Originally Posted by
bisonrav
Good luck with that then.
The commercial reality - and it would be the same with any business quite frankly - is that they will keep their cards close to their chest and play them carefully to minimise impact to shareholders. Were it not for the GDPR situation you might well have seem a service recovery gesture or a more fulsome apology. It's frankly absurd to expect anything much when they're on the hook for a massive fine.
It would be interesting to know what compensation you think is owing anyway and why, and precisely what outcome you are looking for (a solicitor would ask you that).
You're right that for much regulation nowadays, fines when levied go to governments rather than those affected, which is arguably wrong. I also agree that BA is probably concerned about the potential short-term impact to its finances from any fine - but they also need to look at the long term effect of both loyal and not-so-loyal customers no longer trusting them online or even generally as a brand.
BA trades online because it is convenient and should be more cost-effective for them to do so. However, trading online is subject to specific laws which you need to keep to in order to be able to trade lawfully - in the same way that stores need to keep to health and safety laws to stop stock falling onto customers' heads or to stop their windows falling into the street. You can't just not follow the law and then blame others and then hunker down when you have a problem which you should have avoided. Imagine if a shop window fell on a customer inside a shop, and the shop said "it's not our fault" and then clammed up.
If something happens which negatively impacts customers in any sphere, then the company should react in a way that shows that they care about their customers - and I disagree that for a customer who has spent well over £200k of personal / personal business and company money on BA in the last 15 years, then it's OK for them to say nothing at all.
I agree that the implementation of privacy laws in some businesses (Hilton Hotels app is an example) is overkill and unnecessarily disruptive. But I actually think that the principles of GDPR are sound - selling online should be beneficial to businesses but that doesn't mean that it can be the wild west and laws can be ignored at will.
Compensation? It's an interesting one. If BA had offered something at the start, without prejudice, to say sorry for the inconvenience, then I'd have been happy - perviously they have offered Avios and sometimes status extensions - either of which would have been ok - I'm not saying these are without cost but they tend to be towards the lower cost / higher benefit end of the scale than any cash remedy. And I'd have probably renewed GGL anyway - I'm on my 7th year now and expect I will see an 8th so it will actually just cost them the processing time.
Now that they have been so focused on their own short-termism, I don't really want anything which is forced out of them as it wouldn't be for the right reasons - any gesture from now on would be seen as grudging and that's not the point. I don't really need Avios, I don't really need status extensions, but I do like to feel valued as a customer - and right now I don't.