Originally Posted by
libove
Twenty years ago, during my decade working for Delta Air Lines, it was a somewhat human company, and while of course the fare rules had a very few clear cases where we just would allow a customer to make a change despite their fare rule, we also did sometimes apply humanity and common sense, particularly to opportunities to fly a person earlier on a flight which otherwise would have gone out with seats in that same class empty, giving us the chance to re-sell the passenger's originally purchased later-date inventory. That's just good business.
But humanity, and even common sense, at the corporate level, seems to have been almost completely squeezed out of the airlines at this point. It's a sad state compared to what I knew back then.
To be fair - and I am generally as critical of BA as anyone on this forum - BA can be quite flexible and accommodating in the case of true crises and emergencies. (Perhaps not as accommodating as they used to be, but there have been some positive stories here recently.)
You, however, wish to change an inflexible, non-refundable booking purely for reasons of convenience, and I don't think BA has any obligation, moral or legal, to do that. They are already being very generous in offering to make the change for the difference in fare only.