Hopper, British Airways and a change of flight dates.

el_mark

Hi guys,

Got a bit of a tough one I'm afraid and I'm at my wits end a bit with it.

I booked flights to Mexico for Feb 2021 back in May. However I want to change the flight dates owing to the ongoing COVID issue.

I booked the flights through a third party app called Hopper, I've used them in the past and they've been decent. When I accessed the app to change the flights, it states I have to contact the airline, in this case, British Airways. I've attached a screen grab from my phone to show this. On that note I tried the same thing on the BA website, they state I have to contact the travel agent, so back to Hopper.

Confused, I used the app to contact Hopper customer service. I waited the 14 working days owing to COVID enquiries but received no response. I contacted BA again  for some help but was told I couldn't cancel my flights and any changes would have to be done via Hopper.

Again, on the 09/10 I mailed Hopper customer service complaining of the lack of customer coherency. I received no response.

I called BA on 23/10 to see if they could change my flights but again received rebuttal and told to contact Hopper. The BA agent also provided me with a direct email to Hopper booking which I mailed the same day. Again to no response. I also used the Hopper app to message customer services with the same correspondence and was told I'd receive a reply within 24 hrs. I have yet to receive a response.

I had also submitted a complaint to BA on the 23/10 which was apparently sent to the wrong department according to the reply, given it was via the link on the BA website I'm slightly dismayed at the handling of my comments.

Currently, neither BA or Hopper seem to want to take responsibility to help me change my flights and thus I'm stuck in a paradox without any way of making said changes to dates. I have tried to find a complaints link to Hopper but it doesnt exist, though worryingly TrustPilot reviews seem to suggest I am not the only person to receive radio silence from Hopper regarding any changes to flights etc. 

Ultimately I have no problem with paying to change the flights, I just want the opportunity to do so!

Many thanks for taking the time to read this, any advice would be much welcomed.

eskbanker

When suffering from being pinged backwards and forwards between two organisations like this, it's usually worth establishing who's responsible by reading the Ts & Cs associated with the booking, as well as identifying who the payment was made to.  It does sound like it's Hopper you need to be dealing with here, rather than BA, so not much point in chasing BA just because Hopper aren't responsive (as you're not BA's direct customer here so they can't intervene), but I'm not familiar enough with Hopper to know of any better contact methods, although social media channels are often worth a try in situations like this.

Humphreyshalfmoon

It appears Hopper is not UK based, offers no financial protection and is a member of no trade association whatsoever. Its HQ is in Canada with offices in New York and Sofia.....It has a UK registered company, presumably to ensure the protection of the name but no employees at all. It makes no mention of being an IATA agency which would be necessary to issue tickets and its conditions of sale suggest tickets may be issued by third parties, unnamed, whose booking conditions, unseen, may apply. If there is an agency involved BA cannot make changes to the ticket, one of the huge disadvantages of booking through an agent, if you have an e ticket already see if you can see a ticket agency name or IATA number, all agents based in the UK start with 91 as it will be the agent that can make changes and no one else 

bagand96

It's perfectly normal that when you book a flight via an agent, then the airline cannot/won't deal with you directly.  The airline don't hold authority over the booking, it's the agent that do.  Unfortunately, as you've found, if you have a useless agent, then things can get tricky.

Not sure what else to suggest other than trying to keep getting hold of Hoppa. 

silvercar

I booked flights to Mexico for Feb 2021 back in May. 

The only silver lining to the cloud, is that those flights now fall into BAs 'book with confidence' guarantee, whereas they wouldn't have done so when you first started to try to get hold of Hopper. This means that you should be able to change the flights free of charge - or at least you would if you could get hold of hopper.

Do you have a ticket number for these flights? so you can work out if they have actually been ticketed.

I have no idea how you get hold of hopper. Eventually the tickets will come under the airline's control, but that won't be until 24 hours before the flight! You may want to try the BA board of the flyertalk forum here, to see if any BA regulars can help, though I agree with others that this is hoppers' responsibility.

el_mark

Thanks all, it's certainly a tricky one, one that's all owing to the lack of customer coherency on Hopper's part.

Like I said, I have no qualm with paying to change flights (though I think silvercar's comments regarding free changes apply here as it states on the Hopper app) I just want the opportunity to do so.

I'm not sure whether it's some glitch with the Hopper app which says that any changes have to be done via BA, as that's what shows when I attempt to change dates.

Either way, though I appreciate all of the likely backlog they have of correspondence, to completely cut customer contact off like they have is pretty poor service - I don't even receive notification responses to suggest that my contact has been received, which smacks to me that they're overwhelmed with other correspondence or have a fundamental flaw in their comms set up!

Thrugelmir

Hopper's business model is built for online interaction.  Technology maybe great at finding cheap prices. However it doesn't provide feet on the ground when manual intervention is required. 

el_mark

Hi all,

Thought I'd bump this as there's been a resolution to my quandry.

As no response from Hopper was forthcoming I took advice to speak to my bank regarding a chargeback for the flight fees.

In the 10 working days it took to process this, Hopper, out-of-the-blue, reached out directly via an actual human! I nearly keeled over were it not for the window ledge propping me up.

To cut a boring interaction short, BA wouldnt refund me but have since issued me travel vouchers by proxy of Hopper.

All's well that end's well - and I've learned a very important lesson, always book direct.

Thanks all for your help, I hope this thread offers some semblance of hope to anyone who had the same issue.

Caz3121

I am not sure why you attempted a chargeback as you did not indicate that the February flights had been cancelled. If still planned to operate then chargeback fails.
BA don't refund unless the flights are cancelled (or you purchased expensive refundable tickets) so even if you had booked direct the eventual outcome would have been the same....all be it that it would have been resolved weeks ago

el_mark

Caz,

Hopper were the intermediary in this instance, and I could not change my flight dates. The Hopper app pushes you to engage with BA but of course the airline cannot change the flight dates because I booked through the app.

Given my destination is on the list of places not to travel to, and Hopper were uncontactable (at the time) in order to make the changes to my flights and were the company whose named appeared on my bank statement, I figured they were not providing a service they advertised as available to me and therefore submitted my request for a chargeback on those grounds.

Considering the current circumstances, I don't think it unreasonable for me to have attempted what I did when every avenue I had explored had closed down - was I supposed to leave over a £1000 worth of flights or give a chargeback a punt??

Whether it made a difference or not, ultimately I would recommend to anyone reading this not to book through Hopper.