u/SamuraiGreg78

Original

Update 4 months later

I received a few messages on the side so I thought I'd update.

Quick summary: 2 years ago, I was getting burnt out in big tech. FA noted that we can retire. I had a hard time pulling the trigger at the time. Almost 2 years ago, I started a job with a large non-profit and for a while our income and spending ended up being equal so no need to disburse anything from our accounts. Not pulling from our retirement and some insanely strong couple of years in the market helped us compound and grow our net worth from $7.xM to $9.xM.

tl;dr; So, the big question... 2 years later...am I retired? Nope. I think I just like building things and needed work that was worth doing rather than permission to stop.

Has it all gone according to plan? Not quite...

Planned...my wife is a nurse and has been getting burnt out for a while so she decided to go per-diem (think substitute teacher). It keeps her toe in the water without the stress of working full time every week. Some months she works the minimum shifts and other months, she works almost full-time again. The biggest challenge is predicting unpredictable income.

Planned...some amazing trips. With my wife's expanded flexibility on time off, we have been attacking some of our bucket list extravagant trips. When I run out of PTO, I just take unpaid time off. I thought my employers would have an issue with that but they really haven't so far.

Somewhat planned...my in-laws' health took a bit of a turn. They lived a 6-8 hour flight away so we ended up selling our house to buy a larger house so they could move in with us. We knew this was likely to happen so were psychologically prepared for it. Ironically, we sold our old house for the price of the new house. Location location location, I suppose. Only real downside was that the mortgage rates have been high for the last year so we ended up doubling our mortgage payment. This necessitated a slight draw from our retirement.

Unplanned...my boss laid himself off after a reorg. Yes, non-profits have reorgs and layoffs. I realized that they were expecting me to now do two jobs and deal with the politics that my boss had largely shielded me from. It was feeling more and more like a piece of big tech...without the salary, stock options, bonuses, etc. So, I waited for my boss to leave and then I resigned. I fully intended to retire.

So what happened? I ended up connecting with a great guy who is building a mission-driven non-profit tech company. It had finally grown beyond something he could do on his own and he needed to make some hires. I became employee #2. 95% engineer, 5% leader...building a product to help a very underserved population. Exchanged another pay cut for fewer meetings and politics and getting back to building things that will do some good.

EDIT / IMPORTANT UPDATE: I just figured out exactly what happened and I need to apologize to British Airways. Mea culpa, after all.

Here's the exact, terrifying mechanics of how this scam works.

First, I want to clarify how I got connected to them: I completely screwed up by transposing two of the digits when typing out the helpline number from my screen. The real BA number in the email was 1-877-767-7970 (of course they put it in the email without any hyphens), but I flipped two numbers and accidentally dialed 1-877-677-7970, landing me right in their trap.

When I spoke to "Leah" on that fake line, she saw that BA's automated system had placed me on a bad, late flight. She asked to call me back to "reprice the ticket."

During that 45-minute gap, the scammers literally called the real British Airways line pretending to be me. Because of UK/EU261 rules, the real BA agents changed my booking to the perfect 1-stop itinerary for a grand total of $0.00.

The real BA system automatically generated the confirmation email and sent it directly to my inbox. Seconds later, the scammer called me back from a spoofed Texas VoIP line (737-587-3217). She pointed to the official BA email I had just received as "proof" of her work, took credit for the change, and then demanded the fake $500 fee.

The Takeaway: These people are sophisticated middlemen. They are squatting on numbers hoping you flip a digit. Once you do, they will actively impersonate you to the airline, get your flight fixed for free by exploiting consumer protection laws, and then turn around and try to charge you a massive premium for it. Be incredibly careful when dialing your keypads!

Original message below.

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Hey everyone, just wanted to share an absolutely wild experience I had today with BA customer service via the 1-877 number to warn others who might fall for this predatory tactic.

The Situation:
My original multi-stop itinerary (SEA -> ORD -> LHR -> ATH) from the US was ticketed as Premium Economy (World Traveller Plus) for the long haul, and standard Economy (Euro Traveller) for the short connection. BA canceled the flight from LHR to Athens and rebooked me on a new one that would arrive after my cruise would have departed.

Since they canceled, I called to exercise my UK/EU261 rights to get rerouted under comparable conditions. After telling me there were no options outside of refunding and rebooking the whole thing, the agent offered to send it off to another department to reprice the ticket. The system built a great 1-stop itinerary matching my original cabins exactly, arriving in Athens early.

The "Shake Down":
I originally dialed 1-877-767-7970 (which turns out to be an outsourced or secondary helpline desk but was the number in my original 'flight was canceled' email).

• After "repricing the ticket", I received, in this order, a BA confirmation of flight changes email and then a call from the first agent.
• The first agent told me I had to pay $500 per person for a "fare difference" because I was switching from a 2-stop to a 1-stop journey.
• I pushed back on UK/EU261 rules, so she escalated me to her supervisor.
• The supervisor doubled down, falsely claiming it was a "different class of service" (it wasn't, cabins matched perfectly). When I quoted the law, he said he was "following company policy."
• He then tried to negotiate with me, offering a "supervisor coupon" to lower the fee to $350 per person. He even threatened that if I didn't like it, they would "happily refund my money" so I could buy tickets elsewhere (essentially leveraging the cancellation to strand us unless we paid).
• When I asked if company policy told him to break the law, he told me to call the main 1-800 number because they "know more about laws and can probably credit it."

The Resolution:
I called the main US reservations line (1-800-247-9297). The agent there pulled up my file and confirmed that the new 1-stop itinerary was completely fine, completely legal, and was already built in the system at a $0.00 balance before I even called. The first desk was actively trying to extort $1,000+ from us for a transaction that the backend ticketing desk had already processed for free.

I’ve already filed a formal internal complaint with BA Customer Relations demanding a QA audit on those recorded lines but has anyone else experienced this?

TL;DR: If BA cancels your flight and an agent on the 877 number tries to charge you a massive "fare difference" or "cabin change" fee for an involuntary reroute, hang up and call the official 1-800-247-9297 line. Don't let them bully you into paying for their cancellation!