moonbeam

So, My ex booked tickets for us both to fly to RAK CE, in sept and i paid cash but ticket paid on his credit card, on checking my account last week i noticed my ticket was not on the booking he cancelled it, called BA and told that nothing they can do, also the ticket was 100% Non refundable so he didn't get cash back, feeling little let down by the customer service as a long time BA customer

Any chance i should speak to someone again or just re-buy ticket?

irishguy28

Why would you want to fly on the same flight as a bitter ex?

There is nothing you can do here. He "bought" the ticket (even if you gave him the money), so he can "cancel" it, too.

Dave Noble

This is between you and him; nothing to do with BA. He purchased it from BA , so quite valid for BA to allow him to cancel it

What you could do is determine the price of a new ticket and then write to him requiring that he pay it to you as you hold him liable for the flight and , if he doesn't pay, use moneyclaim to claim the money back from the person

corporate-wage-slave

Well either you now know why this individual is your Ex, and/or you have the excuse to sue him if he has taken your money! Just if this happens again(!), one person can delete themselves off a booking and leave the other person in place, unless there is a 2-4-1 holder in there. They would get their taxes back but leave you free to travel.

From BA's perspective the customer wasn't really you, it was your Ex, so I don't think there's much you can do on that side. RAK can be good for Avios redemptions, however, from 20k Avios and £35 for the return.

moonbeam

He also did same thing to my booking on Virgin and they just reissued the ticket as goodwill gesture and have only flown them 4 times in my whole life, Ba have had many years of my custom but life goes on!

its not so much money as inconvenience but thanks for the info

NeverFirst

Just re-buy the ticket. The other stuff is between you and your ex-.

KARFA

Sorry to hear about your problems moonbeam, it sounds like this is the tip of the iceberg for you.

I am just curious about whether you had to show something to Virgin to prove why he had cancelled the ticket or that you were splitting up. I guess if airlines did this even semi-regularly, whether based on status/loyalty or not, two poeple could book, then cancel, and one could phone up and say the other cancelled to be malicious and get a free ticket.

nh1980

It's very nice of Virgin to have done that but you were lucky that time rather than getting anything one could call standard treatment that you'd expect other airlines to follow. BA deal with their customers directly and not behind the scenes. You may wish to pursue something separately through a lawyer proving you gave him the cash etc. If you feel aggrieved enough about it.

Tobias-UK

She wouldn't need a lawyer for this. In the reported circumstances, if she purchased a new ticket she is entitled to reimbursement of the cost of the new ticket from the ex and should he refuse to pay seek recovery via the county court. In the circumstances reported, a DJ is very unlikely not to find in the OP's favour.

orbitmic

In general I agree with the others that you have essentially been scammed by your ex and that it is for your to decide whether you want to take that to a legal level (which I would not recommend just because of the pain it would involve for a very little amount of money) or not.

That said, if making any change to the reservation, regardless of who paid for the ticket officially or not, your ex will have had to confirm (tick a box if online, confirm verbally if on the phone or in person) that he had your permission to make the changes. It is thus plain that he lied and claimed to have your authorisation while he did not. You could perhaps use that as leverage to ask him to refund the cost of your BA ticket.

Conversely, bear in mind that even with a non-refundable ticket, he may have reclaimed taxes and surcharges back on the unused ticket. Depending on how much that was, considering that there would be a processing fee, he may or may not have got much cash back.

So the short answer is that airlines do not have the responsibility to work as insurance policies against relationships getting sour and as such, VS seem to me to have gone well beyond their duty in reinstating your ticket. Your only possible case against BA would be to suggest that they did not take sufficient precautions to ensure that the passengers' authorisation was obtained by the people making the changes, but frankly, I think that it would be a very difficult case to make as beyond requiring passengers to know name and booking reference to make any change, they go beyond most airlines by asking for confirmation that the person making the changes is authorised to do so by all the passengers on the booking. In that sense, to me this is simply between you and your ex and becomes a question of how you want to take this further (or not) in the context. If it were me, I'd let it go and consider that my peace of mind comes from not having any further discussion with someone as bitter as you describe, but you are of course entitled to take a less lenient position in the sense that your ex unfairly cancelled a plane ticket that was wholly and completely yours.

Andriyko

I am surprised BA actually did cancel the booking without talking to the OP. In all of my communications with BA they have always maintained that it did not matter who actually paid for the ticket and that any changes/cancellation could only be initiated by the passenger. The OP was as much BA's customer as their ex was...And BA should have sought his consent to cancel or at least re-instate the ticket when it became apparent that such consent was never given in the first place.

orbitmic

But they do though - if done online, the ex would have had to tick the box saying that the person proposing to do the changes has the agreement of all the passengers in the booking, even if it was to merely change a seat or a meal choice! They would then send confirmation of the cancellation or changes to the email registered on the booking. In other words, if this was the ex's email address, the OP was responsible for allowing the ex to be the primary manager of the booking and informed of all changes but the primary booking manager will have had to confirm that they had the other passengers' authorisation to implement the changes at hand.

I don't think that one could make the case that this is insufficient because there is really no limit otherwise - should they ask to speak to people in person? Of course, someone ready to lie about having consent from all passengers could lie about who he/she is passing on on the phone and have an accomplice to confirm that it is fine. Should the airline ask to see the passengers in person? Again, most inconvenient. Should they ask one different email address per passenger to confirm changes to everyone? Would not make sense - not everyone has email addresses nor want to receive muiltiple copies of an agreed change.

In other words, the default assumption is that people travelling together are travelling together for a reason and the BA system works perfectly well in 99.9999% of cases. In my view, it would make little sense to "tighten" rules for the x% of the 0.0001% of cases whereby not only have people who were meant to travel together have fallen out, but one of them decides to act like a j*rk and openly lies to punish an ex.

moonbeam

we were on individual bookings not the same booking! Yes this is what i thought surely if he cancel's my booking without my consent that it should not be allowed!

Cymro

I would argue in respect of BA is that if the ex represented to BA that he had the right to cancel on behalf of OP, and BA now knows that to be false, they have a right of recovery of any loss against the ex. However they have nothing to recover because they have the ticket price anyway.

Here the cancellation is a binding obligation on the principal in respect of a contract, giving up her rights to insist on performance for carriage. It was probably made with apparent authority, but the ex had no express or implied actual authority as an agent, as that would have been terminated by the break-up.

As such, the cancellation was never validly made and BA is wrong to be insisting upon it, effectively acquiescing in or participating in the fraud perpetuated by the ex. (Admittedly the Ts & Cs may deal with this, but I would argue that anything that requires you to give up your rights to be protected from fraud, when the airline has suffered no detriment, would be an unfair contract term).

Tobias-UK

In that case, you must go back to BA .... unless the ex is named as a 'third-party nominee'.