I don‘t want to burst your bubble, but I have also been through this and thought I found an agent that understood the problem. The fact is that BA has increased the Avios required for short-haul redemptions. When booking point-to-point the first step of an “Avios plus cash” redemption includes a cash component roughly equal to the previous RFS amount and reduces the Avios required to roughly the previous RFS level.

If you are not entitled to RFS, BA will charge you the full new Avios amount plus a taxes and fees component.

If booking a short-haul flight in conjunction with a long-haul flight, RFS has no bearing and they will charge full new Avios for the short-haul component as well as taxes and fees for the full end-to-end journey. If one is entitled to RFS, then one is being royally screwed over because of paying the higher Avios to reduce taxes and fees whilst still being charged them. In the beginning of this happening I could get it adjusted, but in the last 6 months I have been unable to do so.

The only reason I think there is less written about it on here is because the majority of this forum’s contributors are generally UK-based and this change has been largely irrelevant.

Please do report back the final Avios and cash amounts you get charged as a reference for others of us that no longer seem to be able to get this done the “old” way.