Originally Posted by
Schultzois
Further, usually one ends up speaking to someone in yet another part of the world anyway (my English speaking reps on the French number almost always seem to be based in the US, but I can't ring them up directly when I'm in the US - I have to wait until the French lines re-open, and hope the English speaking North Americans are still on their lines). So it's not that BA hasn't figured out international outsourcing yet... just that they do their darndest to ensure that their average European Gold member who's travelled to the other end of the world has as short a window as possible to reach somebody with a brain on a number that (1) they're allowed to dial, and (2) will have someone with a clue pick up.
I second this - whenever I call the number from Switzerland, it's supposed to go to Bremen, but if you choose the English language option, you are nearly always passed to an agent in the US (and very helpful and competent they are too), even if it's clearly the middle of the night in Seattle, which is where I ended up with my last call.
Pretty obviously there is 24h 7/7 service of some kind, with agents all over the place. I don't understand why we can't have access to them, particularly, as others have pointed out, when we're travelling. On top of that, I have no idea how I'm supposed to access the Swiss number from outside Switzerland (it's an 0800 number), as it certainly doesn't work.