Originally Posted by
gogarrio
I'm still not clear about this one thing: WHY IS THE RULE IN PLACE IN THE FIRST PLACE? How does it benefit BA? Fewer changes? Fewer seconds to change a 20-year customer's flight itinerary. Again, how does this benefit BA? I would think they would be happy to add conditions: 1) No change if no seats for award travel available, 2) Charge for the privilege. End result: Customer happy, customer pays more money to BA, customer spends more GBP in Britain, customer helps local economy, customer stays loyal to BA rather than saying, "That's it, time to find another US-UK carrier in future."
Well, the other customer who couldn't get reward availability on his preferred date because you had snagged the ticket would be the loser if you then changed the date of travel at the last minute.
I'm not saying that the rule is a good one, but it does seem to be common to many schemes. And criticising the rule by highlighting the workaround runs a real risk of the workaround being withdrawn, which would not be of any help to you now, you in the future, or any of the rest of us.