ronniehugh

A word of warning to anyone wishing to book a ticket on line with BA with a 10% shareholder's discount. Last year I booked a cruise to the Antarctic for February, 2010, which had been a life-long dream. As I was able to get a 10% discount as a BA Shareholder, I decided to book the flight separately from the cruise and on 6 July,2009 I booked a business class ticket on BA's website at just short of �3000 departing LHR on 12/02/10 to Buenos Aires and returning from Buenos Aires to LHR on 05/03/10. At the end of July, 2009 the cruise company cancelled the February cruise on which I had booked but offered me an alternative departure in November, 2009. When I looked on the BA website, it said the ticket I had purchased was 'non-changeable'. I contacted the customer relations telephone number to explain the situation and was told that if I had wanted to book a ticket which allowed the change of dates, I should have booked a 'flexible' ticket' at an additional cost of �2000!!! I even wrote to the Chief Executive of BA, Willie Walsh, to complain about the inflexibility of BA's policy about changing the dates of a business class that I had booked 7 months in advance, even though I was willing to pay a fee for the date change and although the letter I received in reply said that Willie Walsh had asked the person who replied to me to respond, I doubt if the letter even got to the Chief Executive's desk. BA still refused to change the date and said if I wanted to cancel the ticket I could and the refund I would have received on a �3000 ticket was �144!!
I have learnt 2 lessons from this experience. Never book a flight separately from a tour or cruise that you book, as if the tour/cruise is then cancelled, it is the tour/cruise operator who bears the cost for the cancelled air ticket and rebooking the air ticket on an alternative date. Do not think that British Airways has the customer's interest at heart, even if you are a Silver Card Executive Member and a British Airways shareholder.
There is one positive outcome to this sorry story. The cruise operator, Noble Caledonia, when learning of my plight, offered me a free business class return ticket with Lufthansa from London to Buenos Aires via Frankfurt as part of the cruise price.

Jimmie76

I'm sorry to hear about your cruise being cancelled and the success you had with the cruise company. BA is however a business and there are rules attached to your ticket, which BA is upfront about and you would have agreed to at the time of booking the ticket. Therefore if you booked an inflexible ticket and needed to change it then indeed the bit you would have got back was the taxes/fees which is obviously a very small percentage of your overall cost. You are quite correct that you should buy things like this together as a package if possible precisely because of this. Did you have travel insurance and if so can you recover any of the money from that?

If BA did change tickets for everybody there would be no point in selling inflexible tickets and the prices would go up. As I said at least BA tell you the rules concerning your ticket which is more than the train operating companies do in this country.

Flying Winemaker

Would travel insurance not have covered this situation?

bjorns

This is not a shareholder issue, but something that all who book flights and hotels seperately should be (and I thought was common knowledge) aware of.

It has been said often, that only if you book a package, do you have a guarantee that if one thing changes, the tour opperator needs to change the other arrangements, or offer a full refund.

The other way around this, is to have travel insurance that covers you in such cases.

What are the terms of your travel insurance?

If you book things seperately, you either need to make flexible bookings, or get insurance that covers you for things like this.

I know this isn't what you want to hear and I do sympathise, but BA's response was correct.

bjorns