The new HFP chat thread – Friday 24th April

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

• Anon says:

  24 Apr24 April 10:21

  Anybody had success with chargebacks for cancelled flights with HSBC world elite? TravelUp is non responsive, HSBC saying massive queue and trying to send me to insurance that comes with Premier, insurane wants confirmation that chargeback hasn’t worked…

  • Lady London says:

    24 Apr24 April 11:26

    See above and the very ample flyertalk thread on travelup

    • Anon says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:14

      Yeah TravelUp is crap, but it’s more about the speed that HSBC is operating at that annoys me.If the money was credited to my account and then the agent disputed that it’s one thing but I haven’t even gotten there yet!

• Nadeshka says:

  24 Apr24 April 10:29

  Another thanks for those that pointed to BA refund helper on flyer talk.
  I used the workaround on 19th March for cancelled flights, and points & “241” came back on 3rd April.
  The taxes had been paid on two cards, one of which is now cancelled (outbound then inbound done separately at release) which probably complicated things.
  I messaged Tuesday (21st) evening and they replied straight away saying it would be done in 48 hours. Refunds are on the amex cards this morning!

  • Michael C says:

    24 Apr24 April 10:57

    Exactly the same here! Also an open-jaw 2-4-1, all back the next days (including 6-month extension) the next day, after waiting for 4 weeks. Just incredible what this person’s doing.
    Possible invite to HfP Xmas do so we can ply them with drinks?!

    • AppleW says:

      24 Apr24 April 11:23

      +1

  • Duncan Stevenson-Price says:

    24 Apr24 April 11:43

    What’s the situation here? I came to this thread to ask about times for refunds and saw your comment.

    I cancelled a flight by phone on April 4th and for the Avios and Voucher back same day. Still waiting on a refund almost 3 weeks later.

    Is there a trick to this?

    • Nadeshka says:

      24 Apr24 April 15:17

      With India on lockdown there is a backlog in refunds being issued, especially the more complex ones. BA have an official representative over on the Flyertalk BA Exec Club sub forum who is will look into refunds that have been outstanding a while. They can’t do holiday or Onbusiness bookings though.
      You can send them a private message with details of the booking and they’ll look into it.

• Chris says:

  24 Apr24 April 11:00

  I have also opened a dispute request with Amex for edreams/Opodo for a Thai Airways flight I booked in Jan (LON-BKK return), was supposed to fly today and it was a bit more than £1200 in total. Amex opened it as “Reason for Your Inquiry: I haven’t received my order/item/service”.

  Thai Airways let me know in late March that the flight got cancelled but I was not able to raise anything with edreams until 10th April, on which I was able to choose the refund option on the “manage my booking” link. Unfortunately after two weeks I have still not heard from them and called them up – turned out they didn’t do anything on it as the airline refused to give out a full cash refund. The only option aside from rebooking or a voucher was a refund within airline policy, which would have charged me £300 in fees and only refunded the tax. I found it pretty ridiculous but after arguing with the agent for ages on the phone couldn’t do anything more and reached out to Amex which is taking care of it now. Can I expect to receive the full amount back?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    24 Apr24 April 11:57

    Will all these agents survive COVID19?

    The horror stories of them not refunding people for cancelled flights will live long in the memory.

    • Chris says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:08

      It’s pretty messy indeed, always thought about stopping to use agents and I think this lesson will imprint deep into my memory..

• Oli says:

  24 Apr24 April 11:16

  Not sure who is going to use a travel agent in the future. There’re not helping themselves with their funny refund policies – who is going to trust them

• Doogie says:

  24 Apr24 April 11:18

  @BJ – Contary to what I said on here a couple of days ago, BA have now put KIX back in the schedule for spring next year.

  Annoyingly they did it after I’d already booked my return back from HND and by the time I’d noticed, the CW seats for my return date are already away!

  At the moment don’t know whether we’ll be able to travel while being insured by spring 2021, but fingers crossed!

  • Michael C says:

    24 Apr24 April 11:22

    Thanks for the update – our cherry-blossom LHR-KIX obvs. never happened this year, and missed out on early res. Guess it’ll be 2022!

