Travel agents are now having to add ADM worries to their list of woes, as consultants begin to report receiving ADMS for “failure to collect date change penalties” which they say should have been waived according to COVID-19 booking amendment policies.
A Cape Town based ITC told Travel News that she had received her first three ADMs from British Airways this month for failing to collect a date change penalty on tickets that she says were issued according to BA’s COVID-19 rebooking policy, which waives the booking amendment fee.
“I collected the additional fare and taxes and added in all relevant endorsements as per BA’s COVID-19 amendment policy, which allows for the date change penalty to be waived. The three ADMs came to R11 073 which was not a nice surprise for the start of the week. My concern is that this is indicative of what we, as agents, are going to have to deal with as thanks for our efforts in assisting airlines with COVID-19 booking reissuances. I have a pile of another 50 tickets that I am waiting to reissue once we have confirmed dates of when borders will reopen. Just when we should be working hand-in-hand with the airlines to make it through this period, ADMs of this nature only create fear and resistance with agents about booking tickets in the future,” said the ITC, who said BA’s trade support department and her sales rep had not been able to assist in reversing the ADM so far.
“BA has now suggested that I dispute the ADM on BSP. While I understand that this process may take months to resolve, my BA rep has told me that the advantage is that disputing it in this manner will ‘freeze’ the ADM, meaning that it will not be deducted from my BSP billing until the matter has been investigated,” she added.
Travel News contacted British Airways about this issue and received the following response from a spokesperson:
“We have apologised to the extremely small number of agents who have received erroneous ADMs. Agents should raise any issues using the outlined information to dispute the ADM detailed on BAtraveltravel.com, and where it is correct to do so, we will always reverse the ADM.”