Globaliser

Isn't this to do with the fare rules rather than the point of sale? I had always thought that If you buy a fare from a US point of sale, you'll have the same conditions as if you buy the same fare from a UK point of sale.

And I had also thought that the apparent difference comes from this: If you buy from a US point of sale, you're typically buying a fare for travel starting in the US. It's fares of that category that often have more generous refund / credit rules.

high.and.above

I am talking about Amadeus, since my T.A. uses Amadeus. Building the itinerary does not take that long and then you send it for approval at Ba. In most cases with in one hour they answer back and then it can be ticketed by the TA. It happen to me once that they did not come back in one hour and it was Friday and the GUF was expiring on Sunday. I got worried that my upgrade will expire but apparently they have a team in India that handle this kind f issues during the weekend for GGL's. SO on my last day my T.A got the approval from BA to ticket it. I use my GUF's mostly on USA routes ( LAX,IAD, MIA) and in three years I have never had any time when I couldn't find availability
My T.A is a reader and poster here and he knows very well what he is doing, might as well add that he is a GGL as well.

Kernow

The scenario described by Filthy M above has just happened to me. GUF sent for approval to BA, no response for two days and the ticket needed to be reissued but unfortunately A class had gone in the mean time. Had to move to a different day with a higher fare. Sucks, but that is BA process, not the TA's fault, Propeller in this case. They could not have been more helpful

high.and.above

Wait, isn't the T.A supposed to hold the fare, why would have the ticket been issued in order to reissued? Once he made you the booking and held A space, it should have been held. It sounds to me like is more behind that.Was it like an error fare or something? Cause I know that after the T.A gets approval from Ba team, then they have 24 hours to issue the ticket so before BA answer, there is just a simple confirmed booking that haven't been issued at all but have been placed on hold so therefore hold that A fare seat until it the booking gets canceled and "A" bucket seat gets released to general "buyers"

thebigben

Very sensible advice. For a few months I was contemplating going for GGL, but that would mean flying more than I would benefit from. I have only so many days off I can use... so instead of cramming long-haul trips on week-ends I'll just spend the money on the ground on week long vacations. No CCR access for me, nor Club Europe, but I think those are two things I can do without, especially since I'll still get gold from the Club World trips.

Filthy Monkey

Fares cannot be held indefinitely, unless there are specific rules allowing this, such as key route deals agreed with specific customers etc. Generally the maximum is 72 hours or the expiry of the fare, e.g a 28 day advanced purchase fare must be ticketed 28 ahead of travel. As soon as you roll over to 27 days, it will expire, but there are many scenarios.

Note also that if a booking expires, there's no guarantee that the original booking class, in this case A, will become available again.

danielbk

Unfortunately, if you were quoted based on the availability from, in this case, I assume, the US point of sale, due to lower price or better availability, changing to GBP would have lost you the triple avios earning
as it would have had to be handled not by the airline (who will only charge in the point of sale currency) and would have added a 3-4% processing fee that the card transaction costs us to process. In most transatlantic
bookings we use the US point of sale as it offers more space and flexibility, (sometimes the CAD point of sale is helpful too), while all bookings to South East Asia are usually in GBP for the same
reason.

****

Regarding processing GUF's - Case by case basis and depending on the complexity of the ticket, it takes between 10 minutes or 2-3 hours, depending also on how many times we have to redo everything from
scratch because the customer changes his mind or tried to optimise. The place which takes, literally, in some cases multiple hours of someone's work is exchanging and repricing a ticket that has been GUF'd, whether a
non voluntary exchange (weather/flight time changes) or voluntary changes (change date, route, etc) - it is a purely manual fare construction process since the system automatically will apply the
price of where you are sitting, so, trying to add the difference between the underlying fare you were charged, and the cabin you were seating.

high.and.above

Well from J to A there is no different tax to be collected so that one is very easy, I have to admit that I have never tried to upgrade premium to Club, just because I find it a very big scam. The taxes are outrageous high and make's the GUF lose a lot of it's value. I believe calculating the add taxes to be collected from W to J is complicated and time consuming

Keeping with the answer to the question if GUF's are worth the extra TP's , I definitely think they are, who has a lot of them and don't want to use them, I am more than happy to use them LOL

alex67500

I was charged by BA US in the end, so I did get 3x Avios. With the FX charge, I ended up roughly square. But I still haven't found a TA in the UK, so I'll probably stick with them for now...

Globaliser

Funnily enough, many of us here reckon that upgrading from W to J is the best value upgrade you can get. It's more often said in relation to using Avios to do so, but I can't immediately see why it should be good value if UuAing but poor value if GUFing.

And there are a few of us here who can (and repeatedly do) calculate the additional TFC for a W to J upgrade on a simple round trip in under 60 seconds. It's not complicated on straightforward itineraries.

Filthy Monkey

That depends on the underlying fare rules and the segments being changed. If, for example, you're changing part of the outbound routing, the whole fare will most likely have to be re-priced at current rates, which makes things more complicated.

danielbk

I never said there is any extra effort in the tax calculation, that was implied by another poster. What I was speaking about is manual fare calculation in various exchange scenarios none of which automatically calculated unlike a "regular" booking.

Geordie405

I certainly think that the upgrade from WT+ to J isn't as good value now as it was in the past, but I still think it's generally the best use of Avios and, hence, of a GUF as well. The TFCs are easy to calculate as @Globaliser says and it's often good to have these to hand when speaking with the contact centre as they will often need to do a manual calculation as well.

Most of my Avios are spent on upgrades with BA, although redemptions on CX, AA and AS can be good value for money, especially if the Y fare is exorbitant.

In terms of whether I make the push this year to 2500 points and get a single GUF2, that's my current quandary. I am on 1830 points at the moment with some missing points still to post. Based on my remaining travel plans for the year I should end up just cresting 2500 points for the year which, for me, is a stellar effort and result. I couldn't imagine clocking up 9000 points in a year - that seems an insane amount of travel. One of my coworkers was aghast at the fact that I even managed to retain Gold given that most of my travel is self-funded. This year has been very lean on work trips other than LAS - LAX so all the long haul travel has been personal, booked in WT+ in the main, UuA to Club where possible, and with a few OpUps thrown into the mix too.

I have only managed 3500 once in all my years of travelling, and that was a crazy year. I wouldn't say I had TP / GUF fatigue per se by the end of it. I was just knackered

high.and.above

deleted

high.and.above

Let's say for the sake of math that you pay 1300 usd for a WTP ticket USA to Istanbul return then to upgrade they charge extra 900 usd in taxes ( upgrade with a GUF). I know that is 900 because i tried once to upgrade.1300+900 make's the trip cost 2200. I think that with 2200 usd you can buy a ticket upfront. But from Cairo ( where I live at the moment) a J ticket to USA is around 1800 USd retur, then I upgrade to First and I pay no extra taxes. So first for +/- 1800 USD or Club for 2200