luv2fly4free

I have had a couple recent bookings made over the phone with the UK call centre where I have been charged more than the price for the same route on the website. The only reason I called is because these available flights were not appearing on ba.com. ba.com seems to have the tendency to be lazy and only show some of the available flights unfortunately as opposed to several more options that would appear on the AA website. Flights that would cost $5.60 on the BA website are being billed at $9.60 over the phone. This excludes the phone booking fee of course, which they waive if requested. Any similar experiences from my fellow FTers?

Also, has anyone seen any rhyme or reason as to why the BA site excludes flights that are available and should be bookable on ba.com? If other flights from the same airline are available on that day and bookable, one would think the other flights that are available for award booking would appear as well. I know that is too perfect to expect in the award booking world, but one can always dream...

luv2fly4free

Anybody else experienced this happening?

luv2fly4free

most recent experience booking over the phone - what have you paid for an intra-USA flight when booking over the phone?

Prospero

Sorry luv2fly4free, I am unable to venture an answer as I have no experience of what you described.

KARFA

Can you provide some specific examples luv2fly4free? One possibility is that there are service charges for booking over the phone instead of online. The charges are listed here:

http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/...d-service-fees

golfmad

Are you taking into account that only MilesAAver flights shown on AA.com are available to be booked on BA.com using Avios? AAnytime awards shown on AA.com are not available to be booked using Avios on BA.com. This might not be the problem you're referring to but if not at least we can rule it out.

luv2fly4free

Right, there is a phone booking fee. However, the general unwritten BA rule is if it is impossible to book something online, then the fee can be requested to be waived. Basically, they are forcing the customer into booking over the phone since the customer knows availability but the website prevents the booking. It is different than calling in blindly and just asking an agent to find a workable route with availability. That would of course justify the "value added" assistance of the agent and corresponding phone booking fee. In my examples, the fee was waived as requested, but in the end, the cost of a ticket booked over the phone was still higher than the equivalent ticket booked on the BA website for a route with the same airports/routing/airline. The agent says it is hard-coded into the system and that there is no manual calculation or adjustment that can be made. Neither is there is an explanation or logical reason given for the discrepancy in price when the agent is asked. The ba.com world is a foreign planet to the phone agent. Their system does its "magic" to produce the final price and the website does its own. One would expect the underlying automated calculation of fees would match between the two booking methods.

luv2fly4free

Right - MilesAAver flights that appear on aa.com but not on ba.com (I never consider AAnytime awards at all)

KARFA

I think that you are misunderstanding the offline fee policy. The policy is most certainly not "if it is impossible to book something online, then the fee can be requested to be waived". The policy is:

• if you should have been able to do it online and the functionality is there, but it isn't working properly that day (i.e. some kind of fault/glitch), then the fee should be waived
• if you can't do it online and the functionality is not there so you could never do it online, the fee should be charged - although sometimes it may be waived if you are lucky.

Apart from the offline fee issue are you able to provide some specific examples of discrepancies between the taxes & charges showing online and what you have been charged offline? As noted by others, I have booked both ways before and not encoutered issues where the taxes & charges are different.

HIDDY

What was the flight you booked?

JAXBA

It sounds to me as if, as well as the USD5.60AY USA security fee per direction (used to be USD2.50AY per flight), you may also being charged the USD4.00ZP US flight segment tax which should be exempt. I'm just guessing so have a look at your eticket receipt, or ask for a breakdown of the taxes, fees and charges. Award flights purely within the US should only cost the AY fee of USD5.60 (and multiples thereof).

luv2fly4free

That would explain it. Do you have a suggestion of where I might be able to get the full (broken down) receipt in an electronic form and not just the total charged? Also, if they are not supposed to charge the $4 flight segment tax as we both know they are not, I wonder which department would most efficiently handle processing the refund? Thanks in advance for your helpful reply.

luv2fly4free

Sorry- I didn't mean to say what I was typing was official policy. I was just stating my "real world" experiences over the years with BA phone agents when it comes to itineraries that are impossible to book on the BA website.

luv2fly4free

I will try to find some examples for everyone to see soon. I am quite busy right now, but will get that data out here as quickly as I can.

vishalgupta22

Although I am reasonably sure you can get the refund, but is it worth your time?