How can I be sure a shorthaul Y BD-only redemption gets upgraded to C?
 

I redeemed on Friday a oneway Miles award EDI-CPH in Y using the website, wanting to take advantage of the Gold Upgrade benefit. From reading our sticky here, it indicates that the upgrade happens at booking. I have repeated logged on to checkmytrip.com and MYB on flybmi.com and neither seem to indicate that I'm booked in J. FWIW, at the time of booking (and still) there is J award availability on this flight.

Is this just a matter of calling and asking to get upgraded? Or should I rest assured that the system will take care of things?

Make that call. The redemption website is woefully flaky (bmi seems to want to dedicate its web resources on shabby makeovers rather than making what they have work properly), and it is only after trial and error that we have discovered the protocol is :

Excuse me for being daft.. but can you upgrade an award? On BD, using the coupon?

If you're referring to using a GUV, I don't know.

I was referring to the published benny of a Gold BD-metal only redemption getting bumped up. I called and the agent insisted on charging me a change fee. I bumped it up to a supervisor, who waived the change fee and rebooked me.

Are agents not trained to know about this - this agent wasn't familiar with the benefit?

I didn't think the website ever did the upgrade for Golds benefit? (I may be wrong there though, but the site is useless) Technically (although I don't agree with it) I think the agent was right to try to charge a change fee as you booked economy online and then went looking to change. However, I'd have been miffed if it was me being asked for that, so the supervisor made the common sense call on sorting it for you. ^

Yes they do know about the benefit, but you, no doubt, confused them by having a reservation already. That's probably not in their script. ;) They're used to dealing with booking in the C or PE cabins and it pricing lower for BD*G.

While for marketing purposes, calling it a free upgrade sounds better, it is in reality, a C or PE ticket charged at the lower rate. It's those cabins you look for inventory in and book accordingly, not the Y cabin and then get the upgrade. That also applies to online bookings, which as you're now aware, most of us wouldn't touch if our lives depended on it !

That's exactly how it works. It's been a while since I did this, but the bmi FAQ sticky is correct

Basically if you are a Gold member, you book online as if you are booking a normal business redemption ticket. Then you ignore what it says about the (miles) price when you get to that screen. After you've made you're booking, you'll find that only 2/3 of the normal miles are deducted from your account (I think it's a manual intervention, so it pays to check!)

Sometimes there may be reasons why a Gold member might choose to book Y instead of C - particularly for short hops, the doubling of tax is particularly onerous, so depending on my mood, sometimes I figure that it's not worth the extra £40 or whatever it is for a bento box (...and a bit of curtain that increasingly seems to be missing from domestic flights I'm taking). I can always use one of my stockpile of expiring GUVs at check in if I change my mind (and avoid paying APD)

Hence, unfortunately the call centre agent was technically correct in asking you to pay a cancellation fee, as you may have deliberately booked into Y. As RAPC says though, good on the supervisor for waiving the fee ^ ... did he also charge you double the tax for being in a higher ticketed cabin?

Perhaps I'm simply more aware of technicalities now, but without any Terms and Conditions present, its pretty deceptive (as far as US law goes, which I know isn't the same) for them to market it as a Free Upgrade, but then require it to be booked as J redemption, especially when the J redemption screen shows it as J miles or J M+C again without any Ts&Cs indicating that I'll be receiving a refund/rebate. A simple enough mistake on my part to assume otherwise (and somehow misread that section in the sticky:eek:) I'm probably not the first person to make this mistake and request, nor will I be the last, and I'm glad that the supervisor acted kindly on my behalf^



Lesson learned:) Since I live in the States, if I want to book a ticket between Noon and Midnight my time I need to do it via the website. And being a Friday evening and all, I couldn't guarantee that I'd wake up by 10am Saturday morning to talk to an agent. Beer won over award tickets:D

No, you certainly are not, welcome to all that is bmi award booking ! :p

Technically it is a free upgrade, just the process of achieving it is backward to how you'd imagine it to be.

While I agree the online pricing is deceptive and confusing, you don't actually receive a rebate, your account just gets charged Y mileage. You, of course, now know it's a piece of cr@p.


10am? you amateur, should be at least the afternoon ! :D

Indeed. I once had the miles deducted correctly at Y level but the Cah portion of the C+M booking still at the business level. I had to call CR and get them to reimburse it.

Shorthaul ex-UK, a C redemption will be an extra £10 to HM Customs and Excise and an extra £4 to BD for the higher fuel surcharge compared to a Y redemption.

Well, to be fair, it does say here, that upgrades are "Subject to availability" (i.e. subject to the availability of award inventory in J... just like Y is subject to award inventory in Y)

But, I take your point, the website is confusing and does not say exactly how Gold members are meant to redeem their miles, except by calling

So, the lesson is that you should definitely call if at all possible. I know that the opening times are not particularly convenient, but I think it's a fair assumption on bmi's part that there really aren't many (any?) frequent bmi-travelling Gold card holders based in the US...

I think there's a few more now than say 18 months ago.

While OT for this thread, I would say though, that in 2008, not having 24 hour phone coverage is ridiculous. If they don't want to do it, at least US members should be able to redeem on the BD US phone line.

...each way. £28 return within the UK. And it can all start to add up with stopovers and such (although that point is more relevant to BA, where the foibles of the redemption system means that I often book back-to-back tickets with 3-4 month "stopovers" in London - e.g. DUB-LON-ZRH instead of DUB-LON and LON-ZRH - why waste the miles?!)

OT, and agreed, I would love to have 24 hour phone coverage. But while there are more Gold card holders in the US than there used to be, I wonder how many of them frequently travel bmi? Honest question, I have no idea what the answer is!

Still OT :p

I believe ex. US ticket sales are better these days. The issue was and, to a point, continues to be, that the BD US site advertises many fares that are impossible to book at flybmi.com and many other online agents. That does not endear bmi to the US traveller. Can't book online ? they head straight to united.com or others.

While we've had some of the same problems, like PE ex. anywhere but MAN, the failures of the booking engine for ex. US tickets was embarrassing.

You misunderstand friend:) 10am here in SFO is 6pm in London...I knew I was boozing it Friday night (and Saturday night) so my choice was website Friday afternoon my time (middle of the night in UK) or wait until Monday - and I know better than to wait and get burned by award inventory disappearing overnight...