It's actually mind boggling that more people redeeming award tickets don't get stranded in foreign places.
I booked CNS-HTI on QF for 4500 Avios/pax about two weeks ago and was told "it's going to be sent for manual processing" and you'll get a confirmation email.
Most people would assume they're fine. And most people would go on with their lives. And most people would get stuck in CNS.
I've called back no less than 4-5 times to make sure the booking gets ticketed and each time BA said: "Oh, it'll will be done in 24-48 hours, not to worry!"
So, today, after nearly two weeks, I check the status of the ticket and I see this:
So not only is the booking not ticketed (as I found out from CheckMyTrip), somehow
the date has changed by 4 months, the origin has changed and the destination has changed!
Instead of flying the below red route for 4500 Avios/pax, they had me booked on the yellow route (that should cost 25K Avios/pax):
Finally, after an hour on the phone today I won the lottery by being able to speak to a BA *ticketing agent* who, after a bit of back and forth, was able to fix it. Luckily, the award space was not gone, otherwise I probably would have been out of luck.
I feel for the people who don't know they have to do this kind of stuff... crazy.