BA booking not ticketed

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Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

  • JD_84
    Participant

    Have just returned from SFO on a BA Rewards booking, which I almost didnt get to fly. Although booked -350 days I was told at check-in that there was no ticket number, when Check-in spoke with ticketing in London they told them that tax/fees were never paid. Despite my card being on my account, they claim that they were not able to take payment and so never ticketed – and guess what they never told me!

    So at check-in we had to pay taxes of £515pp (*actual tax £25, rest BA surcharge) instead of the original £220pp that should have been charged in order to have the booking ticketed and get on the plane back. Check-in told me to take it up with Exec Club when I return and “they will sort it out”. CSD was told by the ground crew and filed a report on my behalf.

    Calling Exec Club today, the response was “oh you flew on the flight so we cant do anything about it. Raise a complaint through the website”.

    Has anyone else had this issue, and if so any advice on how to get my £600 back from BA? If not it’s likely to be another MCOL against them!


    MartynSinclair
    Participant

    [quote quote=1215648]So at check-in we had to pay taxes of £515pp (*actual tax £25, rest BA surcharge) instead of the original £220pp[/quote]

    When you booked the ticket, you were meant to pay £220 pp but never did (for whatever reason) and at check in you were asked to pay £515 pp? Is that the gist of your post or am I missing something?

    Since ticketing (350 days ago) did a ticket number show within your BAEC account online when you reviewed the booking?


    Stormin
    Participant

    JD_84

    Before I go on…I like BA, I find them reliable and I can navigate their Customer Service lines and websites easily.

    However, I too had a similar experience recently – I was upgrading a friend with AVIOS 2 days before the flight but only when AVIOS were processing the upgrade did they tell me that there was still £577 in unpaid taxes / fees. I had no option other than to pay it and sure enough it hadn’t been paid previously ( but I was sure that it had been – rarely would I make this type of oversight)

    The message is ….if you have any voucher rebooking or re booking of any kind – I suggest that you confirm at least 14 days in advance that the flights have actually been ticketed.

    Email BA contact centre – explain fully and upload all receipts and emails – it may take 28-45 days but you will get your money back (but only if it was a “reasonable oversight on your part”

    When flying in these times – we ought to take a “brave pill” when booking

    Good luck

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    JDTraveller
    Participant

    [postquote quote=1215657]

    When I booked the ticket I assumed that they had taken the payment from me at the time. The booking was showing in MMB and I was allowed to select seats. At no time between booking and getting to check in did BA contact me to tell me that payment wasn’t taken. Even on the outbound sector (open jaw two one way redemptions linked into one booking) it wasn’t mentioned that the inbound hadnt been ticketed.


    JDTraveller
    Participant

    Stormin, I like BA too, even though I am currently taking them to court at the same time. When they are good they are good, when they are bad, well boy are they bad.

    I remember having to reconfirm charter flights with Avro, 30 something years ago… you just don’t expect that these days. When you make a booking and the contact centre tells you that it’s all gone through, you don’t expect to find that you don’t have a ticket number 350 days later. If anything I’m savvy when it comes to this having worked in the travel industry, so knew what they were talking about at check-in. But to the average traveler who is going to know or care that they don’t have a ticket number. I booked, I had a PNR, I had a seat, yet I couldn’t get on the plane.

    I hope that BA do the right thing, it’s really not my fault that they didn’t take payment (my BA Amex has been saved to my account for years) so I shouldn’t be penalised to put right their issue. Especially when they have the nerve to call it tax when 95% is their own fees that they have been continuously inflating.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    onajetplane
    Participant

    I have had something similar happen twice in the last few months with bookings made with BA:

    -BKK –> CMB (Sri Lankan airlines)
    -ATH –> LHR (British Airways)

    On both occasions I was booking with avios vouchers from previously cancelled reward tickets.

    1) BBK –> CMB – I got to check-in and was told that my ticket had never actually been ticketed… they could see the reservation but BA never actually ticketed it as I “didn’t pay” (I did). Thankfully (still don’t quite understand) they ticketed me at the desk. I was flying J. One of my more surreal COVID era flights as I had the entire cabin to myself…

    2) Learning from the above experience, I noticed on Manage my booking that my ticket didn’t have an e-ticket number (a few days before departure)… I thus called BA and they explained I had not paid and so they didn’t issue the ticket. Frustrating given I gave my card details over the first call etc and they said it had all gone through – albeit my fault for not actually checking my card to see if the charge had come off. Slightly frustrating response from the agent who told me “you are very lucky there is one seat left that we can rebook you on”… I guess lucky me!

    Lesson learned – when booking Avios bookings using previous reward booking vouchers always check the e-ticket was issued!


