Bluebirdnick

Hi all

Over a year ago, I booked flights for my parents in law to Australia. I opened BAEC accounts for them so that they could earn Avios (the flights were with Cathay).

I made a mistake when I set up my mother-in-law's account. I entered her email address as "[xx]@yahoo.com" rather than [xx]@yahoo.co.uk". This means I cannot log in, so she cannot get at the points. I have tried to speak to BA about this a number of times. I have limited time to do it as I need my MIL to be here at the same time as BA need to speak to her at the same time, but she isn't confident with this stuff so needs me to speak to BA to sort it. We have tried on numerous occasions to get through to BA but are rarely able to get through to them due to the crazy hold times. Today is the final straw: after 45 mins on hold they simply hung up on me.

So my question is: how do I get BA to update the email on their system so we can just log in to this thing? Surely there is some way of doing it without calling them, because for lowly blues (MIL is a blue) or bronzes (me) it is just not feasible to do it in less than an hour.

I cannot even log in to my own account at the moment - I get the "are you trying to log in to an On Business account?" nonsense. Argh!

Thanks!

COREi5

Call them and use the wrong details to verify yourself. Once on the phone to the exec club simply tell them the new email address.
They will send out a verification email and once you click on the link (on your new address) it will be updated.

They can 100% change it over the phone (Camelbak)

email2markt

I'm surprised BA don't require you to validate your email address when setting up a BAEC account

HIDDY

Can you not just log in using her BAEC number?

PeacefulWaters

Radically obvious!

If you have the BAEC number. I assume it was emailed ...

Bluebirdnick

Thanks all.

As regards calling up with the wrong details: I don't really follow. I tried calling when I was a silver and they refused to deal with her account as she was blue.

As regards BA requiring you to validate the email address: I think they do. I try logging in with her BAEC number which I do have. It asks me to validate the email address and gives me the option to change the email address. I put in her actual email address, but nothing happens. She doesn't receive an email, and it just takes me back to the login page and we start all over again.

As regards logging in with her BAEC number: doesn't work because the email address isn't validated.

I appreciate the suggestions, but unfortunately I have already tried them all and they don't work!

corporate-wage-slave

This sounds like the time to send BA a Direct Message via Twitter. They will call you. The issue of having your mother-in-law present can be somewhat avoided if you invoke 3 way calling, which seems to be available on most land and mobile circuits these days.

dougzz

Is it definitely an option to change it, or is it (more likely) a requirement to confirm it. Sorry if you've already tried this and the email is taken, but have you considered setting up <xx>@yahoo.com with yahoo mail so you get the confirmation? You could then set a forward on that, and use .com and .co.uk interchangeably.

navylad

Or alternatively, if you haven't yet used the BAEC account in question, can you not set up a new one with the correct details? Don't know if it would work, but worth a try.

Bluebirdnick

Thanks all. Twitter it is.

As regards the other suggestions: yes, I tried setting up the email address with a .com suffix. I couldn't. And the account has already been used - I am expecting that it has approx 30k avios in it, which is why we want to get in to it. That it ten times more than she earned in 2 years elsewhere so it is a lot to her (as it would be to me).

brunos

Frankly, it is difficult to understand what happened.
When you open an account for BAEC, as you did a year ago, the system sends you an email and you need to activate the account from this email.
If you indicated a wrong email address, you never received the email and the account has never been activated.
I doubt that any points were ever credited to that unactivated account.

heartybob

Why not send an email to the address that you registered, tell the address owner what happened, and ask them to forward you the email they will receive when you try to log in?

Bluebirdnick

We did exactly the same with my father in law (except I got the email address right!). I am pretty sure we didn't activate it until long after the flights and on first log in his points were all there (although oddly, the points from the 2 short-haul BA flights didn't post - just the ones from CX). When I set their accounts up I got their membership numbers which were put on the CX booking. I am expecting her points to be there.

I've sent BA a tweet. Let's see what happens.