Thanks to C-W-S (as always), Scottishpoet and ubiest for your replies. After a totally useless 50 minutes on the chat line the best that the operator could come up with was that the only way to find an answer was to claim after the LHR-JNB return flights had been completed. Hardly the point. Anyway, a call to the gold line was picked up after 40 minutes and a really helpful chap tried to get to the bottom of the problem. Unfortunately, he couldn’t even find the booking on my account but traced the flight to my wife’s. Even then, he couldn’t find an answer so apologised profusely and transferred me to BA holidays. 50 minutes later (yes, I was dreading the 60 minute cut off) another really nice agent answered. She also couldn’t trace the booking either using the booking ref. or my wife’s or my exec club numbers. Not to be beaten, using our email address she succeeded! She sounded almost as relieved as I. There seems to be an ongoing problem with communication between the various BA IT systems (surprise) which is getting in the way. After a few minutes on hold she came back to advise that the return flights did qualify and full tier points would be awarded. In addition, although she didn’t know if a full press release had been issued yet, an internal briefing had advised that the double tier point offer has been extended until well into next year. She then offered to record all of this on our records in the event of any query if the points don’t appear in the future. Even without the offer, that’s two gold cards renewed for another year and no need for a trip to Gran Canaria but we may still go ahead anyway. The most surprising thing throughout this rather sad episode is just how friendly and professional were the two agents I spoke to. It must be really difficult to go to work knowing that customers may be quite upset and possibly antagonistic given the pressure that management has placed upon the system. Gold card awards and letters of appreciation are on their way but I do wonder if BA knows just how good some of their staff are.
PS anybody noticed a similarity between the music played whilst on hold to the theme of Black Adder? Perhaps appropriate!