Flight date change within 24 hours

bagand96

I appreciate this may be a different page to where you quoted from but taken from Our Customer Commitment | Legal | British Airways

Your right to cancel within 24 hours

If you have booked directly with British Airways and you notice a mistake with your booking after you have paid for your ticket(s), you can cancel your flight booking and claim a full refund without penalty, up to 24 hours from when you make the original booking.Refunds under these circumstances can be requested online in Manage My Booking or by calling our contact centres. Avios bookings can also be managed online.Bookings made for travel within 24 hours, and British Airways Holidays bookings made on ba.com are not covered under this option.

The BA help pages relate to pax who book direct with BA.

As another poster said the fare class on the agent booking may be different to that sold on BA.com and thus may have different conditions (not certain at this point but a possibility).  You're of course within your rights to question the Travel Agent, but you won't be able to force them (or BA) to apply booking terms that apply to a different sales channel.

That said, I am interested to see how the agent respond and see if they're trying it on or not.

jimi_man

FBaby said:

*If there was no charge and it was a cheaper ticket then there wouldn’t be much point in booking direct with the airline*
The tickets are about £10 cheaper if that. Quoting £300 per person is completely disproportionate. 

If the only reason they can afford marginally cheaper airfares, is relying on people making simple errors and being charged extortionate penalties, this definitely need to be challenged.

I found the below on BA website:

If you notice a mistake with your booking

After you have paid for your ticket(s), if you notice a mistake with your booking, you can cancel your flight booking and claim a full refund without penalty, up to 24 hours from when you make the original booking. Refunds under these circumstances can only be requested by calling our contact centres.

The following types of booking are not covered by this 24 hour guarantee:

Bookings made for travel within 24 hours of booking.

Bookings where immediate payment is not required.

Package bookings or flights booked with hotels, car hire, transfers or experiences.

Flights within Southern Africa, operated by Comair.

Yes, it can be infer that this relates to direct booking, but it doesn't say so, and more importantly, it does not stipulate that booking via an agent as what is not covered, so I would dispute that.

I've ask the travel agent for evidence of them contacting BA to try to change the booking, evidence of their contract with BA that stipulates that BA will not accept a change through them and a copy with the breakdown detail of BA's charge.

This behaviour needs to be challenged.  

The airfare was unlikely to have been 'marginally cheaper'.  Airlines can sell larger quantities of tickets to consolidators (brokers effectively) who then supply travel agents or Online Travel Agents. These fares are often 30-60% cheaper than booking direct with the airline. That yours was £10 cheaper doesn't mean that BA sold it £10 cheaper (unlikely) but can mean that the profit margin for the TA was higher (likely). Your flights were £388 each I think, and you said they were only £10 cheaper than BA direct. However I'm almost 100% sure that BA didn't sell that fare to the TA for that price, I'm guessing it was a lot cheaper!

So these fares aren't marginally cheaper, they are generally substantially cheaper (as I said, often 30-60% cheaper) but the downside is that there are usually fare restrictions, the free cancellation within 24 hours being one of them. It's an accepted principle that you should really only book with TAs and OTAs if you're absolutely sure of your travel arrangements as they are often very inflexible.

The bit you've posted above is not applicable as you didn't book direct with the airline, so you're stuck with the fare rules that the TA has given you. 

Saying that, depending on the TA they may show you some goodwill, depending on how they feel. 

Keep us updated. 

FBaby

*The airfare was unlikely to have been 'marginally cheaper'. Airlines can sell larger quantities of tickets to consolidators (brokers effectively) who then supply travel agents or Online Travel Agents. These fares are often 30-60% cheaper than booking direct with the airline*
Just to be clear, I went to BA app and I could have got the flight through it at £10 more, that's what I meant.

If anyone's interested, the agent refused to share their correspondence with BA citing data protection. This made me laugh as although I accept I am not the owner of the information, GDPR are clear that I'm entitled to receive any information that relates to me. They still refused so I'm now submitting a SAR.

I have no doubt at all that they never contacted BA to see whether they would agree to make the change of date for free or lower fee than quoted. I am conveniently nice they quoted what it normally is after 24h. This is a breach of their terms and conditions and O am therefore not letting it go. 

Voyager2002

Did you pay by card?

Since the agent did not apparently apply their own terms about changes (£150 fee) and are now ignoring you, I suspect that a poorly-trained operator did not bother to check the agent's own rules. In this situation a credit card provider is likely to be helpful (less so if you paid by debit card).

jimi_man

FBaby said:

*The airfare was unlikely to have been 'marginally cheaper'. Airlines can sell larger quantities of tickets to consolidators (brokers effectively) who then supply travel agents or Online Travel Agents. These fares are often 30-60% cheaper than booking direct with the airline*
Just to be clear, I went to BA app and I could have got the flight through it at £10 more, that's what I meant.

If anyone's interested, the agent refused to share their correspondence with BA citing data protection. This made me laugh as although I accept I am not the owner of the information, GDPR are clear that I'm entitled to receive any information that relates to me. They still refused so I'm now submitting a SAR.

I have no doubt at all that they never contacted BA to see whether they would agree to make the change of date for free or lower fee than quoted. I am conveniently nice they quoted what it normally is after 24h. This is a breach of their terms and conditions and O am therefore not letting it go. 

My point was whilst the Travel Agent fare was only £10 cheaper to you, the travel agent will have paid considerably less. However it matters not, the fact remains that (unfortunately) you've gone through a TA rather than direct through BA.

I will just reiterate that the BA 24h cooling off period does not apply to Travel Agent fares, only with direct BA bookings. Travel Agents are free to set their own terms here and they vary considerably. It's absolutely nothing to do with BA and everything to do with the Travel Agent.

Keep us updated though, hope you get a good response through the TA.