Teefaf

Looking for some advice please on whether to accept a CEDR settlement proposed by BA.

In summary:

Itinerary: GLA-LHR-CDG return, in July 2022, for 5 pax. Reward flight paid using cash & Avios.
BA screw-up: Last leg (LHR-CDG) cancelled with 2 hours' notice. No duty of care provided on arrival at LHR - 'fend for yourselves'.
Expenses incurred to get ourselves home:

• £121.18 - Taxi to hotel
• £1,663.00 - Hotel (Hilton Stratford price-gouging as the only place in London with any rooms left)
• £65.00 - Taxi to Euston the next morning
• £399.10 - Train fare EUS-GLC
• £35.00 - Taxi from GLC to airport to collect car
• £18.82 - Toiletries/essentials as our bags weren't returned to us in LHR
• £78.90 - Food dinner on arrival in LHR & lunch the next day en-route to Glasgow via train
• £35.50 - Parking surcharge as my car was left in the airport for an extra day

Claimed submitted to BA day after arrival. 10 weeks later they finally responded, agreeing to pay £1100 EC/UK 261 compensation and only £1000 towards my expenses (£200/pax). I protested but they didn't budge - they also said they wouldn't pay for toiletries and I'd need to submit a separate baggage claim for those... sigh. I therefore submitted a CEDR claim thanks to the wonderful advice available on this board. BA has now responded saying it has issued payment for all remaining expenses except the extra parking charge as that's a consequential loss. I don't like that position but it's not the end of the world so I'll lump it.

I also requested a refund of 1/4 of the total cash and miles used to make the booking, which they've refused:

"As we are now refunding your alternative travel in full, you cannot also claim a refund of your cancelled flight as this would mean you have travelled for free. We would usually refund your cancelled flight, then pay the difference in cost for your alternative travel. However, on this occasion, as the flight was paid for in cash and Avios, it is difficult to do this, so the easiest way is to not refund your flight, and refund your alternative travel in full.

Please note if this offer is rejected, British Airways will issue a full defence to your claim."

Should I count my blessings and accept the settlement? Or should I push for some sort of goodwill for having first of all been left to fend for ourselves, and then the delay to returning our baggage, and then the delays to responding to our claims? I've been £2.5k out of pocket for 6 months - is there a monetary value to that? What is the 'full defence' likely to amount to, given they've already paid the statutory compensation and expenses due?

If the consensus here is to accept the settlement offered, I'd be fine with that - but I'm curious if there's ever scope for a customer service/goodwill angle to CEDR settlements. (I'm just a stinkin' Blue, FYI).

DYKWIA

You're £1064.50 up at this stage?

If so, I'd take that. Trying to get your flight refunded seems a bit "having your cake and eating it" to me

corporate-wage-slave

That seems to be the correct settlement, and of course if BA had offered it in the first week there would have been no issue. If BA chose to mount a full defence then the outcome should be the same as you have here, unless there is some BA supporting factor here. The position of the refund versus the train fare - BA's position seems correct to me, you don't get a free ride here. There is a customer relations point to be made perhaps, but CEDR is not the route to do it, and nor is EC261 going to help. You would have needed to do a MCOL for both EC261 and the Consumer Rights Act to get anywhere on that, and there is no certainty. "Fending for yourself" is better than the alternative in many cases, and your best argument there is BA failed in its contractural responsibilities to provide the service, over and above the rebooking issue. I doubt it's worth £50. Interest on late payment, MCOL can provide that but BA is traditionally opposed to this as a matter of principle, albeit a principle BA usually loses at MCOL level. I'm not aware of CEDR doing anything here, and it wasn't that long ago by their standards. I guess we haven't got to a world of living with 10% inflation. If BA had paid this 6 months ago then that's about £100 of lost value here, there again the basis usually Bank of England Base Rate.

The one thing you could take further under the Montréal Convention is the car parking surcharge. It is indeed consequential and not covered by EC261. But both the Convention and the CRA would be territory for this, though I can't say you will definitely win that specific argument.

Personally I would accept.

In essence BA tends to view having to pay a full EC261 bill is their customer relations gesture, which did net you over a thousand pounds, and the fact that you had to drag it out of them is - to them - neither here nor there.

flarmip

They are absolutely correct (legally speaking) in refusing to additionally refund the fare.

