British Airways Booking Nightmare

When it comes to their booking and customer service experience, British Airways is hands down the worst airline with which I have ever dealt.

The fact that I had to Google multiple times for hacks just shows how bad they are.  This is 2025 for crying out loud.  If a cheap carrier like Frontier Airlines or Zip Air can have a better online booking experience than a large airline like British Airways, that speaks volumes.

Here are my tips and pearls after going through this nightmare and losing way too much sleep over the whole thing.

#1- CLUNKY WEBSITE

If the website is very slow or frequently throwing error messages, just give up and try the next day.  Apparently they don't have any website banner to warn about system down times.  Thus I had no idea if the fact that I kept running into error messages was typical for them or not.  Since the website worked about 10-20% of the times I tried, it gave me a little hope such that I kept trying it.  Otherwise I would've given up long before.  However, after going to bed for 4 hours and trying again early the next morning, voila, the website was much smoother.  I suspect they just don't announce system maintenance times.

#2- NO RECEIPT

Apparently after they updated their website a few months ago, they don't issue a receipt right after you buy it of how much you paid for your tickets.  I can go to the corner store, buy 2 apples, and get a receipt, but British Airways can't give me a receipt for two international air tickets that cost $2400!?!  When went to the website "manage booking" section and clicked on the receipt the first day, it said error.  On the second day, it showed some details but showed 0.XX for how much I paid.  Now I know that ticket wasn't free!

Especially if you need reimbursement for work or other purposes, this hack is useful.  Thanks to the Reddit member who posted it!  Go to the Finn Air website and enter your booking number and surname.  You'll get a receipt in minutes via email.  

Beware, if each member of your party entered a different email address associated with that booking number, you'll get separate individual receipts at each respective email.  Thus each person will only see their own receipt.  That was not intuitive to me at first since I was used to getting one email with receipts for all members of the trip.

It's possible they wait for the credit card to totally clear before listing the paid price on the online receipt, but that is overly conservative vs. other companies.  Other companies send you a receipt within minutes of booking.  It's been several days, and British Airways has not emailed me any receipt.  Yes, I've checked my Spam folder.

#3- UK ONLY NUMBER FOR TICKET CHANGES

Apparently my ticket is fully refundable before departure, but any cancellations or changes are not possible through their website.  This is bogus.  I've never had an airline make it so hard to make changes or cancellations.  It makes one wonder how hard it'll be to ever get a refund.  They list a non toll-free phone number open only during their UK business hours to call for any changes to seats, tickets, refunds, flights, for my ticket.  I Googled for tips, and apparently there's a toll-free US number that might be able to do changes...I'm not sure yet as I don't have any changes to make at this point.

#4- NO CONFIRMATION NUMBER

No confirmation number?  Don't freak out too much yet.  The scariest part for me was after I entered the necessary payment information and my credit card confirmed payment, the screen didn't move.  I DID NOT GET ANY CONFIRMATION NUMBER.  Thus I had no proof that I had any ticket.  I did not have any email, either.  It's been several days, and I have heard zip from them about my confirmation number or tickets via my email.  It's only thanks to the Finn Air receipt that I even have some proof that I have tickets.  But how did I get the confirmation number to get the Finn Air receipt?  

I called the British Airways reservations line, which is a toll-free number, and told the agent I didn't have a confirmation number.  I went into the whole story about how I hit "pay" numerous times, but nothing happened after the first time the money was deducted from my credit card.  I was tempted to start all over again and rebook about 2 hours later.  Only while doing so did I see that the exact pair of seats I had selected for all 4 portions of the trip were already booked!  It's highly unlikely in the almost empty plane that this was a coincidence.  At this point the agent told me "let's not waste time" (his tone insinuated it was his time, not mine, that he cared about), and he proceeded to look up the date of my flight, origin and destination airports, flight number (I could only guess as I had not saved any information from my first booking), and name.  He had a very thick South Asian accent and spelled my name incorrectly.  I corrected him, but he said he couldn't find anyone by that name on the flight.  Thankfully I remembered the seat numbers I had chosen and asked him to look up who was sitting in those seats.  Then magically he found me on the flight and gave me my confirmation number.

Even then due to the clunky website throwing errors, I wasn't sure this number was legitimate.  After the first few errors, I was back on the phone dialing the toll-free number again.  While on hold, the website briefly flashed my reservation details, so I hung up.  Then it went back to throwing errors...and so goes why I only got 4 hours of sleep that night.

Moral of this story is, British Airways human reservations folks can get you that confirmation number if you're sure the reservation went through, like if your credit card got deducted.  Don't be tempted to hit "pay" repeatedly (lest your card keep getting charged) or to start all over from scratch (lest you end up with way more tickets than you really wanted!).  Save everything- flight number, seat number, etc. since you CANNOT RELY on them to send you an email BOOKING CONFIRMATION.

CAVEAT EMPOR