Originally Posted by
wdcosta117
Hello All,
So as mentioned last week thought id provide you an update on the return redemption flight. Hopefully this helps someone as much as all the help I received from here.
Added the Vodafone international call bundle for £3 a month which gives you 100mins. (It auto renews every month so you’ll need to cancel it manually).
Called the US office at 11:40pm GMT the day before I needed to, to test the water. First point of contact is someone who direct your calls to the relevant team (this took a good 10mins). Kind of stumbled my words and was put through to new bookings. Once I got through - the kind customer service agent advised that I should ask for Avios and Miles Team (cant remember the exact name, though will edit the post once I remember) as they deal with these requests. All in all took around 15mins.
Next day waited again till 11:40pm this time it took me 5mins to get through to the first point of contact. Asked to speak to the Avios Team which took another 5mins. Went through security, the booking reference, and that was it. They knew exactly what I wanted and just confirmed it. The cringy part was keeping the lady on the phone for what seemed and eternity until it turned midnight. However she was lovely and was counting down the minutes with me with some brief chit chat in-between. 1minute to midnight she put me on hold and said she will come back once reserved. 5mins later she came back and pretended they went, before it set-in she said don’t worry I have the tickets. Confirmed the price and Avios plus card paying with and was booked. She asked me to check my emails to make sure I have the confirmation and all details are correct.
So all in all went so smoothly and now have my 241 voucher booked to the Maldives in Club World both ways. May thanks to all that helped me, the wiki, and for others that had to read all my questions and bumping this topic to the first page for weeks.
Lastly – BA Customer Services were absolutely brilliant. I did ask the agent while trying to kill time, what in her opinion was the hardest route to book on redemption as she just works on Avios bookings. Cape Town apparently.
Hi wdcosta117,
I was thinking about you this morning, hoping you’d managed to bag your seats so it was lovely to read of your success and many congratulations.
Thanks also for reporting back on how it went too as others will find this useful.
It’s all a bit scary when first starting out with these late night calls to grab the return seats but it becomes second nature after a few and of course, there should always be an element of flexibility, just in case. We were forced to stay an extra night when we were doing just this for our Maldives trip and couldn’t quite get the dates we wanted but as you can imagine, we weren’t too upset! (I used to find I couldn’t sleep for a couple of hours after a successful call as I was too excited!).
Now we have amassed quite a bank of Avios, we just book the returns online and claim the 50% back the next day - still a risk as others could be sweet talking the agents on the phone to block the seats the moment they become available as you did but we’ve done ok so far.
Thanks again for feeding back on your experience and your success - I wish you a wonderful trip and many more successes with this fantastic opportunity for long haul travel in comfort that has presented itself to us.