I'm not sure this is worth responding to...but here goes. I was really grateful for Often1's (and later, frb98mf's) very helpful and nuanced suggestions, and was hoping they could work out. To me, it seemed like there was nothing to lose by calling BA. Calling VS, on the other hand, often means slow progress...today's agent claimed a 40-minute connection (including a terminal change) in LHR was completely inside their policy.

You might have interpreted 'uncharitable' in a slightly unusual way. In fairness, the call centre staff have to spend all day dealing with disgruntled customers, and it's understandable that they will do what is necessary to meet their spiralling targets. But they were rude to me. That said, if BA was on the ball they'd easily identify me as a low (or negative?) margin customer, and perhaps conclude that treating me harshly makes business sense (though there's no suggestion that they've actually done this).

Thanks. Fingers crossed. I can't promise I'll really stick around: my travel problems are dissimilar to those of the other posters, and my approach to dealing with them is different. So what if I called the 'wrong' airline? It's no big deal.