sarvowinner

Hi All
I haven't posted on FT for yonks but do keep a watching brief. I hate to be a whinging Australian but I've sent two messages to BA - the first one was on June 10th and I followed up on July 1st. Despite automated messages telling me "Please be assured, we will be in touch with you again in the very near future. Thank you for your patience while we look into the issues you have brought to our attention." I have had no follow up. This is my correspondence sent to BA. Hopefully someone from BA is monitoring this forum and can PM me?

We checked in at 12.20pm 3 hours prior to departure. [Rome FCO, flight to LHR]. We proceeded to the Club Lounge as advised by the CSO. The standard of the lounge was way below BA's normal high standards and there were no flight information screens. The man at the desk was calling the flights. At 2.55pm my husband asked him when BA547 (due to leave at 3.20pm) would be called. He then told us the flight had been delayed until 9pm. We were shocked as we had a connecting flight leaving Heathrow at 9.30pm on QF2. His response was nonchalent. Finally he told us we may be able to get on the 5pm flight but he couldn't guarantee it. We would have to go to Arrivals (no information on how to get there from Departures), pick up our bags (organised by the CSO in the lounge), return to Check-In and see if there are still seats available.
Other people in the lounge then told us that the delay was posted on the screens at least an hour earlier at the Check-in counters. I asked if he could confirm our seats on the 5pm flight but he declined saying we may not have time to pick up the bags and re-check in.
I am astonished that no attempt was made to inform us of the delay or that an announcement was not made in the lounge. We had already checked in and unless we left the lounge we had no way of finding out about the delay. I have never been in a situation where we have to take it upon ourselves to firstly determine our flight had been delayed by 5hours, then leave the departure area and re-check in and go through security again. I expected more care to be taken of a a Sapphire One World member, or actually any BA customer. As you can understand the stress was considerable as we firstly faced the very real possibility we were going to miss our connecting flight, trying to navigate our exit from the secured departure area and then trying to find our bags and carry them all the way back to the Check-in counter in the very large and busy Rome airport.
I would expect some compensation from BA given the lack of customer service, consideration and care.
Kind Regards
xxxx

Follow up sent 1st July

I have not had any further response to my complaint other than an electronically generated email acknowledgement dated June 10th. This stated "Please be assured, we will be in touch with you again in the very near future." Do you consider over 21 days to be "the very near future"? I trust I will hear from an actual representative within two working days.
Kind Regards
xxxx

HilFly

Did you include flight numbers and in which airport this was happening in your correspondence to BA?

lhrjfkpax

You can always go the @Mo_Farah route and take to Twitter and tweet @British_Airways, though may prove to be more effective for a major UK celeb with 100,000's of followers that the rest of us!

irishguy28

Yes, the flight numbers are given above, so it was FCO where the incident happened.

The kisses (xxxx) at the end make for a nice touch!

nux

A very long winded email with no real point.

It sounds like you managed to change to the other flight and made your connection to QF2, as your story ended rather abruptly.

Did you book it all as one booking (FCO-LHR-SYD)? Or separate bookings? If separate, I would just be thankful you made the connection, as you weren't protected. If all one booking, I wouldn't have stressed so much.

From memory when I was last at FCO, there are monitors in the lounge.

HIDDY

Although it might have been seen as being poorly handled it doesn't sound to me to be a very serious complaint as you made your flight at LHR.

As for compensation I don't think you're due anything.

As for a reply from CS....they tend to prioritise complaints so it's early days yet.

stewaran

10K avios would be my guess!

gms

So did BA get you on the earlier flight? Did you make your connection?

If the answers to the above are yes, then I'm not sure what grounds you have to request compensation. I know it's not nice when things go wrong and you feel the stress, I've been there myself a few times, but I've never thought about trying to claim compensation as a result!

In an ideal world BA should have lots of staff on standby to track down passengers who may impacted by delays, but in today's world that's unrealistic.

Yes, they could have probably done better, but at the end of the day in such situations it's really often up to you the passenger to react when things start going wrong. You can of course claim compensation under EU regulations if your situation merits it, but beyond that I don't think you have strong grounds.

courtster

I really don't think it comes across well when you say as a parting shot
I've never needed to ask for compo from BA after an issue. They have always seen fit to offer it as a way of service recovery.

Perhaps it's just me though.

LTN Phobia

I've never asked for a compensation apart from one case of EU261/2004 after quite a substantial inconvenience.

However, when BA saw fit to do something to make up for the the trouble they caused, they have always, without fail, given me something substantial to make up for it. I have been pretty shocked at the generosity of their offer. That's before I became a GGL and even before starting to credit to the BAEC.

Then again I don't write to complain about really trivial matters because I can't be bothered. It's only when I want a substantial improvement in the future of something that they can implement relatively easily that I write to them, because I don't want it to happen to me again.

Anyway, my point is that BA have always treated me fairly and generously, although not perfectly!

HilFly

How did I miss that????

Paralytic

I once emailed BA to ask why their lounge screens were not updated with late flight information when I could see from their website that the incoming flight had been delayed fairly significantly and would therefore depart late.

It wasn't a big issue, but I had time while waiting in the lounge and there's really no reason for it. I didn't expect anything but 10K BA Miles (as they were then) for it.

JAXBA

Hi sarvowinner,

Customer Relations work in date order of the cases received and due to volume, it can take several weeks to receive a response.

You should receive an acknowledgement that it was received (I see you did), but after that, it's a matter of waiting to hear back. Sending follow-ups only slow down the process I'm afraid.

You're in the system, you'll have their attention, but it will take a little longer.

KenJohn

Call me parnoid but I never rely solely on the airside screen for flight departure information. I found that that is often the last to be updated.

I regularly use mobile internet or lounge internet to check on regular check in-coming flight at outstations and the departure time on flightstats.com and ba.com. I find that I know about delays well before airport staff are aware of them.

paulwelch101

I have a feeling there must be masses of complaints for them to get through at the moment... After 24th May, can you imagine how many people wrote to customer relations, all probably hoping for 261/2004 EU compensation!

I sent a complaint on 27th May regarding my flight on that day and apart from a confirmation email I've not heard a thing. I've also sent a follow up a couple of weeks ago and still nothing!

You would think that when times get busy they would outsource some of this or bring in extra staff to cope with the demand! How hard is it to copy and paste then click the button for 10,000 avios?