British Airways disabled the abilty to book tickets for people other than yourself

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UPDATE MARCH 2023: This has been fixed


Learned a hard lesson today – BA.com has functionally disabled its members from booking Avios reward flights on behalf of others. Yes, theoretically it's still possible, but it can only be done by phone, and given that their customer service center has had multi-hour wait times for several straight years... it's just not gonna happen.

The details: I'm trying to book a points flight as a gift for a friend for his birthday, and when I get to checkout, I click "NO" on the "Is the payment card holder travelling on this booking?" and then this happens:


Add to that the classic modern dystopia scene of the call center automated line on speakerphone telling you to "use BA.com for faster service." Furthermore, can you imagine what hellscape it will be trying to verbally relay all of the information over a highly-compressed voice line to India all of the details necessary to successfully book this flight from my friend?

Yes, I tried Twitter. Yes, I tried their mobile app, and guess what it does when you click "Avios Booking"? Yeah, it opens the Web browser to BA.com. Maybe I could just schlep out to JFK and try and book this at the counter 😂 I'd actually be there by now if I'd gotten on the subway when I placed my call!

One hour and counting!

UPDATE: Their call center terminated my call after waiting 90 minutes for someone to pick up

 

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