BA holidays payment
 

Afternoon,
I have a BA holiday booking for October with full payment due next month of 5k, I'm currently having a big extension done and withdrawing large amounts of cash for builders ECT , which is going to leave me short to pay the holiday until I get paid 11 days after the due date, I wondered if anyone had any experience. Of BA - 1. Cancelling the booking straight after the due date 2. Allowing a "grace" period .
Will be pretty annoying losing the deposit and the payments I've made, and the fact if I was to rebook the holiday it's now gone up about 2k..!

Maybe easier to delay payment to the builders? At least they do not have formal procedures - and they will finish your extension late anyway :)

Joke aside, I have no experience of BA hols but most merchants present payment a second time when the first one was declined. Typically 5 days later both for cards and direct debit. Have you tried to call them though? Can't see why they would not be sympathetic.

A bit of effort involved, though you could purchase 3V cards on a credit card. These can immediately be used towards BA Holidays (albeit there has been reports of some minor difficulties). You would then have at least 4 weeks to pay off the 3V purchase on your credit card. You could also earn some clubcard points etc along the way...

I accidentally left a holiday unpaid for approx one week before. I was called a couple of times on my mobile from a number that looks like one of the frequent cold calls everyone gets in the UK, so I left it unanswered. When I finally picked up it was some nice man at BA asking if I wanted to pay now. Don't know what would have happened if I'd have said no...

Of course, I'm not advising you to miss your payment because it will be fine, but noting that BA did not cancel my particular holiday straight away :)

I don't think they call for the payment automatically, you have to proactively make the payment, in my experience

Can you (part) pay on your AmEx card? Check the billing cycle date of course.

AmEx will move your billing cycle date if you ask nicely, not sure if it can be done on 11 day timescale though.

You can get a zero percent purchase rate credit card usually in about 5 working days (or get a balance transfer card, my current favourite is Santander which has 23 months interest free credit zero fee with transfers allowed at any time during that period). So there are plenty of ways of getting a few K credit available. Then you're less dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Last month I had follow up emails and then a text and phone call at 10 days. The lady laughed when I said I was hanging on for my Amex membership year to tick over and said no problem with that- I paid at 12 days after the 'due' date.

Thanks for all the tips! I've had the money put aside since booking - the funds is not an issue; I would however lose £300 deposit if the booking could be £5/600 cheaper and not have to position to INV :)

Maybe I'll call a week or so before and request a small extension