The Gold and Silver "board at your leisure" is a joke too!

On two recent flights (one LHR-MAN, one AMS-LHR) they announced that they were boarding by rows. A couple of Golds/Silvers tried to "board at their leisure" and were told rather rudely to wait their turn. When I pointed out to the guy at LHR that I believed the passenger (not me in this case) had been within his rights to try and board when he wanted I got rudeness too.

I complained to EC about this via the website asking them to clarify the position on "boarding at your leisure". The first response was the usual "Sorry you have been disappointed with our service - please accept 10,000 BA miles", but no actual response to the issue.

I persisted with them and finally got the following - which is ambiguous to say the least:

Dear Mr Metahome

Thank you for writing back to us. I am sorry for the delay in replying you.

I have checked with the concerned department and can confirm that Gold and Silver members can board the flight at their leisure. If there is a problem on board they will be asked to board by rows.

I hope this is helpful.

Of course there was no problem on board, it was simply that the flight was late (as is so often the case with AMS-LHR).

I pushed further saying that the response was not an adequate answer and I wanted clarification in the case where boarding is by rows (I don't mind that much what the answer is - I would just like clarity in the rules and the rules applied consistently) but their response was to send exactly the same weasel words to me twice more... so the bottom line seems to be that the "board at your leisure" mentioned in the Gold & Silver benefits is basically a joke.