beardoc

I'm kind of struggling with this, and wondering if I could ask your help. My experience is with other airlines for point to point fares so I don't often have to cancel BA bookings.

I've got a BA booking which was booked in O class for CMN-MAD-LHR return on IB flights. I can't change or cancel online on MMB - it keeps saying I have to call BA no matter what I try. I want to set the CMN-LHR leg for one day earlier now.

After there was an exhorbitant change fee offered by BA, I wondered if there's a different way to do it - could I book a new ticket and then just cancel the old one? I can't see anything that it's non-refundable in any paperwork I was sent. The endorsements are:

So, could I cancel this?

As far as I can see, the fees for cancelling at an airport desk or phone line are much more reasonable. I'm wondering, can I cancel this fare, and just book another? It would work out much cheaper than trying to change it via the Guest Centre. And if I did that, would the only fee being charged be the service fee listed at ba.com/servicefees (which, if I'm in CMN, would be 300 MAD which is approx GBP 20)?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Would be grateful if you could put me right on this one.

orbitmic

Well, one would need to look at your full fare rules, but frankly, O is the cheapest bucket in economy and I have personally never seen an O fare that is refundable. Therefore, should you cancel, it is most likely that you would barely get taxes back minus and admin fee and it is therefore most unlikely that you would save money.

The exception is of course if you booked less than 24 hours ago directly from BA as they offer a cooling period.

corporate-wage-slave

You could try looking at classic.checkmytrip.com, under the e-ticket tab you may find the fare basis there, which may help.

It may well vary if it is a Morocco issued ticket, each sales point seems to have its own rules about this, and generally speaking it is best to do a screen print at the time of booking to retain the change conditions.

But with that caveat in mind, it would not surprise me if there was a change fee and reprice on an O bucket, perhaps €80 or so, and just a refund of taxes if cancelled (and from Morocco we can assume that will be close to a zero refund). Best done over the telephone since I cannot believe this would be easy to arrange in CMB airport!

I'm not sure what would hold you back from calling to check this, given GGL status.

orbitmic

CMN! CMB is a wholly different kind of exoticism!

mikeyfly

If it's a long way off, can you just book and pay for new tickets and hope for a time change in schedule on current booking - then phone and cancel if the change is not suitable.... This would gets refund??

Anonba

This would only work for a schedule change over 2 hours otherwise you would only be entitled to being rebooked.


Id advise you simply call up and ask the agent what the ticket rules are and then discuss the cost of change or cancellation.

Globaliser

As others have said, you can cancel but almost everything you've paid will be non-refundable.

In any case, what is the "exorbitant" change fee, and why? The current BA O class fare for CMN-LHR-CMN (which has a base fare of £16) is changeable for a change fee of €50 plus fare difference. So if you're being quoted a big amount, the chances are that it's because the CMN-LHR flight(s) you want don't have anything left in the lower booking classes, and the bulk of that amount is the fare difference. If you book a new ticket now, you'll still have to pay that high fare, so it sound like you're unlikely to do better than simply changing the ticket.

The absence of any details in your rather abstract question makes it impossible for any of this to be researched and tested, though.

HarryKUK

Why is almost all of it non refundable? When the base fare is so low, surely that means most of it IS refundable in terms of taxes etc?

In the case of my LHR-MAD-LHR flights which were often £9 base fare, rest taxes and fuel, it was almost always cheaper to just cancel it and take the taxes back, even minus the fee, than to pay the £60 admin fee to amend. I was also better off booking returns for £100ish, then cancelling the inbound and getting £30ish back and effectively just paying £70 for a one way, rather than the £300+ ish figure the one way fare was priced at.

I didn't do it deliberately, but I did do it often, as was my right under the fare rules, due to many last minute changes to plans.

beardoc

Thanks for the replies everyone. I am sorry if I appeared very abstract. I have been jet lagged and after a very long hold on an international call to BA GGL line (15 min to answer) followed by over 20 minutes on hold as they figured out what the cost of changing the fare would be, I just couldn't stay awake that long to call back GGL again (nor the strength). But I realised I was unfamiliar with BA's cancellation policies as I haven't had to do it before, so I was asking around that.

To make it less abstract, the original fare was 250MAD=£16 with taxes taking it to a total fare cost of 1600MAD=£106.

The cost of booking a new fare outright today on my preferred date is MAD2300=£153 (MAD1025/£68 with the rest in taxes.

However, the cost of the change fee was going to be £81 extra fare and EUR50/£36 change fee = £117.

That's why I was wondering if copping a service fee on the cancellation and trying to get the taxes back might have been better. But I'm not sure how BA does this - is that how it would work?

I'll have the strength to call them back about this hopefully soon, and should be able to report back. Again, thanks again.

Willi90

In my understanding "ref noper" means refund not permitted, which fully answers the question.

HarryKUK

But taxes are always refundable though no? Minus the service fee.

orbitmic

Taxes are refundable, fuel surcharge is not. And in practice, what you pay (beyond base fare) is far more fuel surcharge than government taxes. In practice, real taxes are low and the handling fee for refund brings the refund down to very low levels.

Willi90

I'd be surprised because given the low fare it would make the ticket (almost) fully refundable. Anybody?

windowontheAside

Nope, because the carrier surcharge is not refundable and makes up the significant part of many fares.

Globaliser

Thanks. I can hazard a guess as to what's happening here, which looks to me like a possible case of different sales offices seeing different availability because they're in different markets.

Your original base fare of MAD 250 looks like it may well have been an O class fare in both directions. (EF says MAD 245, which is tolerably close, and of course it may be different now from what it was when you originally bought it.)

Buying a new fare today at a base fare of MAD 1025 looks like it would book into N class in both directions. (EF says MAD 1120 for this, but again it's tolerably close and it is the next fare up.)

If you are being charged a fare difference of £81 or about MAD 1217, the new total base fare would be about MAD 250 + MAD 1217 = MAD 1467. This does not correspond to any single filed fare from BA, but is tolerably close to a ticket priced using N class in one direction and V class in the other (which is the next fare up). Using EF's figures, that would be (1120 + 1800) / 2 = MAD 1460.

Why is BA quoting you a mixed N/V itinerary when you could buy N/N in a new ticket? One possibility is that Moroccan market availability (which is what ba.com sells from) can see N in both directions. But if you're talking to BA in the UK, if UK market availability has no N in one direction but only V, then N/V is how your fare difference will be priced.

Having a look at the breakdown of the O class fare, I realise that I'd forgotten that BA has abolished the fuel surcharge on many short-haul routes, including (it seems) this one. That means that if you cancel the ticket, you might well get back everything except the base fare (MAD 250) plus the admin fee (which you say is MAD 300 for CMN) - so the cost of cancelling would be MAD 550. (But you'd need to check this.)

Without a market availability problem (if that's what it is), the two different routes give roughly the same result. Either you lose MAD 550 in cancelling, or you pay €50 or ~MAD 540 change fee. Either way, you'd buy up to the cheapest currently available fare, so that's the same in both cases.

However, the additional cost of changing the ticket caused by that presumed market availability problem is about MAD 350 or so, which would seem to give the cancel and rebook option the edge here - if (and that's a big if) my hypotheses are correct and the numbers are about right.