    Nogbad01
    Participant

    I had a similar experience lately although not payment related.
    We recently flew to St Lucia in F on an Avios redemption.
    All was fine on the outbound, but on the morning of the return, when I logged in to check the departure time, there was no booking in the “My Executive Club” section of the BA site. I was not overly worried at this point as bookings frequently vanish from this page due to the usual BA I.T. sh*t show.
    So instead I went back to the email received on booking and clicked the “Manage my booking” button. At this point I was told that I couldn’t manage the booking as “all flights had been flown”
    Given that I was in St Lucia with no phone roaming, I couldn’t wait on the phone for several hours waiting for someone at BA to pick up, so decided to assume it was all an I.T. glitch and head to the airport and sort it out there.
    On arrival, we were told that we were not booked on the flight. More digging by the check-in staff discovered that we were booked, but the tickets had not been issued.
    Eventually they found us a couple of seats in club and we got back ok.
    We have received the downgrade compensation, but no adequate explanation as to why they somehow forgot about our booking at some point after the outbound flights.
    My theory (which could be complete rubbish), is that a time change on the return flight which would have meant we then missed the connection from LHR to MAN, was not picked up by a human to action so the whole return trip got stalled in the system.


    Nick Pike
    Participant

    I must confess I am slightly puzzled by this. I didn’t think that you could book, get an email confirmation and a PNR unless you had paid the taxes. Or is this simply because you were using a voucher to pay, in whole or in part, for the flight?

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    Cinnamomum verum
    Participant

    A similar thing happened to me during the pandemic, when BA transferred me onto Iberia flights via Madrid. Luckily, I was booked in Club and the ground crew made probably a bit more effort because of this. But over one year on, and I’ve never got a penny back. BA tells me to take it up with Executive Club, they tell me to take it up with Iberia and they in turn tell me to take it up with BA……. Of course, it’s a well-known fact that Iberia is one of the worst airlines when it comes to refunds and compensation payments.


    fsav81
    Participant

    I had a similar experience last summer. My partner and I were flying NAP-LHR, having bought the tickets with a BA voucher. At check in we were told that whilst we were “booked” on the flight, the booking hadn’t been “ticketed”. Indeed, upon checking the booking on the app, there was no ticket number displayed. So despite being booked on the flight, seats chosen, etc etc, we couldn’t actually be checked in. After much animated arguing at the check in counter (my being Italian helped), and having to ring the BA call centre, we were finally “ticketed” and able to get on the flight.


    JayLibove
    Participant

    The same thing has happened to me three times on Lufthansa since the pandemic began. Tickets purchased or changed, confirmed talking to an agent, the agent saying “it has been ticketed”.. but either (the first time) trying to check-in online the day before, or (having learned the lesson) checking a week or two later, no ticket had actually been issued.
    The degree of business process and technology incompetence required for this kind of error to happen is hard to believe.


    FCTraveller
    Participant

    This happens all the time with BA, I’ve had it happen to me numerous times in the last few years, and for various reasons. But very often if you make a change to a booking which requires a re-issuing of e-tickets. And yes, the booking usually remains intact and you’re none the wiser. I now have a system with all my bookings on a spreadsheet and a reminder to check that I have e-ticket numbers at least 5 days before departure. Their IT systems and protocols are useless, you’d think they could flag these up and contact customers, as most of the time it’s their fault. Although I have to say they are not alone, it happened to me on LH flying F from NYC last year after making a minor change to my booking a few days before and the agent telling me that the e-ticket number would not change.


    TimFitzgeraldTC
    Participant

    FCTraveller

    Just so you are aware – when changing flights you don’t automatically need / get a new ticket number if the ticket has been revalidated. Most of the time a ticket will be reissued but occasionally a ticket can be revalidated.

    Reissues will occur in cases of upgrading / rerouting / some “free” flight changes. For us (not dealing with redemption bookings) changes require reissue 99% of the time and a ticket to be “exchanged”

    Revalidation normally only happens if changing a flight where the date has been changed but with no impact on fare / tax / booking codes

    Only a super basic summary. Hope that helps.

    Sounds like you have a good process in place anyway to make sure you don’t come unstuck at the airport!


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    I was about to start a new thread when I saw this. Something similar happened with Junior today. He had a 5.55 am flight out of MXP to Morocco via Lisbon with TAP for 5 days and meeting up there with a few of his chums. Paid by credit card, received the authorisation code to confirm the payment and the ticket was issued as well as confirmation email. Valid reference and told due to needing a PCR test online check in was not possible.

    He arrived at the airport at 4am to be told his ticket was not valid and there was no booking for him. He had to wait for the ticket office to open at 4.45 to be told the same and that the flight from LIS was full! We call the cc company who told us that the payment was refused because the wrong date and ccv code had been given. If that was the case then we would not have received the authorization code and the ticket would not have been issued.

    Not sure who to blame here, and he is only out of pocket the taxi fare to the airport and his hotel – about CHF 500 in total, which is a lot of money for him.

    Any thoughts or advice from anyone here?

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