claptonalex

You can’t now cancel an avios flight online. You can’t move a flight online , you can’t do anything in manage my booking but have to call them? Are they doing this to purposely make things difficult for people. It’s insane .... been with BA for years and really now had enough I think

navylad

just tried a date change with a Avios booking I have next year and worked fine at least to the payment page. What happens when you try?

SonicStar817

Did you make the booking recently?(like within the last couple days). I made a booking last weekend and couldn't do anything with it until a couple days later.

mikeyfly

All explained in the cancel / rebook thread Covid-19 BA Rebooking/Cancellation/Refund HELP & ADVICE *No Speculation etc*

antichef

They now do not let you cancel and get a refund even on fully refundable flights using MMB. You now have to ring and it automatically disconnects you if they are busy. If you get pass that stage you hope to get answered. No idea how long the refunds will take, they said possibly a month. Not going to do that again.

chistery

I phoned on Friday for a refund. It's back on my amex card today (Sunday)

That's said, two refunds from earlier in the week haven't appeared.

JessicaB

BA made a loss of 4 billion Euros in the last 6 months, and probably only have enough cash to keep going for another six months, hence going to a rights issue to raise more money. That's why they make it as difficult as possible for anyone to get a refund. In fairness anyone running the company would do this. They are hoping that people will not opt for a refund and have a voucher instead.

KARFA

Just to clarify, the half yearly results reported that IAG made the EUR 4 bn loss, not BA on it's own. And this was the loss after tax and exceptional items - one of those items being the one off EUR 1.3 bn fuel overhedging loss. Cash on hand was EUR 6 bn and a total liquidity of EUR 8 bn.

In terms of difficulty getting refunds, yes BA have somewhat annoyingly turned off online refunds. However, my own personal experience is BA have never refused to refund me and if you read the board you can see many reports of people calling and getting refunds. Most are being processed and credited within a few days, with manual ones taking a few weeks.

In comparison a few of the other European legacy airline have either been outright refusing refunds and only issuing vouchers (in contravention of EC261 of course) or still have hefty refund backlogs (e.g. AY).

jerry a. laska

Also see the extensive discussion here:
Why won’t BA let you get a refund via the website?

Sailbot3310

For sure - But it makes me wonder why they didn't elect to follow other airlines (e.g Finnair, SAS) and offer a % increase on the value of the voucher in the event the flight is cancelled. Even if a voucher was bumped by 10% (which I think is what Finnair % is) then I'd have been inclined to take a voucher on some of my cancelled flights, rather than elect for the cash refund. Even if 10% of people elected for an increased voucher, that's a lot of additional free cash flow. You also guarantee that money returns to BA, rather than drift off to a competitor when said individual comes to rebook (perhaps not such an issue for those of us members of BAEC, especially with status).

I don't like the difficulty to receive a refund, but yes from a commercial side it makes sense. I just think there are slightly better ways to go about it that's amicable for both airline and customer.

antichef

My annoyance is that the flights are booked to go to a customer at their request but on my credit card, when they get cancelled they remain on my CC bill and I am out the money until I get the refund back. They are not holiday or discretionary spend. So far this month I have had to cancel three sets of flights and it is starting to mount up!

SKRan

A standard answer to BA problems by some people in this board can be simplified into these sentences:

Others can do it so your case is abnormal.
LH is worse.
Hence you are wrong and BA is the best.

Dave Noble

I cannot see where that view is even being expressed on the thread - others have agreed that it is happening , no reference to LH and no one suggesting that the OP is wrong

antichef

Not at all. What is being complained about is that a standard function that has been in use for years has been switched off in MMB. This is now causing inconvenience to customers.

BOH

...and I would suggest is causing a disincentive to book so actually having a reverse effect on airlines too. One friend and two different work colleagues have both said to m that until airlines refund promptly when the airline cancels a flight they will not book to go anywhere. The removal by BA of the simple "Refund" button that used to be on ba.com plus the arrogant boss of FR saying a while back that "refunds will take up to 6 months" appears to be putting a few people off booking anything.

You "reap what you sow" seems to be so apt with how the airlines have behaved over promptly giving customers their money back.