Originally Posted by yossimills

I would welcome any comments on the circumstances and communications exchanged, as outlined below:

My parents and sister have recently been upset by events and subsequent customer services surrounding a trip TLV-LHR-TLV.

In short, the issue was that my parents booked a flight for my sister to fly to London for medical reasons (her appointment being the morning after the afternoon flight), and received the usual update emails up until the night before the flight. However, at the airport, the agent said that there was a problem with the ticket, and it had been cancelled. Then a new ticket had to be purchased, but it could not be done with a card over the phone, and only cash would be accepted (details below). BA did not try at any stage to be helpful, but rather dismissed it as her problem. She eventually got on the flight, after a couple of very stressful hours, with little or no apology from BA, and a (slightly) incorrect refund to the AMEX originally used for the cancelled ticket.

The card issuer (Commonwealth Bank of Australia/Diamond Rewards AMEX) has said that they had paid authorised and debited the transaction, and are unsure of why BA cancelled the ticket. The bank assures us that the transaction was a normal transaction. To be clear, they did not refuse the transaction, as BA said they might have done. We are nevertheless investigating this further with them.

Original letter of complaint


So BA responded...


Note that the money had been taken from the Amex, and had to be credited back (incorrectly) by BA, so this was not a credit card issue, or at least not one as described by the response.

Then my parents wrote back:


Soon after my mother got the auto-acknowledgement from BA, she got a phone call from an Israeli BA rep, on her home phone. BA seemed to be saying that "it wasn't their fault", and that it must have been the credit card provider's fault. My mother did not understand how this was the case, pointing out that her issuer told her that it was a normal transaction, as far as they could see.

My mother also pointed out that they could have notified either her (the cardholder) or my sister (the ticketholder). My mother was told that BA is "under no obligation to tell customers" this kind of thing, and it was "not BA policy" to advise customers of this. My mother then asked how she was supposed to know that boarding would be denied, and the rep repeated the "no obligation" line ad nauseum. My mother was quite incredulous, and quite possibly lost her temper. She was most upset at the lady's dismissive nature and could not understand how she could not rely upon the information from the airline itself, namely the emails in the days and hours before the flights, (mis)representing that all was OK.


Soon afterwards, BA responded:


Now, this response angered my parents no end:
"... if any error had been made when making payment then regrettably it was not our input." - Not only is this some lousy blame-shifting, but they regret that it was not their input?! And they seemed happy enough to take the money. "Regrettably" seems to be one of those empty "soothing yet condescending" words here.

We are aware of the inconvenience caused and we sincerely apologise for that. - By this stage, these are just empty words. By not taking any responsibility, an apology is simply fake and condescending. For what are they actually apologising?

Our airport team assisted in every possible way. - How? They would not accept a (different) credit card, an online booking could not (supposedly) be made, and my sister was advised to find a travel agent for the purchase, with one hour until boarding. How did the airport team help? Really? They calculated the fare at the original price? How nice.

I am happy to reimburse you for the small balance that is outstanding - Small. Really. This superfluous little adjective seems (although it might not be) to be suggesting that my parents are petty for requesting this. This is, I suppose, open to interpretation.

The big issue, however, which BA has been dodging, is why was nobody informed until check-in? Had anyone called, emailed, or otherwise contacted the ticketholder or cardholder, then this whole thing could have been avoided. And it is the one issue that BA refuses to comment on, or apologise for. Moreover, the email not 12 hours prior to denied boarding was "welcoming her on board". If BA really IS sorry, then they should be apologising for this. Not for some system or process that "isn't really their fault anyway".

Unhappy with the response, but feeling that they cannot take it any further with an unsympathetic (Israeli branch of) BA, they wrote back:


My parents' biggest problem with BA is that they just did not seem to care. Not at the airport, and not since. The attitude has been nothing but dismissive, as if they were just a bother.

Would anyone happen to know if there is an escalation path available within BA? Does anyone feel that my parents are justifiably frustrated, or should they be satisfied with BA's responses?