BA Holidays quiery

asandwhen

I am looking at flights to Sofia (Bulgaria) on 30th July - 6th August for 2 adults and a child.


I have looked at the cost with British Airways and have a price of £577


But.... When I check British Airways Holidays and select flight (the same flights as selected above) and car hire the price comes in at a total of £380


Now my question is can I book the cheaper holiday but then not collect the car as I don't need it... Or would it be a condition of sale? As far as I can see British airways issue you with a voucher to take to Avis. How would they know that you didn't take it?

PeacefulWaters

Good spot! Similar impacts flying to Istanbul and Bucharest. Other MSE users could exploit this way of reducing costs (although it doesn't work for my Gran Canaria plans).

While my instinct would have been to simply not collect the car, reading the terms and conditions makes me think you should turn up at the collection desk, take the car (having purchased CDW excess insurance privately), park it for free for the week and then return it meeting fuel conditions.

7.4.3. If you have booked a package and wish to reduce the duration of your hotel or car arrangements, this may not always be possible due to the restrictions attached to the type of air fare booked. You should contact us and we will tell you if we can meet your requests

This one could cost you the return flight if they have any mechanism to know you've not collected and is why I recommend caution:

7.5.2. If you have booked a package, where the prices of individual elements have not been displayed separately, you may cancel individual elements providing your remaining booking meets the definition of a package (see 1.4). Should you wish to cancel one or more elements, and your remaining elements no longer meet the definition of a package, it will be deemed that you are cancelling the whole package and will be subject to cancellation charges as set out at time of booking.

The Flyertalk forum may get you a more knowledgable answer than mine.

EDIT: I am quite keen on the forgotten driving licence idea below!

becominganobsessivesaver

I don't think they would know, I think severaleople have done this over at flyertalk with no consequence. If you forgot your driving license they wouldn't let you collect the car anyway!

SW17

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Good spot! Similar impacts flying to Istanbul and Bucharest. Other MSE users could exploit this way of reducing costs (although it doesn't work for my Gran Canaria plans).

While my instinct would have been to simply not collect the car, reading the terms and conditions makes me think you should turn up at the collection desk, take the car (having purchased CDW excess insurance privately), park it for free for the week and then return it meeting fuel conditions.

7.4.3. If you have booked a package and wish to reduce the duration of your hotel or car arrangements, this may not always be possible due to the restrictions attached to the type of air fare booked. You should contact us and we will tell you if we can meet your requests

This one could cost you the return flight if they have any mechanism to know you've not collected and is why I recommend caution:

7.5.2. If you have booked a package, where the prices of individual elements have not been displayed separately, you may cancel individual elements providing your remaining booking meets the definition of a package (see 1.4). Should you wish to cancel one or more elements, and your remaining elements no longer meet the definition of a package, it will be deemed that you are cancelling the whole package and will be subject to cancellation charges as set out at time of booking.

The Flyertalk forum may get you a more knowledgable answer than mine.

EDIT: I am quite keen on the forgotten driving licence idea below!

While nothing is ever 100%, I would think it's pretty unlikely you'd have a problem no-showing the car rental. The conditions about cancellation are there to stop people unpackaging the holiday by cancelling portions and asking for refunds.

If you're willing to pay for the whole package and therefore meet the packaging terms of the airfare (which is the crucial point here), pretty unlikely that any questions will be asked. One thing you should not do is try to cancel the car hire, better to no-show.

Many travel agents sell accommodation that never gets used with airfares in order to meet package fare conditions, often on long haul business class fares. It's annoying for the hotel/car hire companies and the tour op sometimes gets grief over it (and may lose access in future), but the customer on that booking is rarely affected.

These cases are unusual in that the package price is lower than flight-only, normally it's just lower than booking flight and car separately, BAH must have some deeply discounted ITX fares on these routes.