sunnyuk

Carlton Leisure. Very unhelpful. Will only receive email in 48 - 72 hours

flyuk

Ah, the bait and switch kings. I've only ever had them offer cheap tickets on Skyscanner that didn't exist. The only time I booked before the switch, I had LHR-NRT that was advertised by them at £600, I booked but the the reservation went on hold. Then they called and asked for another £120 for the same flight.

Contact BA?

KARFA

Welcome to FT!

Tbh I would wait and see what happens first. You will get a refund - although you are beholden to whatever TA you booked with as to how long the refund process takes. Also the voucher seems to be coming directly from BA to the affected passengers not via the TA. I would suggest waiting for others to receive theirs and if you still haven't got anything perhaps contact BA directly at that point.

orbitmic

I respectfully disagree - see my point below where mistake was introduced in the title but with a question mark, and where even if some people believed it is a mistake, it does not mean that others had to agree that it was. People can thankfully make up their own mind independently about what others post in threads, and in the same way that countless posters constantly repeat that BA F is less good than AA J does not make this true to some of us, people repeating that they believe that £195 to TLV may be a mistake will certainly not have convinced everyone who read this nor should it.

You will notably recall that when the Scandinavia-West Coast excellent WT+ (Y UP) fare was introduced, for weeks, a majority of people on this forum claimed that it was a mistake too especially as the bucket did not seem to match the booking class which is not something that used to be done by BA. It took much longer to figure out that we were wrong and that this was, in fact, a genuine fare.

There is no doubt that someone who would claim they thought it was a mistake thought that it was one, but to say that anyone who has looked at a thread was convinced that this was a mistake is a big assumption to make IMHO especially where people were precisely not aware of the booking class and simply bought an "economy standard" ticket.

In fact, even in the case above where someone would have claimed/believe that this was a mistake fare, this may not, in and by itself, make it a manifest error. If I remember correctly, the usual definition of manifest errors in law is that they are "obvious and indisputable" so even if you believed that you may be benefitting from an error but are not sure about it, it may not be enough to make it manifest even though it is presumably something that company representatives would try to use.

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk and welcome to the BA forum sunnyuk, it's good to see you here and congratulations on finding the right thread to post your question.

I can only agree with KARFA's advice, the refund under the travel agent's control rather than BA, since BA has amended the bookings to allow for full refunds. Some travel agents are very good in this area - faster than BA - and others are very slow. If they are in the low margin end of the market they aren't going to invest in back office resources. You may need to nag them however you can at some point call on your credit card issuer (and many debit cards too) to reverse the payment. So keep your paperwork and records up-to-date.

Wozza2404

Yes.

Prior to the abundance of blogs that are currently out there, it was FT that earned itself the reputation of being "The place good fares go to die".

There are loads of examples of these fares flying under the radar for years (those of us who used to use the ex-CMB F fares on EK will attest to that), and then within days of appearing on FT the fares were pulled. Ultimately, a small amount of people booking doesn't raise a flag, but once hundreds (or thousands) of people are booking F/J tickets from a remote destination on the same day, someone in fare management gets their arse kicked and it's gone.

Now, that being said, I have benefited from fares which I found out about on FT, so I personally take the 'win some, lose some' approach to these fares. Plus with the sheer amount of blogs peddling all these deals to their followers, FT is a drop in the ocean these days.

scubaccr

Sorry 'selective memory,' , FTers were mostly booking because early in this very thread the mistake fare was disclosed as booking as "fully flex class B' fare earning highest available TP+Avios. Whereas a correct low end sale priced gbp200-300 fare would be a truly inflexible low earning Y sub-class and not interest many.at all to purchase/

IMO this thread individual posts acknowlege it was a 'B fare ticket and supports BA's stance this was a mistake fare

KARFA

I can't speak for others, but I already noted for myself I wasn't clear whether it was a mistake when I booked and didn't know what teh selling class was until looking at BA MMB afterwards. Whilst I agree Viking and Bratwurst were, from my pov, mistake fare when I booked, this wasn't the case for me on this one. As I also noted I feel £100 voucher is a reasonable outcome.

flyuk

Except you couldn't tell it was a full flex ticket until you booked. I just wanted a trip to TLV to meet the other FTers. I don't need TP for next year, as my planned are already at 1600, though the Avios would have been nice.

I would have been happy with non-flex to be honest (40TP/5500Avios).

flyuk

Message from Netflights:

"We have been informed by British Airways that on the evening of the 11th June through to the following morning an error was made by them on the filing of their Fares to certain destinations over various departure dates including your booking. Although we have tried to get them to honour the fares, British Airways have advised today that they are cancelling all bookings that were made on the incorrect fare level. British Airways have advised you will be refunded in full and they are offering a compensation voucher to the value of £100.00 per person and we pass on their apologies for the inconvenience caused. (details about the process of this voucher will follow from BA)If you wish to escalate this matter further, we ask you direct all complaints to British Airways.com, via their online complaint form or phone them on 0344 493 0787."

Sam Bee

I'm aware of a similar DXB fare - about £215 or so that was floating about but seemingly not mentioned, did anyone book / get impacted by this? I would have booked that for sure just couldn't replicate.

That triggered my thought that there were fares mistakenly loaded. I certainly don't see somewhere that Easyjet fly to and BA offering £198 fares for a 4 1/2 flight as anything but a chance to knock down the loco airlines - mistake fare didn't cross my mind until I came across mention of Dubai. Still, i've 100% of my mistake fares on BA being cancelled and 0% of other airlines (1 vs 4) I hope that no-one here was financially impacted by booking non refundable ancillaries.

onobond

Recently cancelling a BA reservation myself within the 24h grace period. Reimbursement on my CC account the next day. This TLV fare will be re-paid, but only after I send in an application to have it made, and with 3-5 working days delay. In this instance, BA admitted a "glitch" , but nothing wrong done .

A year and a half ago, there was an AZ business fare, IIRC PSA-DUS, with unlimited routing. All on AZ stock cancelled,some on KL/AF stock honored. Many pax with AZ tickets cancelled had to wait months for reimbursement.

Interest-free loan to an airline struggling not to go bancrupt as a business plan? Adopted by a struggling OTA as well?

Sam Bee

OTA's will pay airlines by BSP (Billing & Settlement Plan) which is a monthly payment to airlines, simplifying everything. Refunds similarly come from BSP.

So they are not going to refund you until they get the money from the airline, which in all practicality could be up to 90 days.

The OTA is not holding the money, the airline is. It's not responsible to state that an OTA would be unnecessarily holding onto your money because of financial issues.

yb90

But should they not refund you immediately when cancelled in the same month then?

KARFA

If it's a monthly settlement from the TA to the airline presumably in this case (and for the AZ case) the TA won't have paid the airline by the time the airline informs them of the cancellation?