Lesson Learned: Don't book hotels with Avios
A few weeks ago, I was meant to arrive in Zurich late Thursday night. I decided to book an airport hotel using Avios and pick up my rental car in the morning so I could hit the road right away. Just as I was about to board the Heathrow Express, I got a notification from TripIt saying that my flight was cancelled. I immediately get on the app, trying to rebook. The app crashed so I had to call. I didn't want to wait and risk not getting on the next flight so I called the Silver line. After about 45 minutes of giving my details to 3 different people, I was finally rebooked to the next morning's flight. I then asked to cancel the hotel booking since I obviously would not be in Zurich that night.
The past 3 weeks have been a nightmare of calling and being passed around different departments (every single time you speak to a new person you have to explain your whole situation and provide your personal details all over again) and listening to that awful British Airways tune (I heard it yesterday on my flight from HEL and started twitching!) Having no luck on the phone (getting fed up at the 4th or 5th redirect and hanging up), I filled in a complaint form online. There were a few back-and-forths with this, with the last response putting the nail in the coffin:
"Thanks for your recent email. Please accept my apologies for thedelay in responding. I’m sorry you had to cancel your hotelbooking at the Allegra, Zurich because your flight wascancelled. I completely understand why you’re so disappointed.
While I understand your reasons for asking, I'm unable to honour yourrequest for a full refund of the hotel booking. This is becausea hotel booking must be cancelled 72 hours before the arrival date, orwe're charged a cancellation fee by the hotel if you don’t useyour booking. We advise all our customers of this in our Terms andConditions when you make your reservation. However, we understandyou couldn’t have known in advance about the flight cancellation. I knowthis isn't the answer you were hoping for and I'm so sorry to disappoint you.
Thanks for letting us know what happened andplease accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused. We really valueyour support as a Silver member of our Executive Club and hope this experiencedoesn't deter you from using Avios to book hotels in future."
Which just blows my mind. In my opinion, she is acknowledging how absurd this is by saying 'we understand you couldn't have known in advance about the flight cancellation.'
And how could this not deter me from using Avios on hotels in the future? If I had booked with my credit card, I would have been covered by travel insurance. Now I am out ~16,000 Avios for nothing!
I understand flight cancellations happen but I am just appalled at how British Airways have handled a customer service issue that could have been easily remedied.
Last edited by rocketship87; Jul 18, 2016 at 6:44 am
Reason: fixed font