When a flight is cancelled or is delayed by more than 5 hours, you have a choice:

1) Continue the journey and request re-routing at the earliest opportunity
2) Continue the journey at a later date and request to be rebooked
3) Abandon the journey and receive a refund for any parts not yet completed

You are only entitled to compensation and your own costs for making alternative arrangements (where necessary) if you choose option 1 above. You are effectively trying to have your cake and eat it by wanting to choose both options 1 and 3!

They have paid you what you are owed under option 1 - compensation for the delay, as well as the cost of the alternative arrangements you made for staying overnight, eating and getting to Glasgow. They are probably also correct that the parking charge is too remote a loss to be recoverable (what if you had rented a car and needed to pay £200 for returning it late?) under common law and it's not an entitlement under UK/EU261, so it could only possibly be recoverable under the Consumer Rights Act or similar. A bit of a stretch in my view.

In some ways I would even argue that they are being generous in paying what they have, as I am sure there must have been a cheaper way for you to get from Heathrow to Stratford, Stratford to Euston and GLC to GLA than taking a taxi. I'm not going to try and second-guess your hotel choice as it's impossible to retrospectively determine what was available, but it's also a lot and something that you might have expected them to quibble over.

The only thing they are arguably not paying you, that you would be entitled to recover in Court, would be interest on your expenses. This is normally calculated at 8% simple, so if for £2.5k for 6 months it would be approx £100. However, bear in mind that the judge or adjudicator may not be as generous in awarding you all of your expenses, so even if they awarded interest, it may be on a lesser total award.

Overall, whilst BA certainlty could be paying more as a gesture of goodwill, I think they have made a reasonable offer that pays almost all of what you what you are entitled to, and it would be worth accepting even if you aren't 100% happy with it. When litigating (and this is effectively the early stages of litigation) it's common to accept a settlement for less than 100% of what you think you might get if you took it to Court.

greg5

Looking for advice on how to handle this with BA.

I have been refused compensation for a misconnect of BA713 (ZRH-LHR) to BA49 (LHR-SEA) on 14 AUG. There were originally 75 minutes scheduled between the arrival of BA715 and BA49. Short, I know, but within the MCT, and I figured, if I missed it I’d have a night in London and BA would get me going the next day, which they did via DUB and on EI.

The ticket ended up being a bit of a mess, as every leg of the flight had got cancelled at least once from the time I bought the ticket until the time I flew. The first cancellation involved AA cancelling their SEA flights for the summer. Eventually, over the summer I contacted BA as I bought the ticket from them, and got put on BA flights from LHR-SEA and back SEA-LHR. I was also originally to fly ZRH-LHR on BA715 the afternoon before and stay overnight at the HGI at T2. I figured this would make for a nice relaxing trip, then flying out the next afternoon. Unfortunately, in mid-July my BA715 was cancelled, and I had the choice of a 7AM flight, or the above mentioned BA713 with the 75 minute connection. Not being a morning person, I choose BA715 leaving at 13.25 on 14 AUG.

So, on the day 14 AUG, I head to ZRH to go catch my flight. I check FR24 to see if my flight is headed in. It turns out, the plane is still on the ground in LHR. Eventually, the original aircraft goes tech, and they have to change planes. BA712 eventually arrives in ZRH at 13.09, when it was supposed to arrive at 12.30. Some pax don’t make the flight and have to have their bags offloaded. BA713 leaves late at 14.32, and lands at LHR T5B at 14.49. I check the BA app on my iPhone, and see I have already been rebooked onto a LHR-DUB-SEA routing the next morning. I seem to remember that my SEA flight BA49 was leaving from T5B, and it was scheduled to depart at 15.30, but doesn’t actually depart until 16.20. Technically, there’s still time, so after we offload at T5B I run to a closed T5B security. After that I run to the train and get to T5A flight connections, and get the red and beep from the pass reader. Then I talk with the Flight Connections service desk that says I’m due compensation, and to contact BA to receive it. The guy there gives me a hotel voucher and boarding passes for my new flights. There were at least three passengers trying to make the SEA flight including myself.

