A "Hidden" Fare Increase?

[ShamRoc]

Just got this from BA!

"As from 1 July 2004, a direct service fee is charged on all British Airways tickets sold in Belgium and Luxembourg through our Reservations Call Centre and at the British Airways Ticket Desks at the airports.

The service fee is based on the type of service offered regardless of the destination and means of purchase.

For e-tickets booked and purchased via our telephone reservations a Euro 10 service fee per ticket applies. On request a paper ticket can be issued against an additional fee of Euro 25 per ticket.

No service fee is applied on tickets purchased online, offering our customers who choose to book and purchase their tickets on their own on http://www.ba.com the possibility of benefiting of our best fares."

[Globaliser]

This looks like it's coming in all over the network, and we in the UK have had these fees for some time now - see this AskBA page from ba.com.

It's not a fare increase because for the most part you can avoid it by booking on the Internet, which is what the airline would like you to do.

It is irritating, though, when you have to pay it for simple transactions that the website cannot handle - like open-jaw-at-destination tickets, which seem perpetually to take the BA techies by surprise.

[zed3]

't's been that way in the Netherlands and Germany for a few months now.

[bealine]

It's an attempt to make the "Sales and Reservations" teams self-financing. The idea is that if human intervention is necessary, (ie changing a booking, revalidating a ticket etc etc) then the customer will pay.

Reading between the lines, I feel Internet bookings, e-ticket and self-service check-in aren't as popular as our management think they should be 10 years after their introduction and this is an "initiative" to "motivate" you, the customer!!! (Let's just hope it doesn't "motivate" you to find an "alternative source of air transportation". (Sorry, can you tell I've been on a training course and picked up the jargon!!!)

I wonder how long it will be before we start charging you for a "human" check-in!!!

[Crepello]

Counterpoint: If I can book and check in without staff assistance, why should I pay for the service? Not very community-spririted, admittedly, but that seems to be the vogue these days.

Some hotel chains are trialling automated customer interaction systems. So's a well-known fast food chain - fine by me, if it speeds things up. But I'll avoid automatic dentists...

[rsoman]

Distribution costs (under which head Reservations lie) is an area where airlines like BA are trying to cut costs drastically. A conventional paper ticket costs as much as three times as an Eticket, so the move from BA is understandable.

Incidentally BA has also moved a lot if its back office operations including many of its call centre operations to India. While processes like revenue accounting can be easily shifted out, I wonder how effective the "human touch" functions like reservation call centres can be.

The feedback I have got locally is that BA seems to have neglected the training aspect while shifting operations to India with the result that there are quite a few complaints of less than ideal service. BA was one of the first to start operations here in India for their call centres and while at that time being an early entrant, they were able to get quality staff, now with everyone from Aviva to Cornhill to British Rail , not to speak of Travelocity moving in, it is much difficult to get good people , and more importantly to stay with the company for any length of time. This leads to the question, whether such a move at the end is worth it in the long run.

[PAXboy]

Another encouragement is that Exec Club pays a bonus of (I think) 125 points for each on-line check-in. Over time, these various things will work but more because the folks who don't like (or do not have access to) on-line transactions, will retire from work and then stop travelling altogether.

[Globaliser]

bealine: Reading between the lines, I feel Internet bookings, e-ticket and self-service check-in aren't as popular as our management think they should be 10 years after their introduction and this is an "initiative" to "motivate" you, the customer!!!

Um, can we have some dates as to when each of these innovations came in? WWW bookings are about 2 or 3 years old on BA, e-tickets slightly younger, and SSCI machines haven't been widely available for much more than about 18 months - IIRC they were domestic only for a number of years when they started off.

You can't lump them all into the same basket either. Internet bookings really have taken off. For full FX routes you can actually do a lot more, quicker, than by phoning - which is saying something for a web interface. If you get the full functionality and you're not trying for anything complex, FX beats every other airline booking engine hands down, IMHO. And virtually nobody objects to e-tickets. That's why these service charges are little more than irritating.

It's OLCI and SSCI that are proving harder nuts to crack, and more work needs to be done on promoting them.

PAXboy: Another encouragement is that Exec Club pays a bonus of (I think) 125 points for each on-line check-in.

It's a limited time offer, targeted customers only. I think it's 250 miles per check-in up to a maximum of 2,500, with the offer ending a couple of days before my next BA sector. Typical.

[CargoOne]

My personal experience with BA on-line booking is 100% no-go. EVERY time ba.com quoting me at least 10-15% more expensive fare than I'm getting from my travel agent.

I've made the last try just yesterday:
I'm going to travel LHR-JNB-LHR end of this month, so I've asked my travel agent, searched ba.com and phoned BA reservations for Club ticket (restricted), specifying exactly the same flight to all of them. My travel agent gave me the best price as usual, but what's more interesting, BA reservations also offered the better price, than ba.com

[bealine]

Um, can we have some dates as to when each of these innovations came in? WWW bookings are about 2 or 3 years old on BA, e-tickets slightly younger.

e-tickets (and self-service check-in) were first introduced by BA, experimentally, on UK domestic routes in 1995 and have been gradually rolled out across the network since. A handful of routes still exist where e-ticketing is not possible, and itineraries where more than one carrier is used still mean a paper (or card) ticket must be issued. However, about 75% of paper tickets issued are completely unnecessary and could have been e-ticketed!


www.bookings were introduced in 1999.

FYI Mrs Bealine tells me that Continental Airlines plan to be 100% e-ticketed across its route network by January 2005!

However, I still remain cynical and think that, although there are cost-savings, airlines are losing a colossal amount through error, fraud and deception concerning e-tickets.

[Wot No Engines]

bealine,

...and itineraries where more than one carrier is used still mean a paper (or card) ticket must be issued

Funny, Mrs WNE is currently back in the UK on an E ticket.

Flights were Sydney - Tokyo (Qantas), Tokyo - London (BA)
return is London - Bangkok (Qantas) and Bangkok - Sydney (BA).

Strange itinerary is down to availability of points/air miles seats, but we did book late and still got the dates she wanted.

[PAXboy]

Globes: "It's a limited time offer, targeted customers only. I think it's 250 miles per check-in up to a maximum of 2,500, with the offer ending a couple of days before my next BA sector. Typical."

Tell me about it! The only BA flight at the moment was my usual IOM run from LTN and that is the ONLY BA route from there, so no E-ticket or OLCI possible.

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"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different." Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.