• Ant says:

  24 Apr24 April 11:38

  Wine – probably, like many others, our wine supply has finished at a much quicker rate than usual. Any idea of any good offers around? Doesn’t look like there are any Amex offers on my cards that i can use.

  • Anna says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:33

    Aldi delivers free and has some really quite decent wines in various price ranges. Hopefully they are re-stocking regularly as a lot of then wines had sold out when I ordered last week. You can order spirits as well!

    • Anna says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:33

      And they take Amex, obviously!

  • Andrew says:

    24 Apr24 April 13:40

    First Direct Visa Offers are offering a 10% money return at Laithwaites.

    Probably on HSBC offers too.

    • Rob says:

      24 Apr24 April 15:28

      It is.

      Slightly more exciting than 1% back at Holland & Barrett!

• AJA says:

  24 Apr24 April 11:54

  Interesting article in the Guardian today about Virgin Australia owing AUS6.8 billion to about 12,000 creditors including AUD450million to its 9,000 employees.

  Apparently it owes 26 secured corporate debt and aircraft finance lenders were owed about $2.28bn and more than 1,000 trade creditors are owed $166m and a group of 81 landlords are owed $71m.Also about 50 companies from which the airline has leased 94 planes are owed $1.88bn.
  https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/24/virgin-australia-owes-68bn-to-more-than-12000-creditors-documents-reveal

  • TGLoyalty says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:04

    Surely the plane payments are what they owe up to the end of their leases or the balance of their loans not their outstanding balance of payments missed?

    Otherwise that’s one hell of a pickle they got themselves into and a 1.6bn AUD loan wouldn’t even have made a dent let alone the 200m AUD they then asked for.

    • Rob says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:19

      Yes, you would imagine those are capitalised future lease costs. Legally the company owes the money but if the lessor gets the aircraft back then its loss is negated if someone else takes the plane (yeah, right).

    • AJA says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:42

      I agree I think those lease figures are the total of the remaining payments but as Rob says that is only reduced if the planes are returned and other airlines then take them over. That is a big expectation. Even if you ignore the lease figures the amounts owed to employees, landlords and trade creditors is just shy of AUD700m so a loan of AUD200m just wasn’t going to be enough. No wonder they’ve gone down the administration route.

      I also found the following paragraph very interesting::
      “He also allowed the administrators an extra month to decide how to deal with its 94 different aircraft leases before they become personally liable for almost $2bn owed under the contracts.”

      One month to get out of becoming personally liable for the amount due – that’s a tall order. I expect Deloitte’s is being paid handsomely to deal with this.

      • ken says:

        24 Apr24 April 14:05

        Will indeed be tough.

        Was at an operating loss, so not just a matter of dumping some debt and carry on as before.

        Strip out the impairment losses and onerous contracts and it roughly broke even in 2019 before finance costs.

        Virgin Australia used to pay half of 1% on gross revenues to Virgin in royalty payments. About $10m a year. This was pre-2014 and numbers don’t have to be disclosed anymore but no reason to think its not the same.

        Doesn’t sound much but in the 11 years to 2013 it paid more in royalties than it made in profits.

        Should be a profitable stripped down domestic business in there.

        • guesswho2000 says:

          24 Apr24 April 14:30

          It was, but its operating losses were decreasing, I believe. It had a lot of investment in its product and overseas network. Wasn’t in great shape, but improving, however this situation slammed the brakes on obviously.

          There was an interesting article somewhere looking at whether Australia had a market big enough for two major airlines (commenting on the Ansett collapse and differences to the current situation), I read it earlier today but can’t remember where. The gist was that there’s likely space for 1.5x airlines, if that makes sense.

        • Rob says:

          24 Apr24 April 15:28

          That royalty is peanuts. 99% of businesses would jump at the chance to hand over 0.5% of turnover in return for being an official Virgin branded business.

• Doug M says:

  24 Apr24 April 12:03

  In response to several posts here I wanted to ask why do people book flights through Travel Agents. I’m sure there must be circumstances where they work, but never for me with the exception of using the £200 off £600 with Amex Travel, on a DUB-DFW-LAS. Even that was a pain having to phone Amex each time AA did a schedule change.

