Hi all, I'm looking for a bit of advice on a horrid situation with BA.

Some months ago I planned a trip to SE Asia with my housemate. Reward fligths were booked with Finnair by me and my housemate transferred 161,000 avios to me to cover the cost.

We had to cancel the trip recently and I refunded the avios points to my housemate. His BA account was subsiquently frozen and today he has just received and amail accusing him of purchasing avios.

Here is some of the text in the email

�A transaction was recently made into your account, that was flagged to us as suspicious.

We note that you secured an Avios credit via an unauthorised method and we referred your report to our principals at the International Airline Group Limited, who have now responded.

They have made enquiries and can confirm the Avios secured by you had been fraudulently obtained from other British Airways Club Members. They are happy to accept you were not involved in the fraudulent activity but regret that, as your purchase was not undertaken in accordance with British Airways Terms and Conditions, the points secured are invalid and will need to be removed from your account. Therefore we have deducted these points from your account and will not be reinstating them. I have been advised to inform you that we will be monitoring your account and any future actions such as these may result in your account being closed�

I have lived with my housemate for many years, both of our BA accounts are registered at the same address. It seems they have�t looked into what should be a fairly comprehesive audit trail. My BA account has remained OK and not been blocked as yet.

They seem to think that their decision is final and there is no recourse here.

Any advice on a way forward or relevent contacts within BA would be great!

Just to clarify have *you* contacted BA to explain the situation with a clear outline of what happened?

I tend to find social media staff quite quick to respond too.

This reads to me as not merely an accusation but that an investigation has taken place, judgement has been cast and punishment dished out. It also appears to exclude any further recourse. On face value this appears to be an egregious abuse of a customer.

I would write to BA, probably by conventional letter with recorded delivery, laying out exact details of the transactions, and insisting the avios get reinstated. Be sure also to set a realistic deadline for BA to respond, I suggest 30 days. Absent any satisfactory response, calculate what the Avios would cost to purchase and commence MCOL action against BA.

I have responded to BA by email on the address that the email to my housemate came from [email protected] I think. I mentioned the case number in the email and detailed what has happened.

I am erxpecting that BA will either ignore me as I am not the person accused. My housemate has also emailed them with proofs that they requested and mentioned that he is aware that I have contacted them.

I guess my next course of action will be to follow up my email with a written letter giving them 30 days to resolve the issue before we persue through small claims.

This thread could be useful.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...os-stolen.html

You did not mention in your original post that BA had enquired for details of the transactions. Was this before the email you quoted in the OP or as part of it you didn�t include?

Were you asked about the avios? If not, then is there a possibility its not your transaction that has caused the issue? It appears you have not been contacted if you had to use the email address from the email your housemate received.

i am not sure why this would be your next course of action

BA made abbsolutely no enquiries to either of us. The first response was after my housemate enquired to them as to why his account was blocked

Just to be clear, did you use the "Transfer Avios / Combine my Avios" tool?

That's a good point. OP has not said *how* Avios were transferred. If they used a third party app\tool to do it, then that would explain everything.

I used the transfer avios function. I'm BA gold so don't have to pay the �50 charge. When we made the original booking my housemate transferred avioos from his BA to his Finnair and then to my Finnair where I booked the flights.

His BA - His Finnair - My Finnair - Booked Flight - Cancelled Flight - Finnair Refiund Avios - Avios from my Finnair to my BA - Transferred to his BA - His account blocked

My bad, I should have said "our course of action"

First, welcome to Flyertalk! It's not unusual for people to first join when something unpleasant happens but of course one can only hope things will get better!

A first thing to note is that with all airlines (not just BA), the investigation of suspected fraud etc is voluntarily kept quite obscure. There is little communication from the airline and no way of directly getting in touch with the people leading the investigation unless they get in touch with you themselves. There is a long thread on suspected fraud, account suspension etc which I would recommend you look up and check as it will give a tonne of useful background.

I think it is also important to note that in such cases, the devil is often in the details. I assume the following based on your description but would be good to know if any of it is incorrect:

1) Your housemate and you decided to go on a trip together. You chose to have him send you avios so you could book for both rather than each book your own ticket - is that correct (and why I guess? Is it because you have higher status and there would be benefits in your doing the booking for both?)

2) He transferred the avios to you through the "transfer avios" function on the website

3) You then decided to cancel the trip and the avios were refunded to you

4) You thus used the avios transfer function on the website again to transfer back to him/her the avios they had sent you in the first place.

5) Your housemate was not contacted by BAC but saw that the avios had not reached their account (or had reached it but were deducted and the account was frozen? (What happened what did he/she see?) so they contacted BAC to ask what was happening

6) He/she received the answer you quoted above without having been asked any question as to who the avios were coming from or why

7) You have not had any communication from BAC and your account is functionning normally.

If any of the above is incorrect or inaccurate it would be good to know because again, even small details which you may feel do not matter may do and make the advice you receive here mistaken/useless if it is based on the wrong assumptions.

I think if all is correct, the communication should come from your housemate, not from you. Your account (you) hasn't been affected, so your commmunication is likely to just confuse things or draw a blank for gdpr reasons.

Your housemate is the one who should explain, as simply as possible what has happened and why they feel that the accusation is mistaken and that the avios were in fact transferred consistently with the rules. I would stress that there was no payment at any stage, and that the transfer was merely to enable the two of you to have a single booking for the two of you travelling together with each passenger effectively paying for their ticket, and that conversely, when the trip was cancelled, that transfer of avios had not reaosn to be any more.

Good luck.

This does seem a little more circuitous than it could have been.
I am not questioning you here, I am just trying to highlight that this multi-step process is what a lot of the fraudsters do to cover their tracks.
Had your friend transferred BA points to you, you booked with BA and then refunded and then transferred the Avios back to them, then it is likely it wouldn't be a problem.
But you have transferred from them to you in one scheme and transferred back using the other.
To you it is obvious this is an equitable thing.
But to BA who have been fighting serious organised fraud against their scheme, it looks like a dodgy deal.
If the two of you are unrelated and haven't flown together before, then it could be that your friend had purchased the miles from you by paying you some cash (which is what they say has happened). The same address makes it *more* suspicious not less.
I think you will be able to sort this without going to court if the situation is what you say. But because multiple schemes from different airlines are involved it won't be straightforward and could take months.

alas its not 'our', its very much your housemate that needs to progress this