I've tried to work through normal BA customer support for a seating issue on an upcoming flight but it's turned out to be a total waste of time. I see that the forum representative here is away for the holidays. I'm hoping that an experienced flier here will have a suggestion for how to get results.

My wife and I live in the UK (actually the Isle of Man). She flew to the US about a month ago with our 6 month old daughter to visit family, taking maximum advantage of her maternity leave. I joined her a few weeks ago and we will both return on the 26th on a ATL-LHR flight on BA. Because we took different flights on different days out of London to the US, we were not able to be on the same itinerary. We have different booking codes, etc. despite being on the same flight back to London.

My wife has a seat with a cot for this flight; very important to us as she has found the cots invaluable in her three transatlantic flights with our daughter over the past six months. It's nearly equally important that I be able to sit next to my wife and daughter on the flight so that my wife and I can share responsibility for caring for our daughter.

Unfortunately I am not able to select the seat next to my wife because the row is reserved for those traveling with young children. As I am not on the same booking as my wife and child, I am unable to select this seat. I know that it is available/open because when my wife logs in using her booking code she sees that it is available/open.

Several weeks ago we called BA customer service and explained the situation. My wife and I each called separately, per the directions given, and we were assured that my seat would be changed by someone in another department but that it might take a few hours (up to 24) for the change to show up online.

We didn't give it any thought until we double-checked yesterday and saw that my seat hadn't been changed. I called BA customer service to ask them to change my seat as they had promised prior. I ended up calling three times and am now no better off than when I started and am out of ideas for fixing the problem.

The person who answered my first call seemed pretty clueless about what to do. She eventually understood the problem, then put me on hold, then hung up on me. I believe that in her case she hung up on me on purpose because she didn't know what to do.

I then called back immediately and got someone who seemed a bit brighter. However, he told me that he couldn't give me the seat next to my wife because the computer system wouldn't let him. I explained to him that this is why I was calling a human in customer service, because humans are able to understand complicated situations that computers can't and thus can react appropriately. I asked to speak to a supervisor. He put me on hold for a few minutes. He then checked back in on me to see if I was still holding. He let me know that a supervisor wasn't yet available and asked if I still wanted to wait. I said I did; I was then put back on hold and hung up on 15 seconds later.

I was not pleased. I immediately called back a third time and explained that as I'd been hung up on twice, I would like to speak to a supervisor before wasting my time explaining my issue. I got a supervisor on the phone fairly quickly this time. She told me that per policy, I would not be allowed to sit next to my wife and child because we were not on the same booking. She didn't care that this was not by our choice as it was a necessity due to differences in our overall itenerary.

I told her that I would be making sure to report on my experience to any interested news media and travel blogs. She responded that she would note on my account that I had threatened legal action. I told her that I had most certainly not threatened legal action nor had I threatened her nor anyone else personally, which she did agree. I think it says a lot about a company's customer service that when you say you are going to pass along an honest account of your interactions with them in which they believe they are acting appropriately, they consider this a threat. A company with good customer service would be proud of their actions and want others to hear about your interactions with them.

It's probably not going to help my problem get solved, but it's probably worth mentioning that in each of the calls I explained that we had been told weeks ago that the seat change would be made. In calls two and three I also explained about the hangups in the prior call(s). None of the representatives apologized, offered any explanation, showed any surprise, or seemed to care one bit about the prior service failure and hangups. I got the impression that such things were standard practice and acceptable for BA customer service.

I'm still undecided about how big of a stink to raise. We've flown quite a lot with BA and have generally been pleased. However, the experience with customer support yesterday was quite amazingly bad and pretty clearly the result of very wide ranging problems, not just an isolated incident or single problem employee.

For now, any suggestions on how to get help from an actual competent person at BA would be appreciated. I would assume that in a company so big, there must be someone at some level that actually would want to deliver the seat change that was already promised and meets the clear intent of their policy to seat families traveling together in the seats in question.

I did read the sticky and know that such personal issues are supposed to be handled by PM, but the rep is away on holiday at the moment so I don't see much other choice. I must admit I don't mind if this gets a little bit of public viewing as well as BA deserves some bad publicity for this kind of lack of service.

Thanks in advance for any help.