Introduction
I had bought a business class BA mistake fares back in October. I was waiting for First Class availability to show up so I could use Avios to upgrade to first class. I know a couple of people who did this back in December. And there’s a FT post in November saying it was okay and nothing in this thread that says they changed that rule.
Availability Opens up
So I woke up one morning and saw this:
For you to pay to upgrade, you essentially need award availability to be available. So I was very excited when I saw this. You have 2 options to do this upgrade – either online or by phone. If your itinerary is simple and only involves BA flights, you can do it online. If it involves partners, you’ll have to call.
Call #1 – US Call Center
I tried to do this online, but due to user error, I could not do it online. I got an error. We’ll get back to that. So I called up the US call center. This was at 7AM PST, so there was practically no wait. The British speaking lady I spoke to put me on hold when I gave her my request, and minutes later, told me I could not use Avios to upgrade my flight since it was partially paid with Avios. I thought this was odd, but I figure I’ll just HUCA. So I waited an hour, double checked with my buddy who said he did it in December. Even asked another person who confirmed this was do-able. I called back Chicago at 10:30AM or so and I hung up after 15 minutes on the phone.
Call #2 – Brazil Call Center
The first thing you learn about calling BA is that each call center is YMMV. I wanted to call Japan, but they were not open yet. I went and tried the Brazil call center over Skype. After some language issues with the first rep who quoted me $5,000 to upgrade my segment… “NO, I SAID I WANTED TO PAY WITH POINTS!,” he forwarded my call to someone else who could do it.
The 2nd person understood what I wanted to do. She then told me it was, “fifteen thousand avios and for two people, it would be seven thousand five hundred.” I asked her to repeat it and heard the same thing again. The math made no sense, but I didn’t care since I have 500K Avios collecting dust and just said YES!
She told me I would receive an email within 10 minutes of the change. Ten minutes later, I get this email:
Dear MPD, Unfortunately we were not able to process your request for the upgrade for this booking due to it being made with a part avios payment, and such bookings cannot be upgraded with points. Best Regards, British Airways
Trying to upgrade online
I’m not going to circles and arrows this for you. Just because I’m lazy, but you should be able figure it out. Anyway, this is what I see online for TWO PEOPLE to upgrade OW from J to F from LHR to LAX.
I got all the way to the end where I even entered my credit card info, had the Visa credit card check, and then BOOM! FAILURE!
Twitter to the rescue?
As a last resort, I decided to tweet the BA team. I DM’ed them my reference number and they called me back in a couple of hours. I told him what I wanted to do, and after a 5 minute hold, he came back and said he’d have to call me back. After 30 minutes, he called me back and said he’ll need a day to figure this out. Then 30 minutes later, he called me back saying that the ticket was a ‘shareholder’ ticket and could not be upgraded using Avios. I asked him what a ‘shareholder’ ticket was, and he said it was a ‘super discounted ticket.’ I then asked him why my buddies were able to do it in December, and he said he couldn’t comment on that. I told him it was an I class fare, which should have been upgrade-able, but he was holding the line. I said Thanks and waived the red flag.
Conclusion
So it looks like BA isn’t too happy with those mistake fares and now trying to nerf the customer as much as possible. Also might explain this thread. I’m not sure if this change was made in 2016 since the other 2 people were able to do it back in December or if it coincided with the February 2, 2016 BA award chart change. Either way, I guess no BA F for me on these mistake fares.