MSE News: BA passenger wins battle for cash refund after successfully taking the airline to court

[Deleted User]

jimi_man said:

And yet despite all this BA are without doubt the best airline for flight changes/ cancellations and flexibility right up to the last minute. You can opt to cancel your flight two hours before and then rebook at a later date or rebook to somewhere else. 

Personally I'll use them exclusively and have been, just because of that flexibility. (I know it's not a permanent thing but until it goes it's been very useful knowing that you can book a flight and then cancel at any time). 

I've found JAL are better, not had need to try ANA but they too put a very good policy in place very early in the pandemic.

jimi_man

[Deleted User] said:

jimi_man said:

And yet despite all this BA are without doubt the best airline for flight changes/ cancellations and flexibility right up to the last minute. You can opt to cancel your flight two hours before and then rebook at a later date or rebook to somewhere else. 

Personally I'll use them exclusively and have been, just because of that flexibility. (I know it's not a permanent thing but until it goes it's been very useful knowing that you can book a flight and then cancel at any time). 

I've found JAL are better, not had need to try ANA but they too put a very good policy in place very early in the pandemic.

Yes possibly. However, by and large they only fly (from the UK) to and from Japan as that's where their hub is. BA are UK based so are much more useful. A JAL flight voucher is of very limited use to me unless I wanted to go to Japan again, whereas BA's vouchers are much more relevant to me..

nickplant

Thanks for all the details - this is encouraging. I am in the same situation in having been forced to accept vouchers when I expected to get a refund, so am thinking of pitching my case to CEDR, like others. I have one question though. Does anyone know whether or not the value of any Avios claimed as an offset on the original fare cost would be winnable through a successful CEDR or County Court claim? My BA e-voucher is worth more than £900 but includes about £200 in Avois cashed in at the time along with ~£700 cash payment. I want my refund to include both elements! Am I kidding myself? 

wild666

When you buy anything you enter into a contract with the provider to give that service and if they do not provide the service for any reason they are in breech of contract C-19 should not be an excuse for a company to keep hundreds or thousands of pounds because of a virus that stops the person from using the service. 

eskbanker

wild666 said:

When you buy anything you enter into a contract with the provider to give that service and if they do not provide the service for any reason they are in breech of contract C-19 should not be an excuse for a company to keep hundreds or thousands of pounds because of a virus that stops the person from using the service. 

That misses the point of this thread, which is effectively that the provider implicitly accepted breach of contract (after cancelling flights) but chose to offer an inferior remedy that was incompatible with their obligations, i.e. vouchers rather than cash.

Your point seems to relate more to the different scenario where flights operate but passengers are unable to travel - your conclusion is still wrong though, in that this typically isn't a breach of contract by the airline....

silvercar

nickplant said:

Thanks for all the details - this is encouraging. I am in the same situation in having been forced to accept vouchers when I expected to get a refund, so am thinking of pitching my case to CEDR, like others. I have one question though. Does anyone know whether or not the value of any Avios claimed as an offset on the original fare cost would be winnable through a successful CEDR or County Court claim? My BA e-voucher is worth more than £900 but includes about £200 in Avois cashed in at the time along with ~£700 cash payment. I want my refund to include both elements! Am I kidding myself? 

If the court or CEDR ruled in your favour you would get back the £700 plus the avios. You could always move the avios to nectar and spend In Sainsbury’s or Argos. 1 Avios=0.8p.

MSE_Helen_K

Hi all, 

You may be interested to hear that British Airways passengers previously offered vouchers for Covid cancelled flights can now claim cash refunds - see our MSE News story for the full details. 

MSE Helen

PinotGrigio41

Apologies for re-opening up this discussion. 

We were in a similar position to many others in 2020 with flights booked on BA to travel early June 2020. Like many others we were contacted and offered a Future Travel Voucher , but no refund at this time was offered, still fairly early days into Covid and at the point I'm not sure anybody really knew how long this would continue for, although at the time I believe all BA flights out of LGW had been grounded. They issued me one travel voucher which a few months later they converted to four individual vouchers .

Fast forward and BA have been steadfastly refusing to refund these vouchers stating I "chose "a voucher at the time, when I could have accepted a refund. As I "chose "that option I am not entitled to a refund, yet the option of a refund was not offered at any point and there was no faciltiy online to obtain one. they stated that had I chosen the refund option initially refunding my flights would not have been a problem, but it was my choice and I chose vouchers. 

After the ruling as mentioned above I applied online for refunds of each voucher again , this time they said I was not entitled to a refund as my flight operated. 
as far as I can remember due to lockdown flights were not operating at this time and we were either unable to leave the UK nor enter another country in most cases. 

After receiving this refusal .......two weeks ago out of the blue I received an email from BA offering me a refund  and advising they would send me a link in a separate email shortly to receive this and that I had until October 2022 to do so. I replied and asked them to ensure a link was sent for  each of the four tickets on the booking. The link has not been sent and neither were my subsequent two emails replied to. 

This morning they have finally answered and have now back tracked on their written offer of a refund,advising me that it it was sent in error and once more that I am not entitled to a refund of the four tickets. 

I have replied advising them that they must re-consider as I have this offer in writing, and I am not convinced the flight really did operate. I have been trying to find out online, but so far have not had any luck 

I am just wondering if anyone has any thoughts here, do you think it may  be worth taking this to the CAA / small claims court if I have no joy ? 

For the record I had flight seats booked with Ryanair for September 2020 and these were refunded immediately with no argument. 
Many thanks. 

eskbanker

PinotGrigio41 said:

as far as I can remember due to lockdown flights were not operating at this time and we were either unable to leave the UK nor enter another country in most cases.

[...]

I am not convinced the flight really did operate. I have been trying to find out online, but so far have not had any luck

My recollection is that a lot of flights were operating in June 2020 but that there were restrictions on leaving the UK and/or entering other countries, depending on the purpose of travel, etc, (although this didn't oblige airlines to offer refunds), but your reference to BA suspending LGW operations at some point does ring a bell.  This board (and the likes of FlyerTalk) will have plenty of threads relating experiences at the time, but not necessarily easily locatable so it could be a long search - where were you booked to fly to?

PinotGrigio41 said:

We were in a similar position to many others in 2020 with flights booked on BA to travel early June 2020. Like many others we were contacted and offered a Future Travel Voucher , but no refund at this time was offered

Do you still have the email/correspondence trail with all the exact wording?

PinotGrigio41

Thankyou for your reply. 

I think for me its the fact that they keep changing their minds as to their reasoning for not giving the refund, as it's not consistent. Obviously they then offered the refund two weeks ago, but have now retracted that which surely is wrong in itself ? 

Yes I do still have all correspondance from them. I need to dig out the exact wording.

We were due to fly LGW to Mauritius, my recollections are the same as yours, I know some flights were operating but I didn't think we were allowed to enter Mauritius at that time although could be wrong. 

I will take a look at FlyerTalk thankyou, I haven't heard of that and I will also wait and see how they respond to my most recent email this morning. 

Appreciate your reply thankyou.