maastrichtmouse

Just hopped off the heroically late Heathrow to Brussels. Full ish flight, about 5 rows of ET covered and I would say they made about 6 sales, give or take. They were not proactive about water during our extended holiday in London, though it was given when asked.

GLALAB

Served hot food on LHR-GLA tonight (unlike on GLA-LHR yesterday morning as I posted about earlier).

I have to say despite the disappointing service yesterday, on what would normally be a full breakfast flight, I really enjoyed having the choice of something more substantial. I ordered the bacon roll and although it was 800 avios for that plus a drink, I was happy to pay extra for more than just a packet of crisps like before. Cabin crew were excellent too and served the whole cabin well in time for descent.

Secretsquirrel.return

Good Morning, Afternoon or Evening wherever you are.

This is my 1st post a on this forum, I have been reading with interest and would like to add a view form the crew prospective.

Firstly a little about me (well as much as I can say) I am cabin crew for BA a long service history I will not say if I am ICCM or CC. But let's say that I have see many changes and deal with our valued customers in all situations daily, and speaking for crew we do genuinely value your custom and business.

So let's jump straight in ...... Best of British aka BOB. This have been a disappointment and disaster from the outset. We as crew knew late summer that this was happening and we were told that extensive research and development had gone into the product and delivery. BA rolled out training for crew from October and this consisted of a day in a classroom. The morning session was taken up with M&S videos and information on their brand and history. Also dealing with brand and products that did not change with the market i.e. Woolworths, timex and Nokia and their place in the marked today. The rest of the day was on iPad and pos which I must add was problematic at its best as there were issues with pos systems working. At no point were product and delivery or service standards addressed or tested online.

So on the 11th of January the day the system was rolled out, not only have we had multiple POS systems failing, rejected card payments, printers not working, avois not been excepted. POS systems shutting down, rebooting and crashing. We have had wrong food loaded, no food loaded even out of date food loaded these are not isolated incidents but wide spread across European flights everyday since the roll out in the 11th. We have internal communications saying that we have had SOME teething issues and that it may take some time to iron out. We also use an internal social media which paints a very different story as it comes direct from the staff and crew involved. None of the higher management have commented or sent any messages to their staff in regard to the unfolding problems.

This untested untried service and product failing along with understandable customer reaction, anger and disappointment had pushed the crew to a place we have never been before. All of my flying my career I have been able to at least try to go the extra mile, listen, understand and try to solve any issue a customer has. Simple services like an extra wine, champagne or even just a ear to listen and a cup of tea and biscuit. This has now been removed from us we have no control, we have been told that this product in euro traveler is an asset and belongs to M&S and we are delivering on their behalf. This is the 1st time in my many years of flying that I truly feel helpless and powerless to deliver the standards the BA once held so high.

I genuinely understand all your comments and remarks and agree with many if not most of them. But please be understanding to the crew as I know most of you are . They have had little or no online training, they are expected to use a system that is badly designed (7 steps for one sale ) and works badly when it works at all.

Finally may I ad that I/we (crew) do appreciate your custom, and for what is worth most of us feel BA have taken a step too far with this. And it's a very dangerous step to take.

To clarify a few common points asked so far ;

Water is available from our portable water supply (aircraft tank water) and can be requested by a customer but only delivered after the pay service is finished.

The POS systems are not live all data and details are uploaded to the device (hence why there are a lot of issues with cards)

No one in the aircraft has the authority to give free food or beverages from the Euro traveler bars. As this is separate stock to the Club Europe bars and is the asset of the supplier not BA.

Club Europe customers can buy from the ET bars but only once the service is finished at the ET. The stock in ET can not be used to top up the bars in CE.

Hot food is not on flights with less then 30min service time i.e. CDG, BRU, AMS, LBA, MAN, NCL, ORY, RTM, (service time is from seat belts off to seat belts on )

Hot food orders are to be heated to order (rather then just heating all the hot food after take off ) this is something we are trying to get them to change as sold or not the food is disposed of.

Customers downgrade from CE will have to pay for food and beverages. Customers will be given a pre paid card as compensation (this card CAN NOT be used on board ) !!!!!

CE customers who ask for food or drink to be sent from CE to a ET family member or friend are to be politely told the CE catering is for CE only.

Customers upgraded to CE from ET when we don't have any catering for them can be offered to purchase food from ET after the ET service had finished.

