Appalling check-in service at FAO
 

The morning of our departure from FAO to LHR, we received emails from BA inviting us to upgrade to CE at check-in.
When we asked at the check-in the grim faced assistant snarled "no upgrades",.
We showed the BA email, she called over a colleague whom she started to berate in Portuguese, jabbing a finger at the computer, the colleague shrugged her shoulders and our charming assistant once again snarled what seemed to be the extent of her English, "no upgrades"
After having our boarding cards thrust at us, I mentioned that we had booked Special Assistance wheelchair. We had to show her the WCHS endorsement on the boarding pass she had just given us.
With bad grace she pointed to a seating area behind the check in muttered "wait there" and left us to negotiate and remove the retractable barriers.
On boarding the aircraft, it was quite a surprise to find that of the 28 CE seats only 6 were taken.
I appreciate that the ground staff at FAO are not BA employees, they are acting for and on behalf of BA and would seem in dire need of some retraining in customer service.

Mallorca is pretty dire as well. EasyJet however are charming.

I complained to BA given it took over an hour to check in for a Club Europe flight. Got me precisely nowhere!

you were offered a POUG, this is online only. Airport upgrades AUPs are different and have a different criteria

It's true that the BA employees in FAO are outsourced and not BA employees. EasyJet does not only fly to London from PMI; they have flights to various destinations in the UK, plus many European destinations so PMI is a focus city for them so it makes sense to hire their own employees and take care of the airport experience for their own flights. For BA PMI is a simple outstation.

Message reads :-
"Thank you for flying with British Airways. We may have space on your flight to purchase a cabin upgrade today. If interested, please contact us a check-in."

How does that fit into your alphabetical system? Perhaps it is WADFM (We are desperate for money)

I fly BA to Faro (and back) roughly once a month and, but for a slight interruption earlier this year when all flights were cancelled, have done so for about 15 years. I have never had any problems with the ground staff there.

Jealous

They didn’t have space. I don’t get what was so appalling about that? That she said “no upgrades” instead of “I’m sorry sir, we don’t have any upgrades available”?

The message online says “may”, it does not say for sure whether there is space or not.

I would be disappointed, but not appalled.

Believe OP was appalled at her behaviour, especially when he passed through the CE cabin, only 6 out of 28 seats were occupied. So surely upgrade must have been available - perhaps this dovetails into OP’s claim that she needed training on how to process them at checkin.

From my experience at outstations upgrades are handled by the ticketing desk, not the check-in agents. Check-in agents often have no idea as they're coming from a large pool of employees trained to check pax in, not necessarily aware of BA's edge cases.

Or maybe FAO agent understood you were asking for a free upgrade?

Wouldn't think so. As OP said the agent was showed the "ask for paid upgrade at checkin" email.

My wife can sometimes make a mountain out of a molehill over an ''awful'' experience I actually found to be quite acceptable. :D

It always makes me smile when Ba is defended only this way. If you outsource you still set and manage the service level.

Sounds like FAO isn't doing covid boarding either and is another training opportunity of the ground handler.

FAO staff have been following boarding procedures when I have flown recently. Though they board special assistance passengers first, which I understood OP’s group to have received so should have boarded before others. Maybe that’s why the CE cabin was still fairly empty?