Upgrade but no TP given
 

On a recent flight to Europe from Lhr I decided to check if a paid upgrade would give me the required TP to maintain silver status for the following year. Me and my wife (a gold member ) checked in at the First Wing at T5. I asked the check in person if the ticket would accept a paid upgrade and if I would get the relevant TP from the trip. She said yes, but just to confirm she called the First Wing check in manager over, who confirmed I was eligible. I said I would decide once we were in the First class lounge. When we got in there I went to the information and ticketing desk and told them exactly what I was doing this for, (the flight was a B767 so I'm sure you can realise nobody in their right mind would pay for an upgrade to club on this particular aircraft) Both BA staff members on the desk said I was OK and would get the TP for this upgrade. I paid my money and got the relevant boarding card. As expected the club on this flight was rubbish ( not even enough food for the 21 passengers on it) but it was a means to an end.

Forward 2 weeks and the TP never appeared on my account. Lots of twitter correspondence and it turns out that because the original ticket was purchased with avios ( 9 months earlier ) I was not eligible for the TP's. I pointed out that in that case I had been mis sold the upgrade. They did agree with this and admitted it was their error- but they won't do anything about it. A 80 minute call to the Manchester call centre resulted in someone telling me they would investigate and get back to me on the 9/10. Obviously nothing has happened , follow up calls and emails have not been returned.

Why oh why is British Airways customer service so bad. I had an email this week telling me that BA are planning a multi million investment in training its staff and they want to put customers at the heart of its business. REALLY ?

Yes, well the first agent just got it wrong. A quick look through the stickies at the top of this forum would help that agent and indeed any other traveller in this position - if your initial purchase was for an Avios ticket you can't earn TPs or Eligible Flights. If it helps, you're not the first person to be caught by this, but that's why there is Flyertalk. If in doubt about something like that you best check here, there is usually an expert online who will give you the correct information very quickly.

It's pretty well known - certainly on here, if you upgrade an Avios ticket it will never earn TPs or even Avios. (unless there has been an error). I wonder if the check in people actually understand the nuances of exec club TP earning however.

I'm not sure you have been mis-sold. Your reason for taking it is quite obscure, and the real value of the upgrade is to get the better service and space, even if you don't particularly value that.

In the circumastances though, I would hope they would comp you an extra year of Silver, so don't give up. Just be clear that this is what you want!

As the original ticket was purchased 9 months earlier I had forgotten I had used Avios. If I had remembered I wouldn't have made the change. It's just frustrating that 4 members of staff looked at my booking and told me I was ok to upgrade in order to get the TP's. I was very clear with them why I was doing this.

Whilst I agree with the other responses that you may not necessarily been mis-sold, I think there is a clause in the Consumer Rights Act whereby any information provided to a customer, whether verbal or non verbal is considered to be a term of a contract if this is taken into account when making a decision to purchase that service/contract.

I'm not a lawyer, but given you consulted with multiple staff members and BA have admitted that they made an error it may be worth looking into if you don't have other options to reach silver before your year ends.

I'd say that that is fairly clear mis-selling - the customer made clear what he wanted, was told the product would perform the role he wanted, paid for it and then found it wouldn't. If he's made clear that he wasn't interested in the upgrade for other reasons then I can't see how they are particularly relevant to whether or not it's mis-selling. Whether mis-selling is relevant/going to result in anything positive is another question entirely.

I was offered an upgrade to Club Europe via MMB on an Avios ticket I purchased. I called up BAEC and asked if accepting the upgrade offer in MMB on an Avios ticket would get me the tier points for Business. The agent said yes. Anyway I didn't get them (understand why from Flyertalk) but I challenged BA on this. They listened to the call and agreed I was incorrectly advised and they posted the J tier points and Avios into my account.

So it can be done if mis-sold!

I'm not 100% sure that the check-in staff or agents in the lounge understand the intricacies of the EC system. For the sake of 30/35 tier points to renew a clearly regular flier to Silver, and to avoid this kind of mind-numbing customer service failure, BA should act.

Otherwise, what are you actually empowering your staff to do?

You can ask on the day at the airport and is called an AUP (Airport Upgrade) on here. Not guaranteed if they are available but it's reasonably common ish across the board, Y to W, WT+ to CW, Y to CE etc. More info here but the golden rule is Avios bookings don't earn TP's, cash upgrade or not.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...dashboard.html

I can appreciate that it's a bit of a frustrating situation to find yourself in. However, you seem to acknowledge that you knew that an Avios ticket wasn't eligible for TPs on an upgrade. I feel it is a bit unfair to place the blame on check-in staff when you yourself had "forgotten" about using points to pay for your base ticket. Yes, they could have checked every scenario about your ticket in the same way you could have looked at your booking confirmation and have realised how you originally paid.

Maybe try writing in to plead your case, you might get lucky.

Actually, I've AUP'd an avois booking on more than one occasion and was able to claim back the seat reservation fees, as well. ^

Well after chasing the exec club with no success, numerous emails ignored they have finally given me the 40 TP that I was claiming. Obviously they didn't tell me about this or apologise for the incident. I just noticed my account had been credited with the TP's