.

Yes it happens a lot (certainly far more often than it should) but I’m personally not convinced that it comes down to training or that CR ‘misunderstand what customers are saying to them’. I believe it’s simply the BA default Modus Operandi to try to minimise expenditure where possible, and to prevaricate in the hope that many (legitimate) claims / requests can be shut down with an initial refusal. A certain percentage of customers will understandably be persistent ; but the savings will still be significant as a consequence of the policy adopted.

And so BA will continue - along with many, many, other carriers - to bumble along in this less-than-satisfactory way, whilst happily living with any collateral reputational damage.

One could judge it to be an unethical approach in some ways, but of course the truth is that, for many large corporates around the world, there has never really been a meaningful relationship between business and ethics. For that to change it would take a CEO who - with full Board support & backing - comes along one day with a determination to reinvent the fundamental culture of the business and its interaction with customers. And in today’s profit-driven world, it’s fairly hard to see that happening any time soon.