Originally Posted by
Breadstick77
I just wanted to share my experience from last 4 days. I booked a LHR-JFK CW award flight on Friday when they became available, using the 241 voucher (by calling Gold customer service number). Very straightforward. Last night I booked the return JFK-LHR online about 20 mins after they became available (as a separate one way CW award booking for two, which was 100k avios). I then rang up Gold customer service to combine the return leg into the original 241 outbound ticket. The customer service agent (UK team) was adamant this could not be done. She also wasn't very interested about me sharing the wisdom of Flyer Talk forum and stuck to her guns. :-) However, as there was still availability in CW for the same flight, she was able to cancel my booking for the inbound booking and rebooked the same seats onto the outbound ticket. Ended up being a refund (no charges as within 24h period) for my online booked return leg (so refund 100k avios and c. £800 taxes) and charged 50k avios and c. £100 additional taxes when it was rebooked. So all sorted over the phone in about 10-15 minutes in the end and now all correct and on a single ticket for both outbound and inbound.
Glad you got it sorted in the end. Two points though:
1. I very much doubt invoking FT on the phone with an airline will get you any further. The agent was wrong as you noted, but it is a relatively new way to do 2-4-1 bookings - I am not saying that as an excuse, just merely as a reason the agent wasn't aware, although they should have been of course.
2. I would very strongly advise anyone not to use that method of booking two separate one ways when going to the US. I know I keep repeating this and I am sure most regular readers will be bored of me saying this. The main downside of doing it by doing two separate bookings and having the 2-4-1 applied across both is that taxes/charges/fees are not recalculated when the voucher is applied across to the second booking. Sometimes this will work out well for you (bookings exHKG for example), but for exUS or exCA bookings it is not recommended at all.
exUS/CA TFC is much higher and doing it this way will lead you to pay probably several hundred pounds more overall than you need to. If doing exUS/CA bookings the old method of calling and adding in the inbound to the existing booking is much better since TFC is recalculated and repriced as a return. For example:
LHR-JFK rtn in J/F for 2 people - £1,076.02
LHR-JFK one way in J/F for 2 people - £743.82
JFK-LHR one way in J/F for 2 people - $1,062.80 (£814.18)
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Extra paid when done as two one ways for two (814.18+743.82) - 1076.02 = £481.98
I hand't realised when this new two bookings method was added to the wiki back in February that this important caveat was not included, but in any case I will add it now.
I apologise for banging on about this, I don't apologise for trying to save you money. I am sure the money is better in your pocket than in BA's
