Bizarre and creative ICC shenanigan ? (denied boarding on middle leg of award)
 

After thinking I'd got off lightly with the ICC, who booked me a multi-stop reward itinerary with Thai, I'm now 300-quid out of pocket after they failed to ticket one single sector of the journey.

I had no idea that was even possible, but after taking the long-haul bit of the flight and having a stop-over, I was denied boarding for a short domestic leg. I had been able to check-in online for this leg with the same PNR; they'd loaded my special meal; the "check-my-trip" website showed that the flight was confirmed; and I had a ticket number for the whole reward trip. It's just that this ticket number apparently covered every flight on the itinerary except for one.

After an hour at the counter and ticket office (the TG staff were lovely, but couldn't move beyond "this-is-very-strange" and offer me a solution) I was forced to buy a one-way ticket, and they applied this new ticket number to the existing PNR. Very strange.

And so I filled in the online complaints form to ask BMI to give me my 300 quid back, and they haven't replied after nearly 10 days. Any advice how to proceed?

And: beware for your own reward flights. This seems weird even by ICC standards!

I dont think this requires a new thread. Why not add it to existing ICC shenanigans threat, I mean you even use the word ICC Shenanigan in your title for the thread.

How on earth were you 300 quid out of pocket, short domestic legs on Thai should never cost that much!

If you don't think this requires its own thread, then I will certainly need to read the main one more!

Generally the main one seems to be problems at the time of booking, etc.
I think this is a tad more serious than the frequent problems... or at least I hope it isn't that frequent a problem.

Write to customer relations explaining your situation. Their snail mail address can be found on the website or email customer.relations at flybmi.com. You'll need to supply evidence i.e. receipts of what you paid. Can't see a problem getting the money back eventually if it was bmi's screw up. May even be worth calling CR first. Good luck.

I think we'll leave this one as a standalone thread for now, until the OP can report back on the actual cause of this "very strange" occurrence.

O F

Send a letter by registered mail and set a date by which you expect the money to be in your account/cheque in your possession, and if they ignore it follow up with an on-line money claim (www.moneyclaim.gov.uk). They get two weeks to reply to that and if they don't you can request judgment by default which means the court will order bmi to pay up immediately. The good thing about this system is that ignoring is not an option for the debtor. It's just 30 pounds and it has worked for me with different airlines. Good luck!

Jumping the gun there, don't you think? Send a claim to bmi? :confused:

Until the OP gives more details, I wouldn't be too quick to blame bmi and the ICC. I see nothing, so far, that indicates their guilt.

The OP stated he was denied boarding at the airport, due to some irregularity, after using OLCI for his TG domestic flight. If the ICC hadn't ticketed the reservation properly I dare say that would have been difficult to accomplish.

Reminded me of the time I spent at the TG office myself trying to sort out BD's problem too way back in 2007.

I had 2 reservations booked TG BKK to DPS. BD didn't issue my ticket in time before TG sector got cancelled. The remaining sectors however remained intact. ie DPS-SIN-KUL on SQ. And BD issued those sectors the next day without clarifying what had happened.

TG res office could see the entire PNR cos they use AMADEUS- just like BD. They kindly printed the entire PNR for me to read and I basically saw the problem right away.

BD had priced the itinerary and sent the res over to ticketing. My friend's ticket was issued on one day. The day that TG had set a ticketing deadline. Maybe because his last name alphabetically is "A" and mine is "T".But as mine wasn't issued till the next day, TG had automatically cancelled their segment but leaving the SQ sector which BD had issued but clearly without a clue as to what happened.

And cos the DC isn't open till 8am UK time, there isn't much one can do that day so had to stay on in BKK till they opened. DC in ICC initially denied that it was their fault and after much cafafus, they admitted fault and reissued our tickets entirely. My friend opted to stay on with me instead of flying out first.

So - I had wasted time , money, phone calls and grief over this issue and all DC did was to give me 10K miles (x2) for my 'troubles'.

Thanks for your replies.

Thinking about this, maybe it's hasty to blame the poor ICC, when this could have been an issue somewhere else in the system. But I think it is clearly BMI's mistake. TG gave me two print-outs, one showing my itinerary according to the PNR, and one showing the itinerary according to the ticket number. The first had the domestic flight included; the second did not.

So this does look like a very odd situation where one sector of several just wasn't ticketed. And, it wasn't last leg as the thread title now states, it was the third leg of five.

I contacted BMI through the "Complaints" form on the website: how long do they usually take? The automated reply said they aim to reply within 2 working days and it's been way longer than that.

Oh, and the £300 figure is the walk-up J-fare for 2 passengers travelling CNX-HKT.

Title adjusted. :)

Woah, you're quick!

A big reason to double check the segments of the actual ticket match the pnr using eitr.amadeusasia.com :eek:

The OP has a point though - I'd be fuming if I found out that I wasn't on the flight because of an error with the ticketing office, in this case, bmi. I would take a guess that most people who book reward travel through bmi do not have the knowledge of being able to check their PNR and segments using amadeus. Why should we have to?

Funnily enough, with nearly all of my redemption bookings with bmi, I have had to chase up the ticketing, sometimes less than 24 hours before i am due to fly out.

Ho hum.

Sorry to hijack this thread and slightly OT, but I have a forthcoming UA trip booked through the corp TA. CMT does not show any eTicket, and eitr.amadeusasia.com comes back with NO ETICKET DATA, yet UA and Viewtrip both show the ticket number - ideas?

I believe that's because United don't use amadeus....