BA vs. EasyJet - semi rant

[DerekDuvall]

Just wanted to share an experience and have a little rant:

We booked a holiday which we decided to cancel some 2 weeks before it starts. The reason is not important for the topic, but we could not go exactly there anymore and not at the same time.

Our flight out would have been with EasyJet, flight back would have been British Airways. Both tickets were non-refundable. I suppose that's what most people book for holidays.

EasyJet: fairly easy to log onto their website, pay £54 per person and change our flight to another one. Other date, other destination. Since flight was about £250 per person this looked like a good deal. And if we did it a month before fees would have been even less.

BA only kept offering to pay a similar fee to change the flight date. Using our ticket on another similarly priced destination proved impossible: There would have been fees of about £125 per person to do that or we could cancel our tickets and get back around £25 pp. Not much. And we needed to call them to learn all this. Original tickets were about £130 per person so none of it made much sense.

Anyhow - there will probably be comments how the tickets were nonrefundable and how we could have read the fine print. Yes, all that is fine, I'm still free to point out how quite differently the two companies have handled it. For anyone's future reference and as a little source of venting for myself.

My apologies to anyone who might ask me questions or wish to debate on this: I'm only going to post this here and I will not participate in any ensuing debate.

PS: English is not my first language - I do apologize if this was difficult to read. I tried my best to make it as easy as I could.

whats the point of posting then, if your not going to stick around

Are you familiar with how discussion boards work ?

@chipsandpeas I'm actually going to answer this . If you google BA vs EasyJet then mumsnet pops up. As I'm a bit angry with BA I decided to share this info for everyone who might google it. My disclaimer about not sticking around is mostly for people looking to argue. Whenever there's a thread like this it is likely to attract the characters that take pleasure in pointing out how fine print needs to be read and how non-refundable means non-refundable.

That is because at some point in the past there have been discussions and on the back of those discussions people were helped. 🙄

@HighEndGrifters I'm re-reading my post and I understand it was wrong. I should have told that I will just not debate with people who wish to go into a heated debate. I'm sorry, I had a technical question the other day here and a guy started to play devils advocate and moralize and it upset me quite a lot. I'll ad an edit!

@HighEndGrifters

I can't seem to edit the post - happy to answer any normal questions if it will help anyone.

I think I understand what you are trying to say. You won't be giving further details on the reason for cancellation and won't be responding to comments about reading the small print. But you want to discuss why two airlines deal with rebooking so differently. English not being your first language means the message has got a bit confused but that is OK.

And I agree with you - it is very strange. I have been very pleasantly surprised that easyjet have kept the ability to change a flight with a few clicks and being given a clear price before you commit to anything. It means that I book easyjet if I possibly can. However I was also shocked recently how much it now costs to put a bag in the hold with easyjet.

Thanks @helpfulperson - that was, well, helpful.

Yeah, that was my intention. But really badly written on my side. Anyhow - yes. All along I had this impression that EasyJet is the low-cost and so on and BA is a real airline, but it turned out to be the opposite. I know that they are also just a company and probably have downsides, but they've just earned a massive plus with me.

This isn't new. 10-15 years ago, I flew a lot (LDRs) and Easyjet was always more helpful with any issues than BA.

To be fair, with refundable tickets I don’t think you can complain.

However, I agree that these days British Airways is not a quality airline - it has gone down hill massively.

I agree that I shouldn't - it's just the stark difference between the two companies. Both non-refundable.

If you fly often enough with EasyJet they put you in their flight club, making all your booking changeable for free - you only pay any fare difference. They don’t really advertise this and it doesn’t come with any other privileges - the paid-for Flexi Plus scheme does that. But it’s free and is hugely helpful if you’re using them to travel for work a lot when changes are common.

EasyJet would probably have cancelled your flight anyway. I used to do between 6 and 8 a month for a year post Covid and they were never on time, wouldn’t refund even when I got back at 3am (aiming for 10pm) having shelled out for cabs as trains had finished. I hate them with every fibre of my being. I now fly BA, and while they’re expensive and Heathrow is a total shitshow, everything about the experience is better.

I can appreciate the refund thing is annoying though.

It means that I book easyjet if I possibly can. However I was also shocked recently how much it now costs to put a bag in the hold with easyjet

The cabin baggage is even more shocking. I was looking at flights the other day and I can't remember what they wanted for a hold bag, but in the end I think it was cheaper for us to pay £80 return for one hold bag between us than it was for us both to take a larger cabin bag on the plane with us.

The cheapest way to get a bag on board is to book extra leg room I think.

I’ve flown with easyJet and BA this year alone. EasyJet infinitely better service in every respect than BA so this doesn’t surprise me at all op. Id always opt for easyJet if it’s an option.

hope you do manage to get away ok.

Look! Another non-argumentative post 😉

BA are living in a (lost) world where only people rich enough to stand the financial loss of cancelling a flight, ever booked with them.

EasyJet made its whole success out of being a cheap n cheerful airline.

I used to fly weekly for work and the options were BA and Easyjet. On the whole I used BA because I flew enough to have lounge access, and they didn't board you as early as Easyjet, so less sitting on the plane. On the route I flew they were more reliable too. They were more relaxed on cabin baggage.

BUT the flight change thing for Easyjet was streets ahead with flight club, so if I knew that my booking was in any way likely to change, I always booked with them. Even without it, it was far more doable.

@Whenwillglorioussummercome

Yeah - exactly that, years ahead change. EasyJet was as simple as logging into their website, choosing another date and destination and paying a single upfront transparent fee.

BA was a long wait to reach their call center and then a long wait for them to "run each option" and come back with some unpredictable, random and very high fees.

Thanks @BitOutOfPractice - both for the experience and for non-argumentative post. I think I need to forget my experience with the aggressive devils advocate. (That person's posts anyhow got deleted by mods here).

What a pointless post. Every company is entitled to have different terms and conditions. You could have claimed on travel insurance.

@Dinoswearunderpants Whereas your post is full of insightful, thoughtful comment and thus worthy of being on Mumsnet? or perhaps not. This is a chat forum not an academic discussion board.

Of course every company can have its own terms and conditions. But those will have commercial consequences. Consumers are entitled to make a choice who they use based on their knowledge of how a company operates.

This has been my experience too, EasyJet are better to deal with than BA if anything goes wrong.