Thanks to all of your who have contacted me since yesterday evening UK time. I am working my way through the volume, and will aim to ring or PM you with updates, thanks for your patience. It's been nice to chat to a few of you today, and I am very, very grateful for your support and kind words.

To give an official view on some of this, the vast majority of the ones sent to me are classed as "complex" refunds in that they won't go through the front end systems of my colleagues who you speak to. Most are ones which have been previously reissued, but other reasons are where the original credit card has expired, or where for example the Avios won't auto-refund.

Normally, the team in Mumbai would process these but their office has been closed for two weeks due lockdown. A few days later, our largest call centre, in Delhi, also closed. A week later our second largest one, in CPT, also closed. I'm not looking for sympathy, simply looking to explain that we have lost around three quarters of contact centre headcount. The remaining offices in MAN/NCL/BRE/HKG are dealing with calls (fyi, UK opening hours changed today to 0800-2000 weekday and 0900-1700 weekend, due to us losing heads too due to sickness or self isolation), as well as the day to day ticket reissues, refunds, etc. Help has been secured from airport and HQ staff, all trying to work through the backlogs to assist all our customers, but of course the volume of daily inbound refunds is high. But we will get there!

One gentle reminder is that while can help with ticket refunds, Avios and GUFT/companion vouchers, I can't help with BA Hols queries or the "voucher" process put in place by BA in mid-March

Kind regards

BA refund helper

I pm'ed BA refund helper with my query and he called me back. He was extremely helpful, professional and an absolute pleasure to deal with. Thank you for starting this initiative and assisting us. For information - I had spoken with BA on 19 March for refunds in relation to two cancelled bookings. One was an Amex 2-4-1, and the other was a cash and Avios booking. With the first one, the voucher came back straightaway, but not the Avios or fees and charges. There was some issue with the Avios refund on the 2-4-1 but this was rectified last Saturday (after a couple of extra calls). And there was no movement on the second booking. After speaking with BA refund helper, he was able to expedite things at his end and I should be getting everything on my credit card by the end of the week. Thank you once again - and best of luck to everyone who is currently waiting.

I'm sitting at about 2.5 weeks on my requests that I'm still waiting for, so I figure it's best to wait till 3.5 weeks before reaching out to BA refund helper.

One of my flights was cancelled so was entitled to a full refund.

Also, I wanted to mention that the YouFirst rep I talked to said he was working from home

Based on the refund times reported on here, it seems that if one used the on-line refund process, whether actioned by the JavaScript workaround or not, it still required a human to "press the button" at some point to make the refund happen. When you have someone on the phone, and the transaction is clean enough, they can make it all happen while you're on with them! Just an observation and a theory

I think we all understand and sympathise with the workload and stress you have handling all these Refund Requests with the other Centres closed

I sent my PM to you so will keep my fingers crossed---what I did n't realise is that by phoning BA over the past few weeks to chase up a Refund ( since March 16 ) each Call resulted in the Request being bumped back to the end of the lineup!-- 're-queued'?------in retrospect should have kept quiet

Please keep up the good work!

Within 72 h of departure , phoned Gold line to cancel two J returns to SCL :: got through in under a minute , was told refund would maybe delayed a couple of days , top marks , excellent : sharp contrast to recent experience at LH which have now had to turn over to my credit card company.

Another big thank you to BA refund helper. PM sent this morning regarding a Cash + Avios + Avios Upgrade booking cancelled on 14 March. Avios back in the account within 2 hours, awaiting cash back into the Amex account.
He called up and spoke to my wife (it was actually a booking for her) and she said that he was extremely helpful.

DBarton, I was told the same by You First. Following up a refund delay would result in being dumped to the bottom of the queue. This contrasts with what others have reported. The You First staff try their best but seem to be restricted by difficulty with computing systems.

Here's a data point from last week. Flights HEL-LHR-HEL for end of April were cancelled in mid-March. Called last Tuesday (31.3.) to cancel booking and refunds were credited to my American Express on Thursday (2.4.). Flights were under 400� total.

Just received my e-voucher for a cancelled flight on March 24th. I tried to put it into the BA site to confirm the amount as there is nothing detailed in the email, and I don't want to bother the call centre but it gives me an xxx-xx pre-filled format which my voucher code doesn't fit. Is there a best way to do it? Only curious to confirm it was the same as it was a cash fare reduced with Avios, then I got a POUG offer which I took.

On March 18 I contacted BA to get my Avios award booking refunded due to disrupted travel schedule. The agent confirmed and initiated the refund process for both Avios and tax portion of the ticket. No cancelation fees would be charged on the booking due to it being an involuntary cancelation.

As of today, April 6, close to 3 weeks later the taxes has yet to be refunded to my CC. Have called back twice already, and first they said it could take up to 2 weeks. Called again today and they said there is no estimate at all.


Sent a PM to BArefundhelper, would appreciate if you could look into my case and see why it is taking so long?

More details in the main Rebooking thread, but basically you have to call up to rebook. You can't do it online. Also in the wiki of the main thread is a step by step guide to find out how much the voucher is but in short check the original booking email, it's the same value.

Amazing, thank you for such a quick response!

So I had a part avios part cash booking which I took the voucher for, I received my voucher number today but didn't get any avios back...So are the value of the avios contained within the voucher? Because I can't see how much the voucher represents, it's just a number...Thanks