Refused Access to Lounge on Paid J - How to deal with this
 

This morning my other half (no meaningful OneWorld status – OneWorld ruby) arrived into LHR on an AA flight from Dallas connecting on to a flight up to Edinburgh. She was in J on the AA TATL flight and will be in domestic on the hop to EDI.

Upon arrival at T5 Galleries South she was greeted by the member of lounge staff who directs people where to go who asked to see my other half's itinerary. Other half was them told she didn't have access to any of the lounges as she hadn't flown in on BA.

My other half has done this trip several times and knows the OneWorld rules well so she asked the staff member to check the rules as she has never previously been refused access. After initially refusing, the staff member did check for access by entering details on the computer at the entrance to Galleries First. Computer apparently said no access was allowed. The other half pointed out that she didn't want to access Galleries First (no entitlement) but wanted to access Galleries Club (based on OneWorld class of service entitlement). Staff member flatly refused and told other half that she had to leave. Other half asked for BA staff to check entitlement at Galleries Club, at which point the staff member said she would check with the premium services manager.

After a short period the member of staff returned and stated that the premium services manager had said she wasn't entitled to access due to not arriving on BA flight. At this point I got a call from my other half. She was confused and didn’t really know what to do.

I advised her to do the following and remained on the phone whilst she did:
1) Ask lounge staff to check OneWorld lounge admittance rules that are usually in a folder at the desks
2) Ask to speak to another member of staff to confirm the decision of the first member of staff (ideally the premium services manager)

In response to the first request, BA staff member told other half that she had already checked the OneWorld lounge admittance rules but that they didn't apply in this situation (no reason given) and that she wouldn’t be checking again.

In response to the subsequent request, BA staff member told other half that premium services manager was too busy dealing with something else and would not be coming to discuss a trivial matter such as this.

BA staffer then went on to tell other half that she was not entitled to access and must leave the lounge complex immediately.

I was on the phone at this point and overhead all these points being discussed. The BA staff member sounded confrontational and was very terse in all her interactions with my other half. I asked my other half if I could speak to the BA staff member. This was relayed and the BA staff member refused and said she was speaking to nobody else about this issue.

At this point the member of staff said to my other half "you are now being a pain in the arse and need to leave. If you don't I will be calling the police". This left me staggered and other half burst into tears on the phone. I told other half to calm down and leave the area. She did this without any fuss.

Throughout the conversation with the BA staff member my other half did not get aggressive and was not confrontational. She was initially confused and got upset (crying, not aggressive) after being threatened with the police by the BA staff member, but at no point did she raise her voice or ask for anything that she wasn't entitled to.

After other half had descended the escalators to Galleries South I then remembered about Galleries North and advised her to go there. Admittance was granted to my other half without the lounge agent batting an eyelid.

How would my fellow FTers deal with this? Is there anything that my other half could have/should have done differently?

How should we approach this issue with BA? Not looking for Avois etc, but do think that something has gone quite seriously wrong here and that BA should do something to address this. Views?

Do what you did here. Put it in an email to BA. This is a recurring theme and there are numerous threads on it. In fact, I think there is a combined one somewhere.

I would definitively write a short note to BA about this. If you give them times and where the lounge agent was sitting they can identify her.

I don't see what else you/your partner could have done in this situation, except perhaps go to Galleries North earlier in the discussion. But that's always easier to say with hindsight, perhaps a lesson for next time. :)

I really sorry to read it, I am not entirely surprised since the training of staff in this area is clearly lame (not all the time, but in this case your companion was the victim).

She did the right thing, there was nothing more you could do. (Apart, perhaps, having her own copy of the oneworld website page and asking where it is wrong). If she arrived the same day from an AA flight in J and was then connecting into EDI on BA she should have got Galleries Club access, provided she could show her AA boarding pass. As you rightly say, this is the oneworld rule book here. Was this 2 tickets? That may have been the trouble. Luckily she got into Galleries North.

I would write a stiff letter of complaint in to BAEC, also AA as well. And I'd copy in Nicci here too. If they stopped rotating staff in the lounges this regretable and ongoing process failure would stop in a week. Give names, dates and precise times, so the relevant staff can be educated.

Thanks for the replies.

It was a single ticket, on AA stock with flight from LHR to EDI on BA ticket number. She had boarding pass (I pre-empted that she might have problems and told her to keep this) and a printed itinerary.

Why did you think ahead of time that she might have problems?

Definitely complain. It's one thing for the lounge agent not to know the rules, quite another for the "premium service manager" not to know.

It's not good enough.

It's a recurring problem. Agents get moved around so much that they don't work in the lounge much and the managers are presumably equally poorly trained.

It's not like BA doesn't know. Their paid lurker sees it on here every week yet they choose, yes choose, to do nothing. Says it all really.��

As others have said you need to write to BA about this. An email to Frank van der Post (BA's head of customer experience) is probably also a good idea as this falls fairly squarely under his remit and complaints sent to his office seem to get a better treatment. As others have said if BA are going to rotate thousands of staff around T5 (I do see the advantages) then the managers need to really know their stuff and be able to jump in when mistakes are made. Not that this excuses the lounge agent's attitude though which sounds rude bordering on aggressive.
Write in, give it two weeks, if you haven't heard anything by then ring.

I'd suggest CCing to Nicci as well however we've been CCing her in on cases like this for at least two years and nothing has changed. Not that I blame her personally but BA as a whole seem unwilling to make the changes here.

It's a sad day when we need to print off "guide notes" to produce to the lounge staff but that's the way it's heading unfortunately.

if you've got the name of the dragon who clearly didn't follow the rules then tell BA

complain to BA using this:
http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/5...sengersac3.jpg

let us know how you get on

For what purpose? So they can put him/her on the massive incompetents/not trained list? And like that is effective for anyone....:td:

So they can be trained to do their job properly and taught to treat customers with the respect they deserve! It is unforgivable that this woman was made to cry and threatened with the police simply for asking for lounge access that she was entitled to. Do you really think it should just be ignored...!? :confused:

You're confused? Either they have retrained dozens, nay scores in the past and then don't have them working in the lounges or they just ignore it. Agree it's totally unacceptable but equally it's predictable. A complaint is a waste of energy.:td: