kay82

I just transferred 40k points from my Chase Card into my BA Account to make a booking with Avios and while BA.com is showing me 2 seats available in CW/J on a Finnair flight, I always get an error message at the payment screen:

The BA Rep in India told me those seats aren't available anymore, but when I check Finnair.com, they have exactly the same 2 seats available in their lowest Business Class Tier.

To check whether the rep is lying, I looked for a different Finnair Flight, where BA is showing me 1 seat in CW/J and Finnair.com is -surprise surprise- showing me 1 Seat in their lowest Business Class tier.

Any idea what I can do about this? The Points transfer from Chase is irreversible and I only transferred those points to make this booking.

I'm hating BA more and more every day to be honest...

kay82

Confirmed the Indian Rep was, in fact, blatantly lying to me on the phone and just wanted to get me off the line.

Today I was able to book the very same flight online, which the Indian Rep told me was "most definitely" not available anymore. I suspect there was something wonky with BA's website yesterday (surprise, surprise...).

I can only underscore once more, British Airways is the Somali Airlines of Milage Programs.
United get so much .... in the press (some of it rightfully so), but if I compare their milage program, website, app , upgrade policy, redemption availability and pretty much anything else I can think of, it makes BA look like Bulgaria Air or Somali Airlines.

To summarize why BA sucks

• Their website, app and everything else involving technology is garbage and an affront to their customers & members
• Their customer service (even for Gold members) is pathetic
• 30mins waiting on the phone is not unheard of even for gold members
• Avios are pretty much worthless, because you're gonna find it easier to win the scratchcard lottery than find award flights

If it wasn't for all the hardworking common people at BA, I would say this is a clear example of a company that deserves to go bankrupt and have it's assets sold to someone who starts from scratch with a whole new management. This company is an insult to the British heritage and should not be allowed to have British in it's name.

golfmad

I'm glad you sorted it out.

I suspect if there was an error the rep was basing that on the information available at the time which may well have been incorrect. It's a leap to suggest the rep was lying to you.

Nice rant by the way.

kay82

You are right, it may be a bit over the top to accuse him of lying, but his insistence that there was nothing possible he could do, neither today nor tomorrow, was what set me off. It was the typical behavior of CSRs who don't want to deal with a more complex problem and get you off the phone as quickly as possible so they can close the case

Knowing BA, a Booking System issue was my first suspicion and I brought it up. Still, the rep insisted it was definitely not a booking system issue between the two airlines - he claimed he could see the availability of seats and these seats were sold recently.
I even told him I could see award seat availability on that very same flight for the very same number of seats if I go through another alliance partner's website, to which he responded that sometimes other airlines lag behind in updating availability...!

Thanks
Problem solved, thankfully, so I'm not going to waste any more energy being upset about it, but I still felt I have a duty to put out a clear warning to the next frequent flyer who may stumble upon my post one day