stargold

Lol. You keep thinking that. I'd say your spelling was one of the less pressing issues, but ho hum.

As Globaliser says, the important thing is that Nicci was able to help. At the end of the day, the customer service aspects tend to overrule many of the strict legal considerations.

uk1

Lol. Rather than continuing with the cheapos, why don't you state specifically what I have said that is incorrect? That should be quite easy for you. I've been very specific. You haven't.

Magic01273

Personally, I'd like to thank UK1 for his contribution to this thread.

I've found his opinion to be very well articulated - and regardless of whether you feel his specific view on this particular case to be correct or not - the spirit and principles behind his arguments in this thread DO hold to be absolutely, incontrovertibly, correct.

Consumers should not blindly accept that everything they have signed up to is enforceable. Nor that everything they have read - or even accepted - is necessarily right or fair. That they do have avenues and options available to them to challenge things like this and that they most certainly are not completely and automatically bound by contracts or T&Cs, the way many people or companies would have them believe.

That itself, is a valid and very important message to consumers, readers of FT and the public generally, I feel.

Strangely, some on this thread seem to have argued - not just against his assessment of the specific of this scenario - but almost against the very essence of what he is saying.

angatol

.....

uk1

Thanks.

NickB

+2

I must confess to being rather incredulous at some of the posts in this thread and their combativeness notwithstanding a patent lack of knowledge and/or understanding of UK Consumer law. Given that the OFT, in its 2008 guidance on the UTCCRs, makes it clear that it regards restrictions on the consumer's right to assign inter vivos as suspect as regards fairness, I would have thought that the case of prima facie manifest unfairness under the UTCCRs of terms preventing the transfer of rights on death would be rather compelling.

As to Nicci's intervention, of course we should applaud Nicci's intervention. In this as in so many other occasions, Nicci has proven herself yet again to be of invaluable assistance to FTers. This, however, does not in anyway justify the inclusion by BA of unfair terms in its contract of carriage in the first place.

Another potential reason (albeit not enough of a justification, imo) which I do not think has been mentioned as to why it might be useful for an airline to have such a clause in its terms even though it might be willing to waive it fairly easily would be that it would make the balance sheet look a little better if you can notionally write off a number of miles based on actuarial calculations on the expected deaths (and therefore in principle cancellation of miles) of BAEC members.

baggageinhall

Quite. In relation to the point in bold above, I'm not for one moment suggesting that lawyers are always right, but uk1's posts showed from the outset that he knew what he was talking about. They were well presented cogent summaries of the position that the OP could present, the likely response from BA and what a court would likely do.

Most importantly, I'm glad the OP has had this resolved properly. Large companies rely / appear to rely on saying 'No' to initial requests and most people giving up at that point.

uk1

Thanks NickB

The whole point of the legislation was to put right one of the ideas that a few of the people who are able to consturct punkquasi-legalese have totally failed to understand.

The legislation was intended to correct the imbalance of power between a corporation and a single consumer. That is the "imbalance " referred to in the law - not what has been misconstructed from it in an earlier post.

The law basically says that it is unacceptable for a corporation (or in most cases corporations collectively within an industry with common terms and conditions that are unfair) to say "accept our unfair terms and condtions or go elsewhere". Where? If the terms and conditions are common and consumers are faced with the power of the corporation than this represents a precis of what is intended by the concept of "imbalance". It's my annoyance that the intention of the law has been thwarted by corporations using the techinque of leaving the unfair clauses in, rejecting requests at first line then always saying "yes - we're nice - we'll make an exception for you" when confronted. This is a cynical conspiracy to exploit an understandable ignorance even amongst those that think they are savvy. That is why I am energised.

My passion in this was simply to encourage the OP not to accept the bum-steer from the first-line BA response, and at the same time to alert others that may read the thread that in this situation BA are trying to enforce an unfair term that they know full well is unfair, but for their own commercial reasons do not wish to see tested because it is with 99% certainty unenforceable.

In the same way that a bank would be entitled to close the account of someone deceased but not keep the cash, nor can BA. If BA genuinely believe that they are selling the public a product or service with no value and which the purchaser never owns - then they should be deeply ashamed of themsleves and simply stop doing it.

HIDDY

Out of interest does UK Consumer Law also protect members who aren't based in the UK?

orbitmic

I would have thought the important criterion would be the location of the contract and not the residence of either party.

uk1

It covers everybody other than those that have previously rather rudely and insensitvely said:

So in your case .. the provisions of UK law do not apply as you say clearly "jury is still out". Take your case to your local court.

HIDDY

Yes I see this clause in the T&C's.

^

pinkcat

I am very sorry that your husband has died and that has what has brought you to FT.
I can say with certainty that I will be in the same position as you in a few months as my husband is not responding to the chemotherapy as we had hoped, he has been told not to fly so we have no way of using the avios up and I dont want to fly without him at the moment so I guess his avios will get swallowed up by BA.

Roger

Sad to hear your news, pinkcat.

If your husband is able to travel (on land), one option could be to use Avios for hotel accommodation.

I'm not sure if this can be done at ba.com but it can be done at avios.com in which case you would need to transfer BA Avios to avios.com Avios, opening an avios.com account if necessary.

uk1

Terrible, terrible news. Best wishes and all thoughts. I feel terrible offering advice about the miles, and only do so because you mention them.

On the Avios front, simply open an Avios account in your own name, create a family account with your husbands account incorporated with your own account you being the head of family. That should remove this issue for the future.

All the best.