BA won't refund foreign taxes/fees on avios award ticket cxl
 

So i had to cancel an avios award ticket (on American) from US to Mexico coming up shortly. Our hotel reservation got canceled. I believe they are planning on opening international terminals and tourist areas July 1st. For other reason we can't move trip to July or later in year.
So they processed the cancellation but are not refunding the fees. This includes customs fees and Mexico taxes and fees. Obviously we are not going to be on the flights.

Anyone else run into this? Seems crazy to pay foreign taxes on flights we didn't take. They are saying unless the flight gets canceled, they cannot refund these fees? See below for an example on one of the flights.
Immigration User Fee - USA USD 7.00 Animal & Plant Health User Fee (Aphis) - USA USD 3.96 Airport Departure Tax (International) - Mexico USD 53.11 Customs User Fee - USA USD 5.89

Welcome any responses. There were no BA fees on there just for reference
thank you

You can get a full refund of the Avios and taxes/fees, minus $55, as per your fare rules. You'd need to call up for this.

Thx BA6501, I guess what your saying is that only a tiny bit of what I posted would be refundable (amount greater than $55). I was thinking since Covid etc, they were more flexible. We were going to go, but hotels canceled and Mexico saying Phase II tourists now in July.

And I did call the Avios group to cancel to no avail in getting those waived.

While this will not help you now, in cases where your underlying flights are not cancelled BA is allowing persons to obtain a voucher without any fees. The voucher would have included the avios and cash you paid and would allow you to book another avios redemption for travel until 30APR2022. No redeposit fee would have been charged.
See this thread for more info.:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...ation-etc.html

as noted if the flight isn’t cancelled but you are not wanting to travel you can cancel but it is standard rules, so all avios is return and all cash is retuned minus the $55 fee.

the flexibility which is now also provided under book with confidence is that you can opt to apply for a future travel voucher. All the avios and cash would be held on the voucher, with no fee deducted, and this would be available for you to use to make a new booking anytime up to April 2022.

Thanks for posting that. You know I told the representative that we would be looking to book at some point again but didn't know when. They seemed to indicate canceling was only option. Maybe I will email them to see if they would offer that option as that would have been the better solution.

Thank you for the tip.

you will have the future travel voucher option and you can request it online, no need to call. if you goo in to your booking and click on cancellation options you should be automatically redirected to the"future travel voucher application form" form

thanks for the response, as I noted below the rep did not seem to know about this option or offer it. The flight was coming up shortly so I didn't want to lose the avios. Not sure if BA will retroactively do anything but my choice would have been the FTV instead.

ah, yes sorry if you have requested the cancellation already then you can't change your mind now.

Does AA have similar FTV policy as BA?
Just that the OP is saying his reward flight is on AA, not BA

Related question to some extent. Booked Mexico to Dfw with avios. The ex Mexico leg is charging 20 quid each of tourism tax. As residents we are exempt from this. Does anyone know procedure for getting this refunded?

Thanks in advance

AA's policy is not relevant as this is a BA ticket.

As was already answered nearly a year ago...