BA's reimbursement offer leaving me short
Hoping someone can provide help or advice on this issue.
A colleague and I were flying TXL-LHR-GLA on 15/6/16. TXL-LHR leg was delayed due to weather and landed around 2 hours late in LHR. As a result we missed the onward GLA flight; this was the last flight of the day, so we had to overnight in London.
[Not really relevant, but just to complete the story - the LHR-GLA flight was actually also delayed, and the aircraft was still at LHR while we were at Flight Connection; but we had been offloaded and 'computer issues' prevented the agent re-issuing boarding passes. This was somewhat frustrating, to say the least.]
To be fair to BA, the issue was outwith their control (weather), and had affected a large number of flights, so Flight Connections was mobbed. By the time the agent had given up trying to get us on a GLA flight, BA had no hotel rooms available. We were told to make our own accommodation arrangements and claim for reimbursement.
By this time it was after 10pm. None of the LHR hotels had any availability. A search on hotels.com threw up a bunch of hotels in central London, mostly at exorbitant prices. I picked the cheapest I could find at £295 each - a place in Marylebone. We took HEX to Paddington, then a taxi to the hotel (Bakerloo line at Paddignton being out of commission, and it being late). Luckily we found somewhere nearby still selling food after 11pm, and we reversed the journey the next morning.
Total costs were:
£580 for two hotel rooms
£72 for 2 HEX standard return tickets
£11 for taxis
£45 for food and drink
Total: £708
I have duly submitted a claim, with receipts, to BA. They have responded offering:
£400 for hotel rooms
£50 for travel
£45 for food and drink
Total: £495
This leaves me £213 out of pocket.
I have gone back to BA twice saying that this is unacceptable - I booked the cheapest option I could find at short notice late at night, and at no point did anyone at LHR mention an upper limit on costs. Both times they have come back with hacked together cut-n-paste responses saying it's the best they can do.
Has anyone had any success in getting full expenses covered in this situation?