Originally Posted by latitude
I think that is more than irratating when you are told you cannot use your fully flexible ticket that cost £££'s for days !
He hasn't been told that. He's only been told that the revalidation will not be processed immediately. If he had said I'd like to travel on the flight to DME in 4 hours, we would NOT say "I'm sorry sir. You must wait for 3 days." You may like to brag about the shortcomings of BA and how you all know the miraculous/common sense soultions, but this is certainly one scenario that would not arise.
I'm just at a loss as to how the OP has been so inconvenienced. If the agent who he had spoken to had said "I've revalidated your ticket for you sir" the OP would have had no way of knowing this was the case or not.
Originally Posted by latitude
People could take offence at that !!
NCL office encounters proportionately more difficulties, hence the comment.
Originally Posted by simon_n10
The thing is I know it can be done in a matter of seconds. I have stood over my TA at AMEX and waited for him to re-issue e-tix in the past. Also changed a booking recently and the BA lady at the desk in DME revalidated my e-ticket in front of me. Took 10 seconds if I call.
As I attempted to explain, we are having to get to use our new super-dooper, idiot proof and less functional version of Amadeus. Quite often, when the system says "no" then no amount of kicking, screaming and finger tapping on keyboards will make any difference.
Travel agents and airports work off a more raw version of Amadeus. This means lots of different, native entries that you have to remember, but the end result is more emphatic.
Originally Posted by simon_n10
It seems very inefficient to send it off somwhere (which probably takes as long as doing the work herself), to have someone else open it, read the notes, and do the work. May be someone needs a Time and Motion Study.
Your preaching to the converted.
As I said, hopefully this will be reversed with the next database release.
Originally Posted by simon_n10
The reason I booked this at ba.com and not with my TA was that I expected to have to make changes, and assumed I could do it easier online, rather than call my TA several times. Big mistake. I forgot that ba.com doesn't let you do basic things, like change a fully flexible J-class ticket, which you have booked at ba.com.
Anyway, last smile of the night
Still preaching to the converted. The Change Booking facility on BA.com is hopelessly crap. Embarrassingly so.
If you have found a TA who you trust, then stick with them. There are still a whole lot of travel agents - both corporate and leisure - who would have you believe that disproving Einstein's Theory of Relativity is easier than revalidating an e-ticket, calculating a change fee or offloading a pax who has used OLCI.
Still, I'm not sure what adverse effect this has whole scenario has had on your plans.