I filled out a claim for compensation back in November and was finally refused compensation this week with BA claiming that my original cancellation of BA715 back in July being the reason for compensation denial. Even though it was actually a knock-on effect of the issues of BA712 leaving LHR late to get to ZRH that caused my misconnect.

Here is the response:

flarmip

It seems like they've completely missed the point here. I'm a little confused as to the relevance of BA713 (were you rebooked onto this on the day, due to the previous working of BA715 going tech?) but either way, the only reason you were delayed was that you missed your connection in LHR.

Whilst tight, 75 minutes is a valid connection and so the fact that you were rebooked a month out is of no particular relevance here. It might have increased the likelihood of the connection being missed - but that's like saying that flying during winter is the cause of deicing delays. A root cause, maybe, but not the proximate causal factor.

I'd get the ball rolling on taking this to CEDR.

corporate-wage-slave

I hope your iniitial claim did not mention the previous cancellations, since that's all irrelevant and serves to distract. The only thing that matters here is that you had a 75 minute connection and due to technical issues on the previous service it ran late plus you were reaccommodated when still in a position to make the original service which was separately delayed slightly. The back story isn't that relevant to my mind. If I've understood correctly, you were due into LHR at 14:15 (?) and you actually arrived at 14:49. Presumably they were still boarding at 16:00 for Seattle. So both on the delay and as per CJEU case "Germán Rodríguez Cachafeiro and María de los Reyes Martínez-Reboredo Varela-Villamor v Iberia, Líneas Aéreas de España SA" then BA is liable for delay compensation.

I wouldn't have any further dialogue with BA, I would now move to CEDR if you are 8 weeks past your initial case.

greg5

No. I didn't do anything other than put in the claim that mentioned I had a misconnect and what I got as re-routed flights. Basically all pull downs from the web form. I didn't give any other details, just that I had the misconnect. I had to read the reply a couple of times, as I had never even mentioned the original ZRH-LHR. It was a real 'what the heck?' moment for me. I did mention the missing Fast Track in SEA, as I figured that was simple enough, and that maybe I'd get 10k Avios as I did the last time I complained about it.

The lurid details I included just for those reading it here.

I'll go straight to CEDR, as I was about to anyways, as I hadn't heard from BA. I also have another claim for an unrelated trip as well to do at the same time.

greg5

Indeed. No, BA is claiming here that they can refuse compensation because the cancelled a flight in my itin that led to the rebooking onto a flight that then was delayed and caused the misconnect. I was quite astounded by the sort of logic involved.

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, that sentiment is unfortunately not unusual, and from what I can make out, Customer Relations are giving each case about 30 seconds of time and then sending out replies without digging into (in this case) a rotational delay. If your flight was plain and simple delayed 3 hours then even those 30 seconds tends to reveal that, so they are the claims that work out OK for the customer. It's partly an aspect of the mountain of outstanding claims, but equally there never was a time when BA was straightforward with claims resulting from flumped connections at T5.

Butts

My itinerary has been altered tomorrow Monday 23rd September returning from Poland (Warsaw) to Edinburgh - informed of cancellations at 1525 this afternoon.

Original schedule BA879 Warsaw to LHR 0810 arr 1000 (cancelled) connecting onto BA 1450 to EDI at 1210 arr 1340 (cancelled)

New itinerary BA847 1250 Warsaw to LHR arr 1440 connecting onto BA 1452 to EDI at 1700 arr EDI 1825.

Will I be entitled to any compensation or will the weather poleaxe me ?

corporate-wage-slave

I don't know the reason for the cancellation, but if it is weather, given what happened today and given the night-stop, you are indeed verily pole-axed.

Sigwx

Yes outbound to WAW CANX due WX, the laws of Murphy rule today.

Butts

I think the reason it has been cancelled is because the outbound flight BA878 flight at 1815 which becomes my original Flight BA 879 tomorrow was cancelled hence no Aircraft here in Warsaw.

However I note LOT flight LO280 from LHR to Warsaw is on it's way over (due to leave at 1810 left at 2028)

Does this add a new dimension ?

corporate-wage-slave

It may do if you were travelling from LHR to WAW, but my understanding is that you are going the other direction.