Problems with BA already!

[mdj101]

Hi All,

Having problems with BA already. Can't believe it!

Joined as an executive club member as I have enough tesco vouchers etc. to get about 15000 miles. To upgrade our flight will cost 12500 miles, bonus! I thought.

Went through the booking proceedure, (which states if you are logged in with executive club the lowest fair is one which include tier points bla bla bla)

Booked the flights all good so far. Logged back in to my account and it wont let me upgrade. Phoned BA today and got told that the flights have to be class H or above. I told the guy on the phone "at no point during the booking process is the class displayed, nor is there anywhere on the site that displays the relevant classes". He said, it must be there, let me go and find it" 10 minutes on hold he come back and says. "I can't find it, but i know it's there" I said to him, "If your a BA employee and you can't find it after 10 minutes then how is a customer supposed to find it!" not that you should have to find it, it should state it on the booking proceedure." I must admit, he did agree with me and also agreed it was very poor. I said the only reason I booked with BA was to use my points etc. He said he was going to escalate the problem on Monday and call me back.

We will have to wait and see!

I've been through the whole site again, booking the lot and can't find mention of it anywhere.

[Robert5988]

Lots of airlines will not let you upgrade with miles on their cheapest tickets(deep discount)or only have very few(if any) seats available for upgrades; especially on transatlantic flights.

The rules(as you are finding out) are extremely complex and the Frequent Flyer forums are full of questions on upgrade availability/fare codes etc.

[ShirleyD]

My advise Mark is to be persistant but calm to ensure they do come back to you and sort out this problem.

[wilfy]

Stick with it, we had an issue with Delta, when we went to use 2 vouchers each per flight. They said that we could only use 1 voucher per booking. At no point at the time of receiving the vouchers or on their website did it say this. After a couple of to-ing and fro-ing calls, we got what we wanted, even after a manager said that they couldn't do what we wanted as it was company policy. But my reply, was if it is company policy, then it should be published somewhere in the public domain, we do not have e.s.p

[mdj101]

I will follow it all the way, i'm very polite in these situations, until someone won't listen to reason, there's nothing worse than people who think they know everything!

Even the guy I spoke to on the phone agreed that it wasnt displayed. And was the reason he said he would take it further with the relevant departments when they are in on Monday.

I have the utmost faith that they will sort it out. If not, then i wil get my money back and go else where

[Katys Grandad]

Sorry to be the one to tell you, but the fare class CAN be seen on ba.com and, to be fair to BA, the Executive Club rules are quite clear on which can be upgraded. Go to the page that displays the selected flights when making the reservation. Click on the flight number link and it will give you a breakdown of the flight including the fare class. Sad (but not surprising) that the BA agent you spoke to couldn't find it, but it is there. For bookings already made there's a link from the 'Manage my Booking' page.

I'm still confused how you joined the Executive Club if you booked a non-qualifying flight. The programme isn't, strictly speaking, a Frequent Flyer programme like almost all the others as only the higher classes permit you to apply for membership (there are ways around it). If you're only flying occasionally on cheap tickets, you'd be better off with another airline's programme.

As I posted yesterday, are you sure that 12,500 BA miles will upgrade 2 return tickets? That figure sounds much too low to me and I estimate it should really be 100,000 miles - although I accept I could be wrong.

[mdj101]

Your right, it says fair class v if you click on that, but where does it tell you what that v actualy means. Also, when you are logged in to executive club, it states that only qualifying flights will be displayed.

12500 is the amount of miles to upgrade one person one leg, I would purchase additional miles for the other party.

I said to the guy on the phone, if you have to buy flexible tickets to qualify you might aswell buy the upgrade in the first place as the prices are pretty much the same!

[Katys Grandad]

Without doubt the best deal is to upgrade from a paid WT+ fare to Club. All the WT+ fare classes can be upgraded and, as you have found, full fare economy tickets are poor value (although they are flexible). No pun intentended, but Club World really is a world away from WT+. If I have to fly BA WT I get an exit row seat which has 4 times the legroom of a WT+ seat.

Be aware that you can only purchase 19,000 miles per calender year (that will cost £319) and the same amount for another passenger provided they are named on your household account. As a result, you might not be able to get all the miles you need anyway and it wouldn't be cheap. You can't 'double upgrade' a WT ticket to Club.

If you can possibly manage it, I'd change my ticket to WT+ and upgrade the MCO-LGW segment to Club (check it's available first). Otherwise, spend the money on the ground and travel in WT both ways.

(BTW - I was wrong about joining the EC. I see that the previous restrcitions don't apply any more - sorry!)

[mdj101]

Hi There,

Thanks for the info, what's really annoying is my dad flys WT + to Australia with BA / Quantas nearly every year and hasn't even got a Executive Account! I dread to think how many miles he's lost out on. I presumed he had sorted it out.

I did see about the upgrade to Club and did think about it. When I get my call back next week I might see if I can update the tickets to WT+ and then use miles to upgrade to club. We are flying back from Tamapa.

Will have to check out the prices.

Do you know a way to check prices on individual sectors. I can only get it to show me economy / WT+ on all legs, not separate.

Mmm, according to the planner, upgrades are only available from london to new york on our selected days. (we are going to new york first) on the way back there is no upgrades available from tampa.

How much does it cost to get exit seats in economy and how do you book them?

[Katys Grandad]

You have a DM!