Originally Posted by
wind-blownmind
This ticket was booked directly as an MFU - it never existed as something before the upgrade. My understanding in that scenario is the underlying bucket - the fare upgraded from - is a reward bucket (P?) which are fully flex, so the fully flex terms should persist through the upgrade and allow me to change. It shows in MMB as selling class U (ie redemption) for both the LH flight and the SH feeder flight, but presumably that is the current, upgraded bucket. There doesn't seem to be a way to tell what the underlying fare bucket was.
The kicker here seems to be the non-MFU leg of the journey. The flights on that show T for the LH and B for the SH, which definitely aren't redemption buckets. Shouldn't those have booked into P as well, or is that an indication of what the underlying buckets for the upgraded leg were? If that's so, then why is it not charging me to change that half of the journey too?
Even if you do the whole transaction in one go, an MFU like yours amounts to buying a T class fare (which would otherwise book into T) and then using miles to upgrade into U. The underlying cash fare wouldn't ever book into P.
And so it's the rules of the T class fare which also govern the changeability of your ticket. On the face of it, it seems likely that the new fare rules which you're now being shown are the rules of the underlying T class fare, including the USD 275 or CAD 275 change fee.
The other half of the journey shows you what you would have had if you had not MFUd at all. Both long-hauls would have booked into T, and both short-hauls would (probably) have booked into B (I think that there can be some variations to this).
However, if you've been misled by ba.com, then it seems to me that you have a valid complaint. As you can see, one possible obstacle to this is demonstrating to BA what ba.com was showing you, as opposed to what it ought to have been showing you (which we can all work out).