Hello everyone

I wanted to give you an update as to where we are in terms of Refunds.

The office responsible for processing BA refunds, in Mumbai, remains closed due to the lockdown in India. As many of you are aware, some refunds can be processed by those contact centre colleagues who take customer calls, which is why some show on accounts within a few hours or a day. Those refunds are, broadly, tickets which have never been previously reissued. The more complex cases can’t be processed right away, and are sent off to be dealt with. We have teams around the globe processing as many of these as possible, however the really tough ones then have to be dealt with by core teams of experts, which are mainly in Manchester and Delhi.

The same principle exists for Avios refunds, in that the more straightforward ones can, broadly, be done on the call. That said, a system glitch meant that for March-May no Avios bookings could be refunded when customers called the contact centres; that issue has now been fixed, meaning more of those can now be processed in that first contact, rather than having to be sent for processing. Again, the more complex examples of Avios refunds requires specialist support, which is mainly done by another team in Manchester.

The contact centres now have an escalation process for managing delayed refunds, which is working well, and overall it is now much easier for customers to reach the contact centres as our call volumes have fallen back from the highs in March and April. While it is busy today due to the raft of July cancellations yesterday, in recent times many callers have had no waiting times, so I would ask for your patience if trying to reach my colleagues. 80% of the MAN office now work at home, and a high percentage for NCL, meaning we can support callers from the safety of home. Bremen and Hong Kong continue to operate fully, while Delhi and Cape Town are back in business, albeit with reduced headcount in the office for safety.

I have now dealt with around 1500 queries from FT members, and with the exception of a couple of very tricky cases which are ongoing, have managed to resolve all issues. The inbound volume is now pretty low each day, which is good as it shows other standard channels are working well to obtain customer refunds, and also it enables me to do the “day job” fully again!

As a reminder, I can support you with refund escalations where you have been waiting over 14 days since requesting the refund. However, I am unable to assist with any BA Hols booking, future travel voucher issues, CR matters, requests to cancel future flights, OnBusiness, car or hotel issues.

Finally, thank you again for the overwhelming levels of support shown to myself and BA in general, it’s clear there are a lot of you very keen to get flying again as soon as possible. I’d like to again say that while it’s been myself managing the messages and have done a chunk of the refunds myself, the success of this FT initiative wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the high levels of specialist expertise here in Manchester, to fix issues and get things done for you, our customers. They have done an amazing job.

We are all looking forward to welcoming you back.