Originally Posted by
flyingmonkie
I used to run a business that was involved in providing really important parts of weddings (marquees, furniture, generators, toilets, that type of thing). Obviously not the scale of BA but not a tiny outfit, turnover of half a million quid or so. We prided ourselves on mostly getting it right, we would be involved with about 150 weddings a year and I would say 148 of them were perfect. However, mistakes happen, processes aren't perfect and when you got something wrong the process went:
1. Apologise.
2. Do absolutely everything in your power to make it right.
3. Refund and compensate fairly
By following the above I managed to end up on good terms with most of our brides and grooms. It appears that BA failed to do any of the above and it amazes me that people can defend them for it. A wedding is an incredibly stressful time for many people (I got pretty stressed at my recent one despite having worked in the industry for five years a while back) and made even more so if it is financially stretching you. This is the last thing they would have needed and BA messed up and have since not made good.
I am a BA fan and customer so I don't like the constant BA bashing that we see in the media but they don't help themselves by not owning up and sorting out when they get it wrong.
Edit to add: A lot of people do not go on honeymoon straight after the wedding these days for various reasons including money, time off work, and wanting to make the fun last longer. I have yet to book my honeymoon despite getting hitched two months ago.
There's a huge difference between a SME specialized in wedding services and a mega corporation for whom 'people flying to weddings' are a very, very small part of their business. The ability to more proactively, flexibly and 'humanly' interact with customers is one of the few major advantages of SMEs over large corporations. It's absolutely imperative that you would want to do that, but it's also unrealistic to expect a company of BA's size to be able to behave similarly in each and every case.
I think BA's final offer is fair even if the road there wasn't pretty. The reality of it is that for a company like BA you're ultimately a very small number even if individual staff may at times manage to make you forget that. I don't think there's anything you can really do about it either, it's a natural consequence of scale.