Originally Posted by
Tontoro
Last night I booked two one way reward tickets GIG - LHR. When you select these tickets originally, it says the taxes and fees are around £17. Then when you go to the next screen, this has magically become about £430. Clearly this is a mistake (as has been covered in various places), as BA aren't allowed to charge these fees from Brazil, and if you book the same flight on avios.com, you only pay £17. Unfortunately I had to book on ba.com as it's the return leg of a 2-4-1 voucher flight.
The question is, should I try and get back this £400, which I'm sure would end up going to MCOL, or is this futile? Obviously MCOL isn't going to care about Brazilian law, so I feel like it probably won't work?
It's hard to see this as a mistake - I assume it's deliberate as it has been going on for years and continues on future quotes. The fees & taxes are slipped in after the supposed initial "total price" quote (e.g. a Club World GIG-LHR redemption 28 Mar 24 where GBP8 of fees & taxes becomes 200+). As you say, the work round has been to book via the Avios site which has the correct surcharge but I imagine many just accept the BA fees. One wonders whether local enforcement or a test case in Brazil might result in BA being required to refund all the passengers over many years who didn't query as the OP did (though presumably the MCOL process at the UK end has no such power)?