danielonn

Exactly. I could tell a friend to buy an item or use a service but he can't sue me if something happens to the item or I lost money from using his recommended service without doing the full research and he gets injured. You have to take advice and then critically think if what I am doing is correct. Sometimes we are too trusting of people and follow their advice and it turns out its the wrong advice whether its the advice of a friend or a telephone agent.

A friend could tell me go and book with their friend a travel agent. Guess what the trip is messed up and my friend gets a kickback for the reference. Guess who is not my friend? Sad but true. Advice is just that. No reason to be obligated to act on good or poor advice. Advice is just that guidance to help you make an educated decision. Its you who needs to learn how to critically wade through the good or poor advice.

danielonn

If only all airlines were like Southwest. No fees to cancel or change just use up the credit within a year and if the fare goes down get more credit and use it within a year on its less expensive Want to Get Away Tickets. Even EasyJet and Ryan Air are not generous. Southwest even lets you cancel the ticket up to 10 minutes before boarding and you get credit.

WorldLux

While you book you get the fare break down (what I said earlier). Once you made the booking, it's another story altogether. Instead of telling the passenger what taxes he paid, the BA e-ticket says the following in the "Taxes and charges" category:
Frankly, they might as well indicate that water is wet.

Geordie405

I wanted to chime in on the subject of what constitutes a refund / cancellation etc. For a lot of tickets in the US, including those issued by BA, the fare rules will include something along the lines of the following text:

RESERVATION CANCELLED PRIOR TO THE TICKETED
DEPARTURE TIME RETAINS TICKET VALUE FOR FUTURE
TRAVEL WITHIN THE TICKET VALIDITY AND CHANGE FEE
OR CANCELLATION FEE APPLIES UPON REISSUE/REFUND.
IF THE RESERVATION IS NOT CANCELLED PRIOR TO
TICKETED DEPARTURE TIME REBOOKING IS NOT
PERMITTED AND TICKET HAS NO VALUE AND ONLY UNUSED
TAXES WILL BE REFUNDED.

This will be in addition to anything concerning refunds - either that the ticket is non-refundable or that it is refundable for a fee etc.

The point here is that the ticket itself is not cancelled. The flight reservations are cancelled. The ticket value is retained as a credit against future flights.

Whether or not that would have been an option for the OP is a matter of conjecture.

Dave Noble

if he had asked what the penalty to cancel would be or if he had asked the agent to cancel the booking and the agent decided to not tell the person, then I would feel that there was an issue in the service

The person , however, seems to have just spoken to agent about rebooking with AA and then gone off and cancelled it on their own online whilst (a) being concerned about refund amount and (b) taking the advice of a friend rather than checking with BA

Dave Noble

Looking at the PE fares for that route issued at that time, that text is not in the fare rules

The cheapest 1st class show a $375 penalty, business class shows a $250 cancellation penalty, the economy ones show as non refundable; none of the cheapest AUS-LHR r/t fares in each class for June , sold in July show a provision for using the value later

danielonn

Ok so lets say the OP could use $1,800 towards a ticket that is now $3,000+ I would rather use the $1,800 towards the ticket and pay the difference than to start all over and consider this a very expensive mistake and make the flights.

danielonn

Often1

Analogies never work.

OP, by his own admission, knew that there was an issue with the refund and chose to ask a friend rather than BA, what it meant. The friend told him that the language likely referred to the exchange rate.

The friend was wrong. The friend was $1,800 wrong.

This is where one picks up the phone and calls BA. Perhaps BA ought to be held liable for not including a disclosure to the effect: "if a numpty friend of yours gives you advice on BA's fare rules, you should ignore it and instead call BA."

Whether the amount of the refund is accurate is irrelevant. The fact is that until OP had an answer, he took the risk of his rash action with a ticket which he knew to be non-refundable.

MSPeconomist

I consider something like this to be pretty standard for almost all nonrefundable tickets exUSA on legacy carriers, including TATL tickets to Europe and LHR specifically. In the USA, you typically don't get the refund of taxes and while most carriers will subtract the change/cancellation fee (usually $250-400 on international tickets IME) from the credit, at least one requires that you first pay this fee from "new" money before being able to use the entire ticket cost as a credit, but you don't pay the fee until you actually use the credit.

This is generally true for AF and KLM tickets exUSA and also for DL tickets using AF/KLM flights, regardless of whether they're sold as DL codeshares or not. Unfortunately I've never looked at DL tickets for VS flights to LHR or VS tickets on this route (using either DL or VS metal and regardless of whether the flights are sold as codeshares). [However, DL seems generally to allow the credit even if the ticket isn't cancelled before departure.]

