Originally Posted by MileHighLawyer

It's been a while since this issue has been aired, but it's got me absolutely furious the last few weeks...

My company forces all employees to use a TA for all air travel, incl. BA. Company forces us to use Y or lower (if no justification for flex tickets) for <5hrs flights. I'm prepared to pay for an upgrade myself for all the usual reasons (strange as it seams, getting to the front of the taxi queue at CDG is high ranking among them at 8:25am trying to get to a 9:30am meeting in central Paris!). I cannot upgrade via the TA as they do not allow it (apparently they'd not be able to charge me for it, and cannot charge my company, not that I'd want them to). I cannot upgrade on OLCI (pre T-24) because TA / BA don't want to take his money (the option is greyed out). During T-24, the upgrade option shows, but always fails on the final payment page with the message of something like "go speak to your travel agent". My only option has been to go to the T4 ticket desk on morning of travel (assuming someone there doesn't tell me "no" because it's a TA ticket), and purchase a very expensive C/J ticket, but recently I haven't even been able to do that due to there being no availability!

Don't you want my money, BA?

So what can I do?

- Is there some way of asking the TA or BA to 'release' their stranglehold on the booking?

- Is there some way of 'tricking' OLCI into upgrading the ticket (this used to be the case by just trying over and over again, but it doesn't seem to work these days - and the error message has changed to reference TA being the reason)?

- Any other ideas?

Cheers
/MHL