Originally Posted by
Ldnn1
Thanks for the update, Jack. So do you intend to try and claim some recompense?
I would be minded to pursue this if I were you, as a customer service matter more than anything, and notwithstanding your dad's failure to see the email from IB.
I would hope (but can't be sure) that a reasonable 'gesture of goodwill' would be offered eventually. The three key points for me are:
1) To any ordinary consumer, 'confirmed' means 'ticketed' and thus the confirmation webpage, confirmation number and massive tick in the email entitled 'booking confirmation' that your parents saw give the very strong impression that the booking was in fact confirmed and a-ok (even if the detail of the email stated the ticket was pending).
2) The booking looked a-ok in MMB throughout.
3) BA confirmed seats on the phone, again with no indication anything was wrong.
Others may poo-poo this, but I have every sympathy for your parents in this situation. Personally I'm of the view that airlines should not tell consumers that a booking is confirmed until the booking is ticketed. Plainly, in ordinary language (rather than IATA language), a booking for which payment has failed is not a confirmed booking.
Thanks for the reply.
I think they would like to pursue it, but are of the view it probably isn't worth the hassle of doing so.
Personally I'd be inclined to take it further, as you say, from a customer service perspective. Clearly whilst my dad should have been more astute at checking email, there were no other warning signs of a problem which the average passenger could reasonably (in my view) be expected to see.
The booking was made in October 2015, and right up until departure MMB looked completely normal. I don't understand in these cases why MMB doesn't display a warning message, or is cancelled/deleted altogether - if this were to occur, there'd be little doubt in anyone's mind a problem existed, and it could as such at least be resolved without the embarrassment/stress of turning up at the airport and running into problems.
I also think at the very least something should have popped up when they phoned BA to sort out seats the night before the flight. The thing they keep saying is 'but they issued us a confirmation code' - again, being the average passenger they don't understand that this means nothing if you haven't been ticketed...