OTOH, I have seen a few reports of DL RT TATL tickets exEU that have the harsher "use it or lose it" fare rules that say the entire value of the ticket is forfeited if the flights are not flown exactly as ticketed. Like BA, when AF/KLM/VS sell TATL RTs from Europe to the USA, they commonly have such fare rules unless one buys an expensive refundable ticket.

IMO it's not unreasonable to expect someone purchasing a ticket in the USA for a RT exUSA to Europe to assume that the standard rules about a credit minus a change fee would apply. Of course we shouldn't assume, but only travel experts would know that tickets from Europe usually have very different rules. Moreover, BA isn't (yet) a LCC and a $2000 TATL RT is not likely to be a deeply discounted fare, although if speculations here are correct, it could be a premium economy ticket in the lowest fare class for that cabin. By this reasoning, I would expect the fare rules to be similar to what I see when I purchase a deeply discounted business class ticket on DL/AF/KLM, namely a change fee of about $400-500, but still being able to use the credit for myself later on a ticket that is called nonrefundable. Yes, I know that one shouldn't assume and should check the fare rules, but again, a novice traveler would know to do this and probably would have a hard time understanding those fare rules, even if they can be found.

To me, a key aspect of the story is the OP asking the BA phone agent "SHOULD I cancel the ticket [and repurchase a new ticket on AA to get the upgrade]?" Surely any phone agent realizes, when not dealing with someone who has purchased a very expensive full J/C or full F ticket, that most people would want to think twice before throwing away $1800 in order to buy an entirely new ticket So as to get a one cabin upgrade on what's probably about a nine hour flight. At this point, the BA agent *should* have said something about the likely total cost of such a strategy or warned the OP about how much money would probably be lost on the original ticket. The agent doesn't need to look at the precise fare rules or calculate the exact refund to do this, just to apply some common sense and say "well, maybe you shouldn't do this because it will be very expensive."

Nevertheless, I have two questions:

***Would it have been possible to pay more money to BA to upfare the ticket to discounted business class? Would a nonrefundable ticket permit this, even with a fee? If so, would this potentially have been cheaper than totally abandoning the $2000 ticket and purchasing a new ticket from AA for the upgrade? [Again, I'm asking because it would typically be possible with a DL/AF/KLM RT to Europe exUSA, and even without paying a change fee, only the fare difference.]

***Is there any chance that the OP indeed does have the usual exUSA style credit sitting in BA's computer system somewhere, attached to the ticket number perhaps? BA refunded the taxes to the original form of payment, which seems to be required by British law, but do we know for sure that the OP doesn't have the more typical exUSA style fare rules allowing for remaining funds after a change penalty to be applied to another BA ticket within a year of the original purchase? [AFAIK the OP has never posted the fare code, fare class, or even stated whether it was a WT or WT+ ticket.]

Dave Noble

Based on the lowest PE fare listed for that period, it could have been changed to business class by paying $275 change fee and the fare difference. Since the lowest available fare on 9th June is R class it seems, there would be about a $3644 fare difference

It would seem that the passenger may well have not even checked for award availability for the date before going through cancellation process - there seems to be no awards for that day anyway

Looking at the PE fare rules, it looks like it is a simple non refundability situation. The OP indicated upgrading to business class and a fare of $1800 - there is no upgrade from economy to business

Geordie405

I think it will depend on the specific fare basis. For example THW9D3C1 does have the wording whereas MHW3S1C3/DIF2 doesn't. Without knowing the exact fare basis that the OP booked under it's going to be a bit tricky to know with any certainty

whimike

Very odd since I have an AA ticket with BA flights and I cancelled my inbound and have the ticket credit waiting for me.

MSPeconomist

To return to my second question in post #160 above, has the OP tried to find such a credit? I'm really wondering whether there's a credit but the OP isn't aware about how to find it and access it.

However, if you purchased the ticket from AA (with AA codeshare flight numbers for BA operated flights?), that might make all the difference.

Dave Noble

The tax compoment on a AUS-LHR r/t ticket in PE is $562. This leaves a fare component of $1238

The SHX2D1C1/DIF2 was $1259 which comes to $1821. The next fare up is SHX2S1C1/DIF2 at $1309 which comes to $1871. Other PE fares exceed $1900

Both are non refundable with no credit held for later use

The AA codeshares for those prices have the same penalties