Originally Posted by
JEFFJAGUAR
You get charged the fee as British Airways processes its credit card sales through a bank in Britain. Many consumers discover that the hard way when they buy 3 round trips using one of the Citi or Chase cards with the ftf of $800 each and see on their credit card statement a ftf of $72 and they blame the airline (or their travel agent if bought through a travel agency such as Orbitz or the like). Most of us here know the perils of using credit cards with ftf's for foreign airline tickets but a family making its first trip overseas probably doesn't.
I found this one out the hard way back in the days before I discovered FlyerTalk when I had booked two round trips for a friend and myself. I was livid that the charge showed USD the whole time and then Chase dinged me with a 3% FTF. I forget how the exchange rate compared with the real rate, but I might have gotten hit from both ends.
As an off topic aside, this was also back when I thought because an airline was in the same alliance that you'd get miles for the flight. (This was before ATI between AA and BA, so I didn't get any miles.) Furthermore, this was back in late 2009 when BA was threatening to strike. My friend and I had made alternate flight arrangements with a close in booking on AA because BA had a travel waiver in place. However, by the time we got the AA ticket issued BA said the mater had been resolved and had completely scrubbed all mention of the strike and travel waiver from its website. After calling in, the agent confirmed that the travel waiver was no longer in place. At this point I was furious, and of course not being FlyerTalk savvy I blindly trusted what the agent said. I remember calling back in a huff just saying, "I don't care how little money I get back. I want to cancel this ticket right now!" Fortunately the second agent said that the travel waiver was still in place and couldn't possibly understand why we wanted to cancel our tickets. We ended up rebooking for travel six months later, but it was a long time before I ever threw any business BA's way again. As a final insult, when we did eventually make the rebooked trip, I was
dismissed by the lounge dragon for trying to use my father's card to get into the lounge. What can I say? I have a boyish face.
