Dan1113

A couple weeks ago I booked a last minute Europe avios trip and was told that if I cancel, I'd get all my miles back and the only consequence was losing the £1 per person cost of the avios ticket.

Is this the case for all current avios bookings?

I am wanting to book a trip in October to somewhere just to get away for a few days but I can't quarantine, so I was thinking of booking 2-3 trips with avios and then cancelling 2 (or all 3, if absolutely needed...) knowing I'd get all my avios back and that I'd only lose £1 each for each booking.

If a trip costs more than £1 and I cancel -- I take it I would lose the entire cash part of the redemption (£35 I think)?

Thanks!

KARFA

If you cancel reward voluntarily then it’s normal rules which means cancelling at least 24 hours before your flight will refund everything minus a £35 per person cancellation fee. The cancellation fee will be taken from the taxes/fees/charges you paid. If the taxes/fees/charges are less then £35 you will just lose that, you won’t be asked to cure the difference.

musehead

Is that definitely the case now? Because I had read that people were being charged £35 and then fully refunded the original booking when cancelling on the phone. So, for example, a £17.50 + 4500 Avios booking would still attract a £35 cancellation fee and therefore cost a net additional £17.50 to cancel on top of what had initially been paid.

KARFA

Yes it’s definitely the case. What you read was rubbish unfortunately.

corporate-wage-slave

That should only have happened to those who "mistakenly" asked for a FTV and then wanted their Avios refunded to their account. Best stick to FT for information, any mistakes here get corrected, some blogs give pretty dreadful advice. The usual process is as KARFA has described and hasn't changed in many years.

flying_pig

It's worth noting that at the moment it's not possible to cancel and refund avios bookings through MMB, as the cancellation link directs to the voucher application page. The same happens with fully flexible fares. It means that it's necessary to call. A bit annoying (I assume especially for those who don't have access to the GGL line) and seems a bit of a waste of resources from BA's side, but I get why they want to make refunds a little more convoluted and direct people to vouchers instead.

Dan1113

This is excellent, thank you. Losing only £1 is fine with me.

Are most Europe avios redemptions only coming out at £1 each just now, or did I just get lucky / catch an offer of some sort?

KARFA

Yes they should all give the £1 option. This came out of a trial last summer Reward Flight Savers priced from £1 - trial begins 16 July 2019

Effectively there should be the old RFS band pricing shown, as long as some additional pricing options going down to £1 cash but much more avios. I don't tend to find the avios amount at the £1 level good value myself, but you need to make that determination yourself really about what pricing level you prefer.

Dan1113

Thanks!

DCAview

Resurrecting this thread to make sure that I understand the rules of the road. I'm looking at a somewhat speculative 2021 booking from LHR-PSA. The baseline Avios price I'm being offered is 12,000 Avios plus $1 (I assume this is a Reward Flight Saver fare). As I understand it, if I choose that option and cancel, I'll get my Avios back and lose the $1 fee. I also have options to pay more cash and fewer Avios, up to 2,500 Avios and $91.

If I choose the more-cash option and cancel, is the cancellation fee (a) the GBP 35 that ordinarily applies to ex-UK reservations (such that I'll get be refunded 2,500 Avios and about 33 GBP) or (b) the $1 in fees that I would have paid if I had chosen the all-Avios price (such that I'll be refunded 2,500 Avios and $90)?

I *think* the answer is that the cancellation fee is set at the taxes I would have ordinarily paid (in this case $1) even if I separately choose to conserve Avios by adding cash into the mix, but the real experts are in this group, so I thought I would ask before pulling the trigger.

Truth be told, I wouldn't ordinarily consider any of the Avios redemption options to be good values, considering the very reasonable cash fares in the market, but given how the world is going, at this point I'm valuing refundability over all else.

corporate-wage-slave

If the flight is cancelled you would get a full cash refund anyway. But yes, the redeposit fee for USA based BAEC members if USD55, but that's the maximum based on what you actually paid in cash. So if you paid less then you still get full Avios refund and they don't require you to pay extra cash for ther refund. This isn't anything new, and for internal USA flights (for example) it's been the case for as long as I can remember.

DCAview

Thanks. What I'm hoping to figure out, though, is what constitutes the amount "actually paid in cash." If I had the choice of paying $1 and 24,000 Avios on a RFS booking, but chose instead to pay $91 and 2,500 Avios, is the "taxes and charges" that BA would keep for the purposes of a cancellation fee just the $1? Or would it keep the standard 35 GBP redeposit fee? (I would think a 35 GBP fee is the correct redeposit fee on an LHR-PSA flight since the UK is the "region of departure," regardless of the fact that I'm ordinarily a U.S.-based member, but I'm happy to be corrected on that.)

This 2019 post from Head for Points seems to suggest that the amount actually paid in cash that is kept on a RFS redeposit is $1 (or 50p, more precisely) and that additional amounts of cash paid to reduce the Avios due get refunded on a voluntary cancellation, but I'd be curious about more recent experiences.

corporate-wage-slave

"Actually paid in cash" means what you paid in cash, as opposed to what you notionally could have paid in cash in divers hypothetical scenarios. So if you paid USD1, it's USD1 that BA will hold on to, you won't get anything back. If you paid USD 55, it's USD55, so zero back. If it's USD56 then you get USD1 back. To repeat my earlier point in different words, BA won't hold your Avios hostage until you paid more money. As I say, there is nothing new in the principle, which has been around for at least 20 years.