Hi all

I had a frustrating experience on Friday night at LHR T2.

On Thursday I booked an avios flight LHR-ORK 22.25 8th April on the BA website. Everything seemed well but when it came to checking in on the app, I was unable to. I assumed this was due to me being codeshare on EI and it didn't trigger the usual warnings it might had I been on BA (ie. check the ticket number!). I arrived at 9pm at T2 to check in and was told I had an incomplete reservation, and that they could not issue me a boarding pass. There are no BA representatives at this terminal, and the Aer Lingus ticket desk was unable to access my booking. I called the gold line, which had a message stating they were they not accepting calls about reservations (only 'customer service' issues which I guess this was) and that getting through would take up to 30 minutes. This would be past check-in time.

I had no other option than to buy a new ticket from Aer Lingus on the spot. In my haste I booked for the next day (the Aer Lingus app wasn't displaying the Friday flight) and for a moment I had two useless flights and no boarding pass - luckily the staff at check-in helped and transferred me over to the correct flight departing that night. I admit to feeling a little flustered which is definitely not my usual MO at the airport.

I then went through to the lounge and applied for an e-voucher (this was done before the cut-off time of one hour before the flight) to recover something from the mess, and I shortly received an email from BA stating that my booking was ineligible and that no voucher would be issued.

This is irritating as had they issued this, I would have just left it and moved on. Is the denial of a voucher correct - is this to do with the EI codeshare? I was fortunate to be able to book a new ticket - but I can only imagine how incomprehensible this would be to other customers who had paid and received confirmation of their booking.

I assume I can call the Gold Line at some point this week and get a refund for my BA ticket, or should I be contacting customer relations? Should I expect some pushback on getting this refunded? Thank you in advance for any advice or past experience with this.