mclachlan4321

10k for being refused to use fast track at Cologne airport.

Gold, flying in CE. 1/12/23.

IJN Harekaze

Ten thousand?

Surely Nein would have been more appropriate

aab203

Hello,

First timer here - hoping to get some advice on whether to accept a BA offer or push for a hopefully better resolution via CEDR.

My family and I flew to Orlando in August and went Business Class. Long story short, my seat suffered a total loss of power just before take-off and couldn't be resolved. So I had a chair that was not fully upright and couldn't be re-positioned. I also had no use of the entertainment system / screen - so no games, movies etc. The outward journey originated in Dublin and went via Gatwick. It was the LGW - MCO flight that had the issue. The customer services rep onboard said this was bad and filled out a complaint form on my behalf when we landed.

My individual cost for the round-trip was €1,894.84. I'm actually based in London, but arranged for the flight to originate in Dublin as we were already going to be there on the dates we wanted to go to MCO.

After BA finally responded and some back and forth I was offered 80,000 Avios compensation. I rejected this in favour of an e-Voucher as I don't travel that often and felt an e-Voucher would be more useful to me. They offered my a �450 e-Voucher. Converting the price I paid in € would be �1,655.77 (conversion rate based on the day I booked the flights). I don't know what the cost of the specific LGW-MCO leg was but feel it would naturally be more than the cost of the DUB-LGW leg.

Is the �450 e-Voucher offer a good / fair one and should I accept it? Personally it feels low given what I paid, but I'm not sure how objective I'm being!

Any thoughts welcome

Sigwx

For an infrequent flyer I�d say that the 80,000 avios offer was not a bad offer. �450 depends on how you perceive it and only you know if you feel that is reasonable. I�m not sure what else CEDR would bring in this instance. Ultimately you were no doubt able to use lounge at LGW, and had the option of having the seat manually turned into a bed if requested and were no given the catering as asvertised. So for a lack of IFE (which I admit is a PITA for a day flight) and the lack of seat functionality on one sector of what I imagine was a round trip (?) I�d say it wasn�t a bad offer in my book. Others may of course disagree but ultimately it is up to what you think it is worth, but I doubt CEDR would bring anything extra to the table from BA.

aab203

Thanks for the quick reply. The seat was unable to be manually made flat as I think the seat was jammed. I'm not sure if it was this which ultimately led to the power issue (it felt like there was a surge at one point when I was using the chair before take off). And yep it was a round-trip (I've updated my original post to make that clearer).

We are a family of five, so I felt the 80,000 Avios offer was a little wasted on me as realistically I'd never be booking an Avios only rewards flight but rather just use the points to take some money off a cash flight. I priced up a similar flight to see what Avios amounts were required to get different reductions and it seemed that 80,000 points would not give a fare reduction of �450 - so the e-Voucher offer seems 'better' than the 80,000 Avios. Not sure if my logic is wrong in any way though!

I agree with your points and I am leaning towards accepting the offer as I also don't really want to be dragging this out more than it already has - but I wasn't sure if anyone on here had similar experiences or felt taking the Avios was a better route.

Thanks again!

SonTech

You could convert the avios to nectar points and spend them in Sainsburys/Argos if that's where you shop. Not sure what the conversion rate is though as I convert the other way around.

marcolau317

300 Avios to 400 Nectar Points, then 500 Nectar Points to �2.5 spend at Sainsburys/Argos/ebay UK
At 80000 Avios, this would translate into around �530 (though you have to convert it over 2 months, it's 50100 Avios to 66800 Nectar Points maximum per month)

PETER01

Sorry to hear about your seat issues and welcome to Flyertalk and here at the BA Board aab203.

I'd say that was a decent offer and agree with what the other posters have said so far. Personally I'd take it and some good tips re converting it to Nectar points.

AJA_

I would hate suffering a seat failure like that. But I think 80k Avios was a decent offer and i would've accepted it since I value Avios at 1p each meaning that you were offered the equivalent of �800. This is somewhat more than the subsequent cash voucher but even that is decent given that it is roughly a quarter of what you paid for the return trip. I'd take the �450 e-voucher and move on.

corporate-wage-slave

The other point to make is that Avios can be transferred to a long list of other airlines: Aer Lingus, Vueling, Iberia, Qatar (and indirectly jetBlue), presumably soon Finnair. And BA's own Avios list of airlines spans all oneworld airlines. Plus you can book for other people such as friends and family. And hotels and car hire, less efficiently. So while Nectar is fallback, I would hope you could get well more than �530 out of this.

emeraldflyer

25k to GCH for AVOD not working in CW, July

The flight was also delayed

rontse

5k Avios for not having water from the bathroom tap. It�s ok for a three hours flight, but it�s still a bit gross!

DXB2745

you just contradicted yourself, but still wrote in? BA seemingly hand out Avios like smarties - I must get on the bandwagon.

aab203

Thanks for all the feedback!

Sounds pretty unanymous that the offer is reasonable and not worth the trouble trying to squeeze anything further out - which I agree with.

Thanks for the suggestions of what can be done with the Avios points should I stick with keeping what I was given. I am possibly going to take a Vueling flight in April / May time - so good to know Avios is a potential option there!

Much appreciated.

Edit: It looks like my original post was merged into this one?

Wozza2404

80k Avios is (at least lately) the standard compensation for a completely non functional long haul business class seat.

CEDR are unlikely to be able to do anything else here, so your only other option is to take BA to court through the MCOL system for failure to provide the advertised product. Assuming your return flight was OK you'd be looking at around EUR800 claim value based on the ticketed price for that leg of the journey. And with that calculation done, I'd 100% be taking the 80k Avios and walking away on this one.