Refunds only given if:

Foreign object in food
Product was spilled spoiled by crew
Sell by date has passed
It'll opened and is found unsuitable for consumption

The water for tea and coffee is poured from our kettles and tend not to be as hot as we want. The coffee is a ground coffee with a filter lid (can be confusing)

BA did state that they were going to over cater by as much as 40% to start with. But this has been hit or miss depending on the route.

Pre paid cards will not be accepted which will be an issue in the summer with school trips and younger children traveling alone.

If customer ordered hot food and changes their mind it may be resold to another customer as long as packaging is not opened . If not resold it must be purchased by the original customer (how they expect this to work I don't know)

As for the question of PCI DDS and manual credit card receipts, well BA do comply to the Reg 9 . But I believe there is a question as to if this adheres to the standards ! I would doubt it as absolute guarantee of access to data is not possible. Although we as crew are very aware of protecting personal information and data.

I'll will hang about and continue reading with interest and try to answer any questions you may have. I have posted this because I decided that our valued customers need a true and honest view of what's happening and I hope to be able to offer you that at least.


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My username is not original I have used in memory of poster somewhere else who was a true hero to many at BA .
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The information posted here are my views and opinion . They do not reflect the official view or opinion or any other individual or company.
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corporate-wage-slave

Welcome Secretsquirrel.return, welcome to Flyertalk and to the BA board. I'm sure I am not alone in being grateful for your candid contribution. I hope we will see plenty more of you, however in the circumstances please don't force yourself to say anything that may get you into trouble.

That said, much of what you have said has confirmed the views of other staff posters, particularly the training (or lack of it) and the hardware difficulties. I very much hope this gets ironed out over the next week, and certainly my experiences suggest that the more experienced the crew, the better it all works out.

One point which I hadn't really considered is how before BoB you were able to provided a cup of tea or extra pack of biscuits to cheer someone up or for some other legitimate customer remediation purpose. I hope that someone, somewhere, takes that point on board and sees if something can be done about it. It wouldn't be difficult or slash BA's profits.

Thank you again.

[This may make more sense in the morning!]

Tobias-UK

Indeed, and I echo your welcome and thanks to Secretsquirrel.return, very informative ^

EDIT: It's back!

Calchas

Let me also add my welcome Secretsquirrel.return.

Flattery will get you nowhere ... except with us of course Please do stick around.

wyvern

Welcome Secretsquirrel.return. Thanks for the insight. Based on the two flights I have seen so far crew are doing their best with a very badly thought out product and sales process. Maybe if there are enough issues with this and enough customers complain/don't buy anything, then management may think again.

michaelr

I was oblivious to the fact that BA started charging for food in Y. In fact BA may not know either yet as I flew HAJ-LHR on 1/11 at 6:30 am. The choice was a cheese or ham & cheese sandwich along with coffee, etc. For free no less.

Looks like I got lucky for freaking once. ^

Calchas

I think that would have been one of the last—return catered from the night before.

sxc

I wonder to what extent the contract was negotiated to be risk-free to BA.

elitetraveler

Interesting question -- Maybe BA even get a guaranteed minimum and some % off the top line - so they make money no matter what. BA is simply enabling M&S to use its cabin crew as commissioned sales staff to distribute their product via BA operated 'retail' locations. Would explain as well the aggressive promotion of M&S as that would be part of the value BA is bringing - tens of millions of marketing impressions for M&S.

Almost like the mobile phone display in CCR

Dambus

Wow. Sounds like staff have been factored into this deal simply as sales assets to be leveraged.

Also, given the degree to which the M&S brand appears to have been invested in this joint enterprise I wonder if the BA twitter complaints might not have more impact on the M&S feed.

Nicksta

The whole campaign certainly doesn't make me feel better about M&S. But, for BA, it is simply a shameful display. When I fly, I want to have some confidence that somewhere there are some smart minds running the show. That doesn't match my experiences lately.

This hasn't been a brand-builder for M&S, though. Honestly, it just gives me M&S fatigue and seems to remind us that they, too, are out of touch with their customers.

Porky Speedpig

Excellent posting by the Squirrel. I can not understand why there was a mass roll out of this - were lessons not learned from the opening of T5? Surely a phased in approach would have been better - my suggestion would have been long sectors first and very short sectors last.
I have a pair of medium length BoBs this week so will watch with interest. I quite fancy a bacon buttie but might have to have a Pret contingency plan based on all I have read.
I also have a few short Domestics coming up so thanks for the tip off that there is no hot food on them.

gengar

Reminds me of the DTV deal with PMCO. But even then, crew could comp DTV as a goodwill gesture when payment systems weren't working, there were severe delays, etc. etc.

BA certainly seems to appreciate the "hands-off" approach here.