gms

I made an open-jaw Avios 241 booking at the weekend via the GGL line and was overcharged by almost £800 in taxes/fees/charges!

I even queried the figure quoted by the original agent saying I had never paid taxes that high (even on BA!) before. But was assured it was correct so went ahead - I just figured that BA had whacked up its surcharges again without me realising.

However, straight after the call I did a dummy booking and realised I had been seriously overcharged. I called back, got a different agent who also got the same figure I obtained from my dummy booking. He said he would check with the fares team and call me back within 10 minutes. Which he did and confirmed that a refund was being processed. He was at a loss as to explain how the original agent had quoted the wrong figure.

So my problem is being sorted, but it worries me that there do not seem to be any checks in place to ensure that the correct amount is being charged. It also worries me that someone on the GGL team did not recognise that the figure being charged was so clearly incorrect. So much so that it would have been significantly higher than the fees charged on even BA's longest F flights.

So always double-check your taxes/fees/charges on BA! No wonder BA is making such healthy profits these days

BA6501

I was recently quoted +£700 in taxes to change a booking... called back 15 minutes later to confirm the change and was quoted a refund of £31...

UKtravelbear

So which element was the actual overcharge?

The BA 'carrier surcharge' ? because that is not a tax even though they try and make you think it is.

gms

I realise it is not all strictly "tax", as indicated by my reference to "taxes/fees/charges"

In terms of which part was overcharged, no-one knows. My e-ticket receipt just shows a total for "Tax/Fee/Charge". The second agent I spoke to could not explain how they had calculated the overcharge. But he was apologetic.

I suspect the issue is that this calculation is done manually for certain types of booking at BA. This is probably the root of the problem. It seems I am not alone in being overcharged by BA - I wonder how often BA gets away with this!

Maybe someone with more specific booking systems knowledge could confirm which types of bookings require manual calculations and therefore which ones we should be more cautious about?

Globaliser

I don't know the answer to this. But ITA provides a very easy way to check the TFC amount: on the day that you book, you simply price the itinerary on your routes, dates and cabins (switching off the availability checker to avoid that getting in the way), and save the full breakdown of TFC. Except where there is a percentage tax to pay, I've always found ITA to be accurate on this - usually to the penny.

gms

What's the advantage of using ITA as opposed to just doing a dummy booking on BA.com?

Globaliser

ITA can easily price itineraries that ba.com won't - mixed-cabin open-jaw, for example, which is what you can end up with if you're using a 2-4-1 but you encounter availability problems, or if you're UuAing one half of an open-jaw itinerary.

It also gives you an easy-to-read page that can be quickly printed to PDF.

Ldnn1

One thing ITA is not good for, however, is calculating the TFC on partner itineraries for which there is no valid BA revenue fare combination - especially if you're trying to book a complex multi-carrier award.

For BA metal, it's certainly the easiest way to do it.

710 77345

Yes, it'll be a real shame if ITA closes next year - it provides a lot of transparency to airlines' operations.

Anonba

The reservation system is what ultimately generates the quote. There is more potential for human error to come into play for changes when quoting manually the change fee and/or service fee need to be checked by the agent. Also when quoting a change the system prices the new itin in full for tax/fees and charges and fare this has to then have the cost of the original ticket deducted from it to get the cost of the change.

However what you described is a new booking and if an agent is to quote a new booking the system generates the figure for avios and tax/fees and charges or fare and tax/fees and charges. The agent would go with the quote that is generated although they are able to check quotes with fares.The fares team can price a booking if the system wont price the booking for the agent.

I would put this quote down to system error (rather than human error) and likelyhood of errors would then be dependent on destination and complexity of the route, so difficult to say.

I have to say to be fair to the GGL agent that there can be so many changes to yq for example and you quote so many different bookings with different routes etc i wouldnt expect someone to know that a figure looked incorrect.

gms

Thanks for this insight Anonba. Maybe I took too literally what the first agent said to me, something along the lines of "I was working out the taxes while waiting for the space to be released for you" [I was using a GGL redemption to open up seats]. So I assumed that it must have been some manual process, rather than an automated one.

For reference, it wasn't an overly complicated routing. LHR-CPT/JNB-LHR both legs in F. Does using a GGL redemption complicate matters somehow?

Ldnn1

No difference being GGL redemption.

Here's the breakdown from ITA:

United Kingdom Air Passenger Duty APD (GB) £150.00
United Kingdom Passenger Service Charge Departures (UB) £41.47
BA YQ surcharge (YQ) £339.00
South Africa Passenger Service Charge (ZA) £12.00
South Africa Passenger Safety Charge (EV) £1.20
South Africa Asc Charge (UM) £1.20
South Africa Air Passenger Tax (WC) £10.20

Total = £555.07 pp

gms

I was originally charged £944.39 pp.

On the date I booked the correct charge was £558.71 pp

An overcharge of £385.68 pp

Edit: Interestingly today I get a figure of £558.51 from a dummy booking on BA.com. Which doesn't quite align with Ldnn1's £555.07 ITA figure. It's all so complicated!

Ldnn1

The difference of the few quid is probably just currency conversion.

The original £944.39pp looks like a massive overcharge. I wonder if they mistakenly processed it as an avios+money redemption (aka 'top-up'), rather than correctly applying the GUF.

Globaliser

£555.07 is quoted by ba.com for a departure now.

However, at some stage the UK PSC goes up from £41.47 to £44.91. And at some stage, APD goes up from £150 to £156.

So your dummy booking is obviously after the PSC increase but before the APD increase. If you dummy book for 30 March out, 20 June back, you'll get £558.51. If you dummy book for 12 June out, 20 June back, you'll get £564.51.