No record of being ticketed
 

Is there a way for BA to check all calls related to a booking or FF#?

having just failed to OLCI for a flight, I discovered that it hadn’t been ticketed and there was no record of me having called to pay for the booking.

Seems off, since I definitely called and gave my credit card when I wanted to confirm the booking, and I can’t imagine they’d have left an unpaid booking remain in the system for 6 weeks without cancelling it.

Is is this just an IT issue? They’ve told me that they will try and issue the ticket now and then call me back, but if they can’t do it, I’m not quite sure what recourse I have.

One possibility is that you did indeed provide payment details, but the processing of this took too long. BA (or rather its outsourced agents in India) can only retain the CVV information for a week, at which point it is automatically deleted as part of BA's banking agreements. Someone is supposed to call you back to get the CVV information again, but there are plenty of FTers who say this doesn't happen, and some regulars make sporadic calls to refresh the CVV. If this was a dollar currency transaction made via the Contact Centre, this is a risk. If you pay via online channels, or even the Contact Centre on a simple transaction then it is fully automated, but if you were amending an existing transaction or it was complex, that is where the risk of non payment can happen.

Having said that, we used to get a lot more posts about this issue than of late, and it was certainly made worse when there was disruption elsewhere in the network since those travellers would be prioritised, but still it's been a while since I've seen a post like the OP's. So maybe they have improved matters.

Normally an agent will make a comment on a booking whenever there is any contact made with a customer regarding it so there will be a comment to say that you provided payment details. From personnel experience I had a similar issue a few years ago and it took about 20 minutes from talking to an agent to getting the ticket issued correctly. This was a slightly fraught time for me as it was less than 2 hours until the flight.

This is still very much an issue.

I've had BA change and reissue a ticket for next June. CVV provided when I made the request but wasn't ticketed in time. Since then, I've received two emails from BA asking that I call in for an issue with my ticket - done that twice, and still not ticketed in time.

I'm not particularly stressed as there's lots of time and I know the issue, but it is annoying. I have a long layover in LHR later this week, so will try and get this taken care of by an agent there.

While it should not be the passenger's responsibility, it befalls the passenger to track the issuance (or reissuance) of an e-ticket. If you do not see your new e-ticket at 5 days, call in.

It is an absurdity that in this day and age, tickets and most particularly reissuance of tickets is not close to immediate. AA tickets issued in the UK (where the CVV problem arises) are generally handled either immediately, e.g. you will have an e-ticket confirmation by the time you hang up, to the next business day on those rare occasions when AA's "rate desk" must look at the ticket (something which occurs much more frequently on BA due to the lack of automation of its front line pricing).

I'd be very surprised if the average man in the street has any clue about ticketing. They make a reservation, get a locator and would think that's job done.

Happened to me when I upgraded months before the flight, which required an additional payment. Can't tell you the panic at the airport when told by BA that I wasn't ticketed. Resolved, when they discovered, after 15 minutes, the cause. I handed over my credit card and ticket issued. But that didn't makeup for the upset.
BA personnel at airport told me it was my fault because I ignored the B.A. email. Of course, I never received one.

I would be surprised as well.

That does not change the reality as it is not done.

I absolutely disagree with that sentence. Airlines moved away from physical paper tickets to e-tickets to save money.

With that, it befalls on the airline to ensure that they issue tickets correctly and that they make things right when their processes fail. After all, they are already saving millions by removing the admin related to paper tickets, surely they can and should pay for when things go wrong because of that.

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BA Is required to get you on a flight that you paid for in good faith. If there is a problem then the Ticketing department had to have contacted you. Its not your fault that the third party outsourced payment processor did not process your payment and ticket your reservation in time. I would press for a "Forced Ticket" and see if they can reprocess the form of payment by providing your CVV again. If they get a lot of these issues then they should reconsider their payment processor .

The same goes for my local Community College they use a third party NetPay and if there is a problem the financial services of the colleges reaches out to NetPay and asks them for the authorization code.

BA should be able to provide you with an Authorization or Attempted Authorization code and the dates they attempted to charge your credit card, the date and time the pre-authroization was taken if it was approved or declined, the date and time they tried to contact you for any problem. Point in case if you were not made aware of such an issue then it would be reasonable to believe that everything is ok.

How can you be expected to babysit your reservation constantly.I mean its good to see that a ticket number is associated and if none is then I would question the problem but after a ticket number has been associated then the airline enters into an agreement to carry you.