keepschanging

No matter what I do - through website, app, or whatever - I always get an error message trying to redeem Avios:

"Error

• There was a problem with your request, please try again later."

Is this another airline trying to scam us out of airmiles? Just a pretend website that never works?

golfmad

How far in the process do you get before you see that error?

And, no it's not a scam.

I see you've now suggested that Cathay and BA runs scams in the space of 48 hours. I doubt Cathay's is a scam either.

If you provide more details someone here may be able to help.

keepschanging

Thank you for the reply. For your information, I am a judge; I have often made rulings on civil frauds and other causes of action one would describe as "scams"; and I do not use the term lightly; although I do not suggest this is actually a fraud.

The Cathay change is obviously a scam (albeit not a fraud of course). I used to search on the Asia Miles website. I could search (a) multiple dates at once and (b) any airlines in the OneWorld group. Now, (a) they have forced a diversion to the Cathay website (b) it is ONLY possible to search Cathay - any other airlines you have to fill in a form which is massively time consuming and doesn't allow multiple dates and (c) it not possible to search multiple dates.

They then call that an "elevated" service. You cannot credibly suggest that is not intentionally making it more difficult to redeem Asia Miles.

As to BA, all I can say is that on both teh app and the website, for a number of days now, when I try and search availability of any form of Avios redemption, the result is simply "computer says no" (figuratively). Now why would that be?!






BUT - what they did at Cathay was outrageous. You used to be able to search a bunch of dates and it would set out availability. Easy peasy. Now they made two deeply significant changes: (a)

golfmad

Well I can't comment on Cathay but the BA site looks fine to me. I just did a dummy search LHR-JFK for mid Jan and see these results.

I am almost immediately turned off when I see people suggesting airline employees are lying or companies are operating scams when they are almost invariably not.

If you're having the same problems on the BA app *and* the website it's hard to know what to suggest. Perhaps try logging out and back in again. If you're using a VPN then perhaps switch it off and try again? At what precise point does it fail for you? Which step in the process? Is it before or after the step shown below?

GumshoeW12

Am I the only one who�s mildly concerned that someone who claims to be a judge seemingly doesn�t know what a scam is?

Mikeact

Of course it's not 'down'...

chriswiles

A scam by definition is something malicious and designed to extract something from you using fraudulent purposes.

The BA website was/is just slow, nothing more nothing less. I was getting errors yesterday. Doesn't make it a 'scam' though.

AviationMoose

I've always found BA's Avios site to be very... browser fussy.

Probably get errors 30% of the time when I do anything using Edge, but it's fine in Chrome. Could just be that.

golfmad

The OP mentioned getting the same errors on the website and the app so I don't think so.

Ancient Observer

Sounds like impatience? And/or a need to clear all cookies.
I was researching Avios to USA last night. Firefox. It worked fine, but I do clear all cookies very often. When I do not clear cookies, I get the same message as The Judge.