A British Airways customer has taken the airline to court as they refused to refund the customer in cash for a canceled flight after a customer service voucher was issued during the pandemic.
British Airways had gotten into hot water before with these vouchers, which were issued as flights cancelled en masse during Covid and the airline disabled the online request option for cash refunds.
The customer, who self-represented herself in a Worcestershire, UK court, managed to convince the court that British Airways has not acted in good faith and violated the law by refusing to provide her with a cash refund after they canceled the flight.
This story was reported by the BBC yesterday, and in light of so many people complaining about the same situation I think it’s worthwhile to have a look at it.
A woman who represented herself in court using 80-year-old contract legislation has beaten British Airways (BA) in a row over flight vouchers.
In January 2020, Jennie Barber booked two return flights to Japan departing that May, but the flights were later pulled due to Covid restrictions.
BA offered a refund in the form of travel vouchers but Ms Barber wanted her money back. The airline refused.
Representing herself, Ms Barber took BA to court and won a full refund.
“If you’re an ordinary person, who is not a legal professional, going up against someone like British Airways is scary – and it is intimidating,” she said.
However, Ms Barber, who studied A-level law, was able to beat the airline giant in court using the Law Reform (Frustrated Contracts) Act 1943.
Ms Barber said she had requested the vouchers – in effect store credit to the value of her flights – in March 2020, after Japan closed its borders to foreign travellers during the first wave of the pandemic.
Her frustration began, she explained, when her preferred destination of Japan did not reopen its borders to visitors as quickly as other nations. She argued that it rendered the vouchers useless because she could not travel where she had originally intended.
By December 2020, with Japan’s borders still closed, she raised the issue with BA and requested a cash refund, but her request was denied.
The Birmingham resident told the BBC she spent approximately 12 months – most of 2021 – trying to persuade BA to reconsider her request. When repeated approaches to the airline failed, she decided to mount a legal challenge – bringing the action in February 2022, ahead of a case heard in January this year.
It was during this period that she came across legislation stating that because the sale involved, through no fault of her own, something that was subsequently impossible to deliver, she was legally entitled to her money back. …
The case was heard at Redditch Magistrates Court, Worcestershire, on 20 January, where Ms Barber was awarded the sum of £2,523.42 to cover flights, interest up to the date of judgment and costs.
Ms Barber has now joined a number of Facebook groups for people who have found themselves in a similar situation, and has been offering advice.
“If I can get more people their refunds….I think that is the ideal outcome,” she said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for BA said: “We were the first UK airline to offer customers the unprecedented flexibility to change their plans during the pandemic by providing them with vouchers for future travel.”
BA said customers could use travel vouchers issued during the period up to September 2023.
Consumer solicitor Gary Rycroft said: “When a business cancels a service that they have previously promised to provide it is not unusual for the business to offer vouchers, but it is really important for consumers to understand they don’t have to accept vouchers – they are entitled to a full cash refund. …
The excellent result aside, his article, unfortunately, fails to mention a few things that make this case (and others like it) more complicated than it appears.
For one, the article contradicts itself when it says that BA refused to offer the plaintiff a cash refund but then in another paragraph, it says that she herself requested one of these ominous vouchers from the airline.
This request process is where the problem lies. Both John and I have repeatedly warned and pleaded with readers not to accept vouchers of any kind from airlines or hotel chains for services that were canceled involuntarily.
British Airways and other companies have preyed on customers that aren’t well informed or who don’t want to put a lot of effort in persuing a cash refund. Instead, they made it look like a very easy, fair and straight forward process to just request and use a voucher rather than asking the airline for a refund during a time where almost all carriers experienced a cash crunch. The downside was: British Airways was lying.
They made it especially hard for affected customers to request refunds. For example, the online refund request option was disabled by BA. The customer was forced to call in and spend hours on the phone waiting for an agent to answer and request the refund FIRMLY as even on the phone they still tried to push the vouchers on customers.
Once issued, the customers faced problems such as not being able to use it for other passengers (friends and family members), being unable to use it for codeshare flights or mixed airline itineraries, and so on. Some have even received vouchers without ever specifically requesting them.
This lasted throughout the first six months of the pandemic.
In November of 2020 British Airways once again offered to request cash refunds online after having received a massive amount of bad press coverage:
British Airways Customers Can Now Request CASH Refunds For Their Cancelled Flights Online
But people were still stuck with the previously issued vouchers, and British Airways continued to offer them. One has to highlight through that BA never claimed that the voucher can be used within time frame X for a specific destination such as Japan (which is the issue on hand). Japan was a hermit Kingdom for 2.5 years as far as international tourism is concerned.
Then in 2022, the airline also refunded some customers their travel vouchers back to the original form of payment:
Nevertheless, it is always a VERY bad idea to accept vouchers or gift certificates of any kind. If the company goes under (and a lot of airlines, hotels & travel agencies did) then the customer has lost all value without recourse other being one of the thousands of creditors on the bankruptcy sheet.
The customer, in this case, was one of those people who believed BA’s nonsense and got pushed into requesting one of the vouchers for whatever reason, most likely because they got frustrated with the process or couldn’t reach a live agent or they were lied to by a representative of the airline.
She later contacted the airline to demand a cash refund which they declined, claiming that once accepted, she has no valid claim to cash anymore. Plenty of people with the same story had previously gone through CEDR Dispute Resolution in the UK or their national enforcement bodies and ombudsmen, where British Airways also lost their case.
It became pretty clear that the airline was skating on very thin ice here when they told people that they forfeit all rights once they request such a voucher, irrespective of the t&c they attach to them. T&C can be void if they violate the law. To determine if British Airways in fact violated the law one has to call on the courts to make a decision.
Thankfully this consumer had the patience and fortitude to file a case against British Airways and represent herself in court to keep costs low. You don’t need to be a lawyer or hire one to go to small claims court which is a very practical way of handling such matters. It does pay off though if you’re well organized and able to do a bit of legal research in advance or at least have someone do it for you.
Conclusion
British Airways lost yet another legal challenge and was forced to refund a customer £2,523.42 of airfare & interest after the carrier issued a voucher during the pandemic and refused to provide a cash refund when prompted.
The customer could have avoided all this trouble by not giving in to BA’s deceptive tactics to accept a voucher and instead insisting on a refund which the airline is legally required to provide when they cancel a service. British Airways did not act in good faith here.
Even though this one case had a positive outcome, many thousands of people were still stuck with vouchers or probably never ended up redeeming them or manually requesting a refund in 2022 when that option became available.
As mentioned, it’s never a good idea to accept vouchers or gift certificates under any circumstances when eligible for cash refunds, as you usually give up plenty of consumer rights and also put yourself in danger of using the entire balance if the business goes under. Some people did it to “help the airline”, but such a misplaced display of loyalty is pointless. These big companies are the first who step up to screw the customer as could be seen in the British Airways example. Think of yourself first because you don’t matter to these companies!