hartmannt

I purchased a business class ticket MUC-SFO back in December and promptly had to reschedule my trip. Unfortunately I didn't get through to BA right away because of the Heathrow snow disaster. It took me 3 full days of calling every possible number and I finally got through. Unfortunately, the person that picked up the phone was from an outsourced call center somewhere in Asia and not "regular" BA customer service. I had a hard time understanding the person and she told me to "hurry up" because of the many calls they had. She advised me to reschedule my flight to a random date out in the future and I scheduled the flight out 6 months later in June (and paid very high change and adjustment fees).
In the meantime, I couldn't fly BA as I was doing business elsewhere. I completely forgot about the BA ticket but expected to get a reminder via email or phone as an Executive Club Member. Having flown BA many many times in the past, I always got prompted to complete my passport information etc. and was reminded about other things in an email that was sent to me prior to flying. So I relied on this again this time to let me know about the ticket so I could rebook it once again and fly to MUC in September with my family.
Well, not this time, I received nothing. Even though BA has my information (and I checked, it's all correct, my email, phone etc. and nothing stuck in Spam etc.). I missed the flight date. I called today and spoke with several people in CS and they all told me it was my fault. They told me the ticket was now non-refundable, non-rebookable with no value left.
I explained the situation but they brushed me off rudely even though I am a very polite and calm person on the phone. Can anyone help me please or have any ideas? Thanks much in advance.

HIDDY

If you had to promptly re-schedule your trip why did you just pick a random date?
I'm not sure what you meant by this.

BicesterTerrier

Welcome to FT hartmannt, although I can understand your frustration I am with Hiddy in as much as selecting a random date in the future was never going to help remember it. You suggest you were brushed off by CS but I guess that's the old your word their word argument.

I can't offer anything here, perhaps a nicely worded email to CS might serve to explain things better, but I imagine you won't get much in return.

EDIT - I guess I am also with Hiddy as we are currently in the same time zone, probably have to wait a while for the Europeans to pop up with any advice.

HIDDY

Where are you GRU?

I think I get it now.

The OP couldn't travel on the original dates so picked a random date in the future, paid the change fee rather than cancelling.
He completely forgot about the re-scheduled date and now wishes a refund because BA didn't send him a reminder.

Plums come to mind.

LHR-HUB

Plums?

As in, "Oh 80110x, I forgot to take/change my flight"?

hartmannt

Yes I was forced to just pick a random date in the future, otherwise I would have lost the entire ticket. Shame on me I didn't remember that date but I travel a lot internationally and this is just one of dozens of open tickets I have at the moment. In the past, I always got my reminders electronically from every airline and I just assumed I would get something from British Airways again before the flight. This is the first time that I did not receive anything prior to my random flight date. Is this a new BA thing now not inform customers about their upcoming reservations?

Thanks much for your advise.

HIDDY

They are still sending out reminders and have been for years. Are you sure you had the same email address attached to your booking as the one that's in your BAEC contact details?
I recently saw when I changed my BAEC contact email address it wasn't reflected in an earlier booking. I only noticed when I made changes to the booking and didn't receive a confirmation...it had gone to the address I had in the booking rather than my BAEC one.

I fear you won't get any joy from BA as it's really up to you to remember when you are flying.

Should add that you will be due some taxes back so it's definitely worth asking them.

hartmannt

Thanks HIDDY! My email hasn't changed these past 10 years and I keep getting their ads and promotional materials all the time.
Good idea on the taxes, thanks. The ticket was very expensive as it was last minute at the time (but not full fare unfortunately).
What irks me is how they just brushed me off so easily and didn't even want to investigate. The CS supervisors said that the system would have sent something and that I probably just overlooked it. Well, I can prove that nothing was sent so they should investigate that. They also said that when I rebooked it, I might not have given them my email... Not true either because the original booking was under my Executive Club membership with my email.

OPebble

You really do seem to have been SOL!

Sitting here reading your posts, an email has just popped up from BA reminding me to check in for a flight tomorrow. So they do send them out and I am 100% certain that it is an automatic process! Hope you get something back.

ColdWalker

I assume you have checked your deleted items box. Not all the sending addresses BA use are the same and so it may not be with all the marketing gumph you receive. Also email is not an infallible system: There are many reasons why you may not have received the email, not all of them the fault of BA.

At the end of the day it really is down to the passenger to remember their flights. You could have diaries the time away after all.

henkybaby

You are a BAEC member so the flight would have been in your profile all this time. Do you check your profile?

I do think that - assuming that you travel as much as you say you do and that a substantial portion of it is on BA so you have status - a PM to Nicci might clear things up.

Phil the Flyer

Apologies for the confusion. Was the ticket MUC-SFO or SFO-MUC?

colmc

Well you know what they say about assumption..

The problem is you can't - some mail providers filter "spam" (or what they think is spam) before it ever reaches your inbox. What they consider as spam can change from day to day. Email, as pointed out, is most definitely not infallible.

Unfortunately, in this situation, it was your responsibility to keep a track on your own travel plans. Relying on a notification mail was a mistake, and it may turn out to be an expensive one. As has been said, BA may do something, but I suspect if they do it will be as a good will gesture.

LeisureFirst

It sounds to me like the OP was poorly advised by the call centre, although it's difficult to judge without knowing the whole conversation - BA keep records of all call centre conversations and can usually recall them very fast.

This sounds like it was a non-refundable ticket which was changeable for a fee. Most cheap US-originating tickets in all classes (in particular I,R and D fares) normally fall into this category, If you can't travel on the original date you can't just no-show and then change the date when you know when you want to travel - you lose the ticket then. (This catches out a lot of Americans, as US carriers tend to be more generous in these circumstances). It looks like this is just what happened to the OP in the end.

Unfortunately, this does mean that if you can't travel on the originally booked date, but don't know for certain if and when you will want to travel, you're in a bit of a dilemma, because the only way to keep the ticket is to change it for a particular date in the future and pay the change fee. If it turns out you can't travel on that day you've effectively lost that change fee and are faced with the same problem: do you pay another change fee, or just cancel the ticket and get the taxes back?

These change fess can be quite hefty ($500 or so iirc) so after a couple of changes you end up thinking you would have been better off cancelling and waiting until you were sure of your travel plans.

Advising the OP to pick a "random date" was very bad. At least he should have been advised that perhaps he might pick a date on which there was a fair chance he would want to make the trip - if he didn't know of such a date, he should have just cancelled the ticket.

Dave Noble

If you failed to change it before the flight date and the ticket has no value with a no show, what more exactly dd you want them to do ? I can't see what there is to investigate; it is the passenger's responsbility to get to airport for the flight not the airline's