[Anonymous]

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Guys n Gals

Be careful.

I just looked at booking MFU for our family (4 pax) LHR CPT LHR next August.

Booking in WTP and MFU to NCW was quoted at 5,312.20€ per person, plus 25,000 miles each.

Booking for cash on the main website was 3,974.24€ per pax.

To summarise, to take the family using MFU = 21,248.40€ plus 100k miles.

To pay cash = 15,896.86€.

Ripoff for using MFU = 5,351.60€ difference plus 100k miles.

The cash flights were LHR CPT LHR and the MFU via JNB, but does this justify 1,400€ per pax?

I have just booked the 4 pax on Star Alliance, as I completely resent BA trying to rip me off by providing a very high priced itinerary where reward seats were not available on 2/4 flights.

[VintageKrug]

Your post suggests that ALL British Airways’ MFUs are subject to a higher base fare.

This is simply NOT the case.

http://www.newclubworld.com is currently available on that route in August for £3259 rtn (the sale price is usually about £2500, but August 2011 is not yet in the sale and won’t be until Boxing Day). You could take an additional 10% off that fare if you were a BA shareholder.

So for £2965 each, the four of you could be heading off to Cape Town direct aboard BA.

Shareholder discount or not, that Club fare is significantly less than the cheapest fare €3974/£3304 you were quoted for World Traveller Plus.

You just have to check http://www.ba.com and these prices will be revealed to you…..

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Vintage Krug

I got these quotations from ba.com, having logged in through the BAEC.

Being somewhat aghast, I printed PDF copies of the pages, so please resist smearing me in your usual snide way, I have just written a letter to the CEO with the evidence and asked him to explain why they would treat a premium card holder that way. I will share the reply, in due course.

[Tom Otley]

I’ve only just seen it – I’ve been reading the other thread all evening.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Site Admin

Give me an mail address and you will have the PDFs by return.

[Tom Otley]

I don’t need them.

I’m not doubting you.

(But…. (since it isn’t a secret) our editorial address is <a href="mailto:[email protected]“>[email protected]).

[VintageKrug]

Well, sorry but I DID check http://www.ba.com.

Have you tried ensuring you are logged in as a UK BAEC member? That could also affect pricing?

For fares from LHR to CPT this coming August you will clearly find that not only is WT+ available from £1275 rtn on most every day (unless you are not planning a Saturday night stay) but that also the cost of the underlying fare does not vary when MFU’d apart from the increase in APD levied for the Business Class cabin.

The most I could get a fare in WT+ was £1375 rtn (a popular Friday departure).

What may well have happened is that you have used up the less expensive T class WT+ fare availability by booking multiple seats and then it books everything into the higher W (I think that’s what it is) fare class, which could possibly explain the discrepancy.

Simply rectified by booking as many as possible at the lower rate and upgrading using miles, and then booking the final seats at the remaining (higher) fare category.

Either way it would have been less expensive for you to pay for Club World….go and check it out on http://www.ba.com if you like…..

————

The more fool you comment was an error, for which I apologise. You have however spent extensive time criticising me personally in your other posts and along with the highly personalised sniping in the other thread (not from you), it did get the the better of me; sorry.

Much better however to post on here before you plan to book something; I really am quite knowledgeable on the BAEC and how to get the best from it and could have pointed out these other options to you and helped you get the flights/seats you wanted.

Instead you now feel short changed as you have (probably) had to fork out a lot more than was necessary for the flights you wanted to take, suffer a connection or a wedgie bed, while cheaper BA flights in Club do indeed exist for the taking.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

I was logged in.

I got quotes for one pax, so nothing to do with multiple bookings.

I have sent the PDF files to Site Admin and am now waiting for a response to my complaint about your unjustified comments.

With the very best will in the world. whilst I appreciate your offer to assist with bookings, I have been organising individual and group business and leisure travel since 1978; I don’t need your assistance.

FYI, I have booked the flights for several thousand euros less than BA’s best offer, in Star* business class. Unlike you, my family and I are fortunate enough to be able to sleep very well on a wedgie bed and although BA’s NCW is better IMHO, it is not worth several 000 euros.

As we have to connect one way or the other, I have no particular reason to waste time and money with BA if their website cannot give a sensible quotation.