  • Kev 85 says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:05

    Because people don’t know why they shouldn’t book through travel agents. When I booked my first couple of trips I didn’t know either.

    Now I wouldn’t ever use one.

    • Novice says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:12

      I personally think it’s to do with how complex your travel plans are. I use trailfinders always because I tend to have multiple domestic flights, various different locations and hotels as well as international flights within one tour as I tend to cram two countries if I can in 18 days etc. It’s too much hassle and stress if I do it myself. I just plan where I wanna go and when and leave them to sort it out.

      • Doug M says:

        24 Apr24 April 13:53

        The planning is all part of it for me. I like to control the various aspects of it myself.

        • Novice says:

          24 Apr24 April 14:56

          I plan what I want to do and where I wanna go which I enjoy. I sure as hell don’t want to plan the times/ logistics of getting me to various different places some off the beaten track because I don’t have the patience for that. If I know someone else can do it, why should I. I’m happy to pay for the money and when something has ever gone wrong, Trailfinders have never let me down. They know I have spent a lot of money with them since I started touring years ago as my parents at that time were not keen on me travelling alone without safety net as I started touring quite young. I didn’t wait for after Uni.

        • Kev 85 says:

          24 Apr24 April 15:15

          “ If I know someone else can do it, why should I”

          Because it’s quite easy and someone else might do a poor job of it.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:08

    Unless its a significant saving I mean huge % and absolute or its in a few days/weeks time normally I would not bother.

  • PerkyPat says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:11

    Because they are often a lot cheaper than booking direct through the airline?

    • Rob says:

      24 Apr24 April 12:17

      Yes – some airlines do release exclusive fares to certain agents. A couple of years ago we pushed a £1500 Sydney business class deal on Malaysia, for example, which only Expedia had. An OTA can also link flights on different airlines on the same ticket to ensure baggage connection.

      A lot of the time, however, a cheap headline deal from a no-name OTA is just a scam and you will hit with demands for extra money at some point.

  • BJ says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:16

    Probably price, if you search skyscanner for example it throws up premium flighrs with a number of agents including Opodo that are several hundred less than booking via the airlines direct. I’ve been tempted at times but difficulties in finding such basic information as fare rules have ultimately deterred me.

  • Jonty says:

    24 Apr24 April 12:31

    A good agent for travel or anything else works for you. A few years back I needed to cut short a visit because of bereavement. Airline was useless, we couldn’t even buy 2 seats in any class for several days…travel agent got death certificate or somesuch from family, got us flights via an unusual route, all we had to do was pay a few quid for reticketing at the airport.

  • ChrisC says:

    24 Apr24 April 14:53

    I once booked a multi city (but not that complex)flight in Expedia because it wasn’t possible to book The flights I wanted either on the airlines website or via phone.

    All the sectors complied with MCT etc and it was a properly constructed sequence and all on one ticket so no getting caught by separate tickets which can be a risk.

    Another trip flight and hotel Package was cheaper than the airlines package for the same flights and hotel.

    There is nothing wrong per se in using a reliable TA as in most circumstances things operate smoothly and you don’t need them to sort any problems out.

    • Chris says:

      24 Apr24 April 16:42

      Which are the ones that you’d consider “good and helpful when issues come up”?

      I have had very bad experiences with edreams and travelup previously..

      • Novice says:

        24 Apr24 April 23:28

        As mentioned earlier I use Trailfinders and they are excellent. In Iguazu Argentina, my airport transfer gave a certain time for which he didn’t turn up. I got worried what the hell was happening as hotel didn’t know who to call and ask so I emailed my TA and despite time difference the store duty manager emailed back straight away and then got on phone with suppliers and found out I was given 1 hr earlier time. It reassured me they were on the case and I managed to get to airport on time for another domestic flight.

        And in the past if I complain about something, they always compensate. In fact my family call me spoilt coz I even find flaws in 5*+ hotels and resorts. So it takes a lot to please me. And I’m happy with their service till now. Can’t predict future.

  • Baji Nahid says:

    24 Apr24 April 23:03

    I got a cheap flight to NYC for £120 return from the UK! so i cant complain

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.