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Passenger Frustration at BA Voucher Refunds

Posted on 22nd September 2020

British Airways have made the news again regarding their handling of passenger refunds, as more travellers are unhappy with the service they have received.

The passenger, Lesley Anderson claimed that though she selected ‘cancel and refund flight’ she was automatically issued a voucher.

Ms Anderson is the latest passenger to accuse BA of automatically issuing a voucher when a refund was requested, however, the airline has stated that there is ‘no way’ a voucher would be issued unless the customer had requested it.

She said: “I obviously chose the ‘cancel and refund flights’ option, which then took me to the British Airways webpage that said, ‘Thanks for completing your travel voucher application.’ I was a bit gobsmacked. […] I definitely did not fill in any information about my name, my flights. I did not click submit, nothing like that at all. It just took me straight to that page and it issued me automatically with a voucher.”

Ms Anderson took screenshots of the webpage to show that vouchers were not even listed as an option for selection, however, she was told by the airline that she had accepted these and they could not be replaced with a cash refund.

EU law states that when an airline cancels a flight, passengers booked on the flight are entitled to their money back in cash within a seven-day period. Airlines are however free to offer to rebook flights or issue passengers with vouchers to be used in future travel; the decision is down to the customer as to how they want compensating.

BA advised that Ms Anderson completed an online application form that without doing, the issuing of vouchers by its online system would be impossible. However, despite the airline’s claims, Radio 4’s consumer programme, You & Yours, has been contacted by several passengers claiming they too were issued vouchers which they did not request.

In a statement, BA said: “Since March, we have provided more than 2.1 million customers with cash refunds and more than 1.6 million with vouchers. Customers can request vouchers via our call centre, or by filling in details on an online vouchers form, and in each case, they are asked to confirm this before it is submitted.”