[VintageKrug]

Still seems odd as I can still see these seats for £1275 LHR-CPT direct in WT+, and £3259 each for Club World return, still less than you seemed to have been quoted online for WT+ MFU to Club.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

VK

To be clear….

I found your £3259/3,974.24€ in NCW, for cash bookings. Direct to CPT.

The quote for WTP MFU was 5,312.20€ + 25K miles. Connecting via JNB, no direct option, both o/b 2 August, returning 14 days later.

If I had not been alert, I could have paid 100,000 miles and an extra 5,351.60€, for an indirect journey (no stopover.) No LHR CPT DCT was offered.

I have just checked again on MFU and this time was quoted 5,271.85€. I also checked WT+ for cash and agree that there is loads of availability at £1,276.

There are return cash upgrades offered from WTP to NCW for £1,982, making a price of £3,258.

[VintageKrug]

Ah yes, I see it now. In your initial post I missed your reference to “cash flights were LHR CPT LHR and the MFU via JNB, but does this justify €1,400 per pax”

What has happened is that because there was no award inventory available to CPT, the MFU tool has routed you via JNB, where there was award inventory available.

As a consequence the underlying fare you see via JNB is completely different from the direct to CPT fare being quoted without the MFU.

The “via JNB” (incl. Comair) fare could very well have a fully flex element to it, which is why the fare is greater.

It is not uncommon to see WT+ fares the same or greater than discounted Club World fares. Indeed this also happens frequently on shorthaul fares as well.

We all know buying airline tickets is something of a minefield, and as you say you are indeed knowledgeable about this having been purchasing tickets on a quasi-professional basis sine the 1970s as I think you stated.

While it is unfortunate that the WT+ MFU price you were quoted for the indirect routing was considerably higher than the cash fare WT+, and roughly equivalent to the cash fare for Club World on the direct service, I’m afraid it is really a case of “caveat emptor”.

Given the fact that a simple check of direct cash fares in Club would have revealed cheaper cash fares in Club without needing to expend any miles – and indeed with the miles/TPs earning and lack of any award availability schedule restrictions, I don’t think there really is much else to be said on the matter.

It is certainly something worth bringing to the attention of BA, so their systems can be refined, but I cannot see that attempting to offer a viable MFU alternative is “ripping off” customers.

I think it is right that you identified a glitch and good that you have made the effort to point it out so that others can be aware of this, and also that it might be brought to the attention of BA.

But the main reason for the fare discrepancy is that the underlying route is different, and just as BA.com has differential pricing exAMS vs. exLHR it really is a case of being aware of alternatives. The fact that you yourself did pull up before booking suggests that few people would have paid this price.

I would then ask what sort of outcome you are expecting?

I would hope that BA would look into the algorithms which generated this high fare. BUT I would also suggest that in many cases it might have resulted in someone being able to use miles/MFU for a very marginal increase in cost, and that surely would have been beneficial to most consumers.

As ever, if you get a strange price like this it (generally) is not much problem to call up and check it with your local callcentre, though I appreciate in this specific instance it was not that easy.

I would imagine it would be very complex to offer this automatic alternative routing for MFUs whilst also warning that less expensive direct Club World fares might be available, but maybe that is indeed possible?

In my experience I have long been in awe of the complexity of fare rules and various combinations/stopovers and routings which can vary prices. However I can honestly say that by arming myself with proper research and the benefit of others’ more knowledgeable than myself I have very often benefitted from those fare rules to construct very advantageous (legal!) pricing.

It should be remembered that the quirks of airline pricing work both ways……

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

VK

There is a little more to say about this, I think.

I tried to get a cash quote for a multi city journey LHRJNBCPTJNBLHR, but was informed the dates (o/c 2/8/11, i/b 16/8/11) were invalid – interesting.

So I decided to look at 2 separate tickets.

If you look on ba.com and you get a quote for 2 x tickets LHRJNBLHR and JNBCPTJNB, you should get the following (valid 2 mins ago.)

LHRJNBLHR – 3260GBP

JNBCPTJNB – 6138ZAR (equivalent to 528GBP) NB: FLEXIBLE CONDITIONS, not restricted for the COMAIR ticket.

Convert these two fares to EUR and they total 4,417€.

Deduct that from the 5,317€ I was quoted (plus 25,000 miles, which represents quite a bit of previous spending with BA) and that is still a difference of 900€ in BA’s favour.

