 4k less… can’t offer us that as it’s 2 airlines and we’re currently booked with one only so price for equivalent is £8k more. I’m pissed off because we could have cancelled summer 2020 we’d have had a full refund but we wanted to support the travel industry. Feel screwed over for our loyalty.

I’m really surprised by that. We had multiple holidays booked with BA over the last year and they were consistently excellent with cancellations. A lot better than EasyJet and TUI

My complaint to BA over the shambolic way they treated me when they cancelled my flight is still outstanding. Initially refused to refund me £5.5k for the cancelled flight, then “accidentally” issued it as a voucher when I had been very clear I wanted the refund. They have finally processed the refund but it’s another three weeks to get it apparently. So far they have had my money for almost two months since cancelling. They seem to be ignoring the fact I have to pay for a replacement flight with another company, because the first replacement they could offer me was six weeks later.

Absolutely useless.

So it seems to be completely random what kind of customer service you get, based on the individual agent you get on the phone. Kind of a like a lucky (or unlucky!) dip. Nice one BA.