Or what happened to me was I had to get a refund after a cancelled flight and managed to get thru to someone who apparently didn't understand how to do his job. He said he was sending my refund to the refunds team who would take care of the Avios points.

Fast forward 8 days - I have just been on hold for 40 mins, finally got thru toa lady who, once I explained what I was waiting for told me that the previous operator was wrong and that she (or he for that matter) take care of Avios refunds. She tapped away for a few minutes and the points were immediately showing in my account.

So take note BA - if some of your staff knew their jobs, you'd be getting less calls as we wouldn't need to ring back!