In other words, the company is prepared to sell the same journey to someone who walks in off the street and charge them 900€ less than a premium card holder redeeming a lot of miles – not clever IMHO, albeit 2 tickets v a single ticket.

If you look at a MFU LHRJNBLHR it comes to 1,595€ plus 25K miles, a good deal, BUT there is ZERO, I repeat ZERO MFU availability in JNBCPTJNB (Comair) from now until August 2011.

But wait a minute, if the LHRJNBLHR sector is 1,595€, that means BA is effectively charging 3,722€ for a Club Europe fare JNBCPTJNB that can be bought for cash for the sum of £528 or 641€. (I know that technically the fare rules are adjusting the cost of the UK/SA return flights too and making the whole trip flexible, as you say, but the impact on the customer, looking to reduce cost by redeeming miles is the point I am making.)

Bottom line, it costs 3,081€ extra for the privilege of buying a single ticket, rather than 2 x back to back tickets.

I do not find this a defensible way to treat so called ‘premium’ customers and don’t wish to travel on separate tickets in case of disruption.

So, as previously stated I’ve gone to * and got a better deal from them.

You say ‘Caveat Emptor’ and I totally agree.

I hope that others reading this post may at least be alerted.

A question for you (and anyone else who wishes to state an opinion) – is is morally and ethically acceptable to offer an MFU fare that is extremely expensive, when there is no MFU availability for part of the journey and that part is nearly double the cost of the part where redemptions do exist?

Please understand that i am not attacking you by asking this question, you are often an advocate of BA and I respect your opinions, just genuinely interested if my moral outrage is an outlier opinion.

You ask an interesting question “I would imagine it would be very complex to offer this automatic alternative routing for MFUs whilst also warning that less expensive direct Club World fares might be available, but maybe that is indeed possible?”

I am not a IS professional, but as a management consultant who has designed and implemented processes for automated back offices, I do not see why this would necessarily be so complex, then again I do not know the constraints of BA’s systems.

However, I don’t think it would be so difficult to dsplay a message alerting the customer that ‘this quotation includes sectors where upgrades are not available and you are advised to call the BAEC to see if better alternatives are available’, with a ‘proceed’ or ‘stop’ type of selection at the bottom.

That could be triggered by a simple true or false condition on the attribute ‘reward seat available’, or whatever the correct term is, when the system searches.

The system already displays messages such as ‘only 2 reward seats available’ when offering flight options, so it should not be difficult to add a routine to test true/false and in the event of a false result, display the message and it would be providing value add to the customer experience, as well as being ethically responsible.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

I have just managed to get cash quotes from BA.com for the LHR/JNB/CPT/JNB/LHR routing and append them for interest:

Restricted £3,785 (4,409€) – this looks very adjacent to a combination of £3,260 (restricted) for LHR/JNB and £528 for JNB/CPT (flexible.) Seems strange that the fare rules appear to allow this combination when paying cash, but not when MFUing – however, my hypothesis could be wrong and the closeness of the fares could be coincidence.

Flexible £5,805 (6,763€)

The true value of 25,000 miles therefore appears to be about 1,400€ on the LHR/JNB/CPT route for a flexi ticket, as opposed to 2,203€ when redeeming on the LHR/JNB route on a restricted basis.

I suppose this reduction of 1,400€ might be appealing if you need a flexible ticket, but it is certainly not vfm if you do not. (This comment being based on the difference between the cash and MFU fares, for comparable conditions.) You will still pay over £20K for the tickets, as opposed to around £15K for cash.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that BA is deliberately setting out to rip off it’s customers as a business strategy or committing any kind of illegal act, but rather that the system did not provide the best option to me when I was looking for a specific routing and gave no warning of that.

This feels like being ripped off, even though it is not intentional and I believe BA needs to think about the consequences of treating customers this way.

[blondcat]

Hi Disgusted

Do you think this is just isolated to BA or all airlines ? I don’t have all the facts and figures that you guys have, but I’m sure when I looked at doing MFU on Virgin Atlantic earlier in the year I had exactly the same issue and remember thinking how cheeky it was !

At the time I just assumed all airline schemes were similar – and decided to save my miles until I had enough to buy an upper class return seat (100k for the holiday I have in mind).

I know the thread is entitled BA rip off, but certainly would be interested to hear if people have experienced similar issues with other airlines ?

[Author]

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