New cancellation policy on Ex UK MFU to CW? ( £200 cancel charge))
 

Hi,

When looking at a ex-LHR MFU to CW for LHR-PHX in Apr-May when ba.com comes up with the price £972 but under the fare rules it sates

cancellation before departure charge £200
changes before departure charge £200

The base WT+ has a no refund whatsoever and a £90 change fee.

I have not seen the £200 charge before on MFU tickets ( previously they would be non refundable)

Is this new or a ba.com glitch?

Regards

TBS

Systems is very flaky - as per my other post, my T fare originally showed as totally flexible. Just tried it again -and it also shows the £200 charge you have seen.

Added - if I just try and upgrade the outbound only - it goes back to allowing changes/cancellations without penalty.

I believe I saw something similar on an IAH-LHR around Nov/Dec last year. I believe I commented on it in another thread, but it looked like the change fees on the MFU were following the 'I' fares ($400), instead of the 'T' fares ($275). In that case, to my great surprise, I didn't need to change the reservation so I don't know if this was a change in policy or a system problem.

I have booked 3x MFUs to Club in the last 4 months and they have all shown this £200 cancellation.

I also commented on another thread about it as that particular MFU I specfically booked it because I needed the flexibility to cancel.

One I commented on yesterday - MFU to First to CAI allows a full refund - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...mal-fares.html

I would value a formal response on this as I don't feel comfortable relying on a print screen if I do need to cancel. Although some may think it wrong to alert BA to this sort of loophole (if it is one) I personally think it is of benefit to both BA and other pasengers for the details provided during booking to be as accurate as possible.

I have a WT+ return to PHL, MFU'd to CW booked in the January sale.

I may have to cancel, so I called BA who said it was non refundable as a result of the rules of the underlying T fare. I mentioned the £200 cancel fee I was quoted when I booked (and have a screen print) and they have just called me back to say they will honour it if I cancel, but it was a known system error.

Fair enough - although I have just done a dummy booking, and the same rules come up. This £200 fee has been around for a few months now - and if it's a known issue, seems a bit odd it's still there.

BA IT seems to be woefully understaffed, either in terms of quality or quantity. Issues like this on our internal systems would be fixed with 24 hours. Yet on BA's client-facing systems they persist for months.

For example, the ability to MFU a WTP fare on CWLCY was allegedly an IT glitch. This "glitch" persisted for months with little real evidence it wasn't actually genuinely allowed other than the word of one or two BA staff. Then they closed the "loophole", but in the most cack-handed way where it showed availability to the last minute and then when you got to the final quotation page gave their generic exception "Our systems are not responding". This easily reproducible bug persisted for many months. Anyone who works in IT knows that bugs which can be reliably reproduced are normally pretty easy to fix. The overall unpredictability and flakiness of the redemption engine is not so straightforward, I will admit, but it's still shocking how bad it is.