I am absolutely livid with BA customer service.

I have a return HKG to LHR and last month I found out I can’t use my separate flight (booked with another airline) from Taipei to HKG and then transfer because of covid – it needs to be on the same PNR to allow transfers. I needed to add a Cathay Flight onto m BA PNR then.

I called executive club who said they couldn’t help, I need to speak with redemptions. I spoke with them who said they can’t add a cash booking onto an avios booking and asked me to speak with commercial. Commercial told me they could book me a new flight but redemptions would need to cancel the existing one first. Spoke to them again and was told actually they can add a cash booking because my booking was a full cash booking with avios upgrade. We then went through the process of adding the flight. Sounds simple but in total I was on the phone for 3 hours.

I logon on today to see about changing my dates and the Taipei flight is missing! I called executive club and they say there is no record of the new flight. On hold and they talk with management. They can now see the flight, it wasn’t completed and told me I need to speak with commercial. I speak with them. They have no notes of the call or last month’s calls and say they can’t help me. They try to transfer me to redemptions but redemptions refuse to take the call from her saying they can’t help. She tries the transfer four times. In the end she has to transfer me and hangup without explaining why she called just so they will take the call. I speak to someone who can not only see the booking attempt last month but says it is possible and I need to speak with the Pay with Avios team. On hold again. She says she’s struggling to put me through. Continue on hold. Then I’m speaking with someone in the executive club who has no idea who I am or why I’m calling. Each and every person I speak to I have to clear security. He tries to put me back to the Pay with Avios team. I’m transferred somewhere else and I’m speaking with another guy who has no clue who I am. He puts a note out to see who I was speaking with before in redemptions. They reply to say they’re going home now and he asks me how he can help. I lose it at this point. He’s put me on hold mid sentence and the call counter is now 2 hours 58 minutes. I have no idea why I am now on hold, whether I’m being transferred, or if this guy just hopes I will hang up. Well, I have recorded the call and will be making a formal complaint.

Any ideas?

Not to mention I still have a flight next week that I won’t be on and seem to have wasted £2k on. I rarely swear but I’ve said a few choice words today (to myself, not on the phone).

Just hung up after 3 hours and 10 minutes. It's clear the last guy I spoke to just wanted me to go away.

Second call today. Spoke to a guy who insisted my booking is a commerical one and nothing to do with redemptions. Depsite the lady I spoke to earlier (in commercial) who was adamant it's nothing to do with them. After agreeing to be transferred to commercial the line cut off. At this stage I'm feeling this is one big prank at my expense.

I can see you had a bad set of experiences there, equally I can see the issue, namely a fairly complex booking being made more complex and then (if I've understood correctly) changed a third time.

Did the first Taipai booking show up on the BA App without a ticket number? I'm wondering if it was simply in the the ticketing queue, which we know is overloaded at the moment, and they won't be ticketing many reservations outside of August 2020 at the moment.

I'm not entirely sure of al the details here, but what would have been best to begin with would have been to ring Redemptions and simply ask them to remove the UuA (which is presumably what it was). Then next day add in the TPE sector, then maybe think about UuA again after that was done. Right now, it may be simpler to do the first stage - get the UuA off the booking - then FTV, then rebook a new booking to TPE from scratich. These are all fairly straightforward transactions. The catch is if the fare difference is greater than where you started.

Some of this advice will change depending on when you are travelling and similar details.

Thanks, I'm back on the line with commercial as the redemptions guy insisted that's who i need to speak with. As luck would have it got through to the first commercial lady I spoke with 4 hours ago who was shocked I'd been on the phone all of this time and still thinks it's redemptions I need to speak with. I no longer know who to believe.

Apologies but a lot of your acronyms (UuU - upgrade using avios? and FTV) went over my head. It's 1am in Taiwan now and I've got a cracking head ache :( Commercial lady is talking with her manager....

I'm trying to change an August -- October return to an October -- December return. Of course it would be nice if the Cathay flights were on there too.

It didn't show on the App. Only the original HKG to LHR was. Apparently- the redemptions guy told me a short while ago that LHR - HKG hadn't even been e-ticketed yet and the flight is the 26th of August :)

"namely a fairly complex booking being made more complex and then (if I've understood correctly) changed a third time." IS an UuA a complex booking? I can see adding (trying) to add the Cathay flights would make it complex, but that wasn't even done. We've not even attempted my original aim of today which was to change the dates yet :)

Upgrade using Avios. Have a look at your e-ticket, there are 5 differentt combinations in the mix here and really helps to be clear which it is, for reasons thy poor heid is now experiencing. So Upgrade using Avios is where you paid for say World Traveller Plus and you used Avios to get a Club Wolrd seat. That's commercial. It's closest cousin is Part Pay with Avios. You book WTP but you use Avios to reduce the cost, a CWS unapproved idea.

FTV = Future Travel Voucher - you throw in the booking and get a voucher equivalent to the value, which you then use for a brand new booking.

I'm hoping the lady is sorting this out, but if not, have a sleep and then we can work out the best way forward.

And yes, FT specialise is complex bookings. Most people buy a ticket there and back and just give cash, FTers on the other hand are very special people. But in that ideal world there would be no BA Forum.

Thanks for the explanations. Yes, it was an UuA.

Commecial lady has two commercial managers on the phone with managers in redemptions There's a PowWow going on. If this doesn't crack it then I might walk away from the ticket altogether lol

In change booking we would handle commercial booking with uua dont know why redemptions need to be involved.

Just start everything anew. The way I see it - it is a simple issue that has gone into complication.

BTW - this isn't entirely BA's fault.

I think BA tried to do you a favour by agreeing to try adding CX flight to the PNR - they are not obliged to do so. This is not something they usually do.

I guess the reason is that it may go wrong like this and make you unhappy.

From a customer's perspective, if adding a CX flight onto a BA flight was equivalent to building the first computer BA really should have advised me to cancel the ticket and book a new one. it would have been easier and faster all around. It's the people saying it's possible and then being transferred between different departments with people disagreeing about who should be able to do what that caused the issue. You can't blame the customer if they ask an airline to add a flight and are told ok. I only now have an understanding of how apparently complex this is - I had no way to know that before.

I eventually spoke to someone in redemptions who did the new flight for me with the new dates. Took about 45 minutes. Got a 6000 avios refund and paid £145 fare difference. It's now showing on my app. Just under 5 hours on the phone in total. Utterly ridiculous. Every person I spoke to was 'right' and dismissive of any of the other's opinions and stated facts. Department names and team names that I were told about were not recognised or claimed to not exist. It's hard to ask to speak to X in team Y when person Z says team Y doesn't exist despite person X telling me that's where they work.

Anyway - done now. Next time I'll just cancel the ticket and start a new one :)

As for BA doing me a favour - if they did, thanks BA. Certainly didn't feel like it.

I must say a big thank you to Tracy in Commercial who is quite new to the job but tried everything she could to assist me in getting redemptions to do the changes. Lovely lady and very empathetic.

Did you already use the HKGLHR? A partially used ticket is not necessarily refundable.

I must say it does sound like a nightmare.. But on the positive note you mention here, might be worth (especially during these times) to submit a "Well done" for Tracy even though everything else turned out a mess :)

Which can be done at ba.com/thankyou

I've not started the trip yet. The original first leg would have been Aug 26 - next week.

I was just going to ask how to do that - I'll do it right now. Thank you