TheMan123

I sympathise about the broken seats.. it’s happened to me before and can be quite frustrating however…

why are you getting mad at the SCCM on the first leg of your journey? Cabin crew are there for your comfort and safety ONBOARD. They don’t have the a lot of power to affect any flights you can take in the future? There’s a few emails they can send or they can put a word in to the ground staff when they land but that’s it. Do you 100% know that they didn’t do any of these? I think it’s rather unfair to make certain accusations when you don’t exactly know what efforts they made?

I hope you get compensated appropriately! Some avios and a little more hopefully!

LothianLad

I didn't get mad at anyone as it's not my style, but what frustrates - as pointed out - is that I was advised that she would see what she could do to resolve the issue at least for the next sector (her words, not mine) but never came back to me and clearly didn't communicate with the new crew - as confirmed with the new SCCM - so in view of that you're left to assume she did nothing at all. It's not good customer service, not even close. The frustration increases when the new SCCM was completely disinterested, bordering on rude.

Having flown Emirates Business to Australia previously, the whole experience is night and day compared to BA both in terms of quality of cabin and customer service, which was hugely disappointing.

TheMan123

What did you want her to come back and say? You were still on the flight and she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to speak to anyone on the ground in SIN?
Also, how likely is it that the first SCCM and second SCCM bumped in to each other in SIN? Especially since one crew is arriving and one is departing. They rarely ever see each other on turnarounds.Perhaps she did in fact have a word with the ground teams, but since it was a full flight unfortunately there was nothing to be done.

LothianLad

I'm only going by what she said she would do and expecting to be further advised one way or the other, after all I have no knowledge of the processes involved during crew changes, I'm just a paying customer.

She did ask what my preference for the next flight would be, I said return to the seat I paid for (broken tray or not), or remain in the seat I was moved to across the aisle from my wife. I didn't want to be moved to the other side of the aircraft and another row back. She agreed that wasn't a good outcome. Whatever she did or didn't do from then on is pure guesswork as I never saw her again.

That's poor customer service whichever way you look at it.

Misco60

Most people would quite reasonably assume that, when there is a change of crew, there is some kind of brief handover, as there is in almost every other service industry.

There's far too much victim-blaming in this thread, and a refusal to accept that this was a wholly avoidable failure in customer service.

OP: Apply immediately for a refund of your seat reservation fee. That is an entitlement, and BA will not refuse it. Then send a separate, succinct complaint and hope for some kind of service recovery gesture.

ACYYZ/SD

To be fair, the seat was not fully operative and they appeared to proactively protect you in a fully functioning seat. They very often will give those seats to staff members as revenue Customers come first. If however, you were okay with the faulty table, then swapping seats to your original accommodation should not have been a problem. Whatever the scenario is, communication is the key.

TheJayHatch

The staffer sitting in the seat is not unusual. I flew to JFK recently and 1E was broken (the new First suite controls seem very cheap and prone to malfunction…) and so was swapped with a staffer sitting in 2F. It is frustrating though not to be able to sit beside your travelling companion, especially on such a long flight. But at least they didn’t have to put you down a class!

LothianLad

A very quick response from BA.

30k Avios (15k each) credited to our accounts, and a request to complete the seat booking refund form (I have explained I want both fees refunded, not just mine). So I've done it this morning.

No explanation of what has caused all of this.

The reply seemed to be a collection of cut and paste responses from Nagma, but credit for the quick turnaround.

Sigwx

Glad to hear you’ve had some contact and service recovery already. Hopefully the seat refund won’t be far behind.

For what it is worth I’ve looked up that aircraft and there are actually 3 seats in J not functioning correctly, and 24F does indeed have a table listed as the element which appears to be broken. It is listed in the tech log as such.

As crews we don’t perform face to face handovers, many customs and immigration authorities around the world expressly forbid it and ensure we are segregated. In other states such as Singapore we do enter a common transit area but we are solely focused on getting to immigration and through customs to our transport when we arrive, we don’t faff and hang about as we’ve got zero idea where the oncoming crew are. Most likely they are still on the road towards the airport. There are however hand over sheets crews fill in, but even still if it is in the tech log as broken, it means it is broken and not yet cleared back into revenue service. Some seats may also be listed as ‘Do Not Occupy’ in which case absolutely no one is permitted to use them.

Mixbury

I understand being bumped from a reserved seat is always frustrating, especially for the infrequent traveller, but could you not have asked 23E then 24F to swap with your wife, then you would actually have been sitting together? Most pax in that situation would have swapped for 22K. As you have to disembarque at SIN maintaining the same seat on both sectors isn't a significant benefit. Not sure what you hoped the crew members would do on a full flight while preparing for departure with no free seats, 21K wasn't going anywhere. I suspect the core of your frustration is driven by indignation someone else got your reserved seat, but the odds are the reason given is true, and if you had asked and accepted the broken tray table I'm sure you could have had 23K. I got moved from 2K to 1E, a seat I would never book, on my last JFK-LHR which was annoying, but it turned out to be a broken tray table and I only wanted to sleep and I got it back. Embarrassingly 1E was one half of a couple who had been bumped back to Club so everyone was happy.

Glad to hear you got swift compensation, hopefully that has helped.

DoctorCopper

From that comment, I wouldn’t be so certain that ‘everyone was happy’.

Doc Copper

FamilyOf6

I'm glad the OP got reasonable recompense for their experience.

if ive picked the right flight, this frame was delivered less than 2.5 years ago. Is there a reliability issue with the CS cabins or is it a reduced compliment of engineering staff to fix these issues in a timely manner causing the issues?

(Disclosure: I ask as a contact of someone who was working in maintenence prior to the pandemic lay-offs and is now bored out of his mind watching 'homes under the hammer!')

D1L

Both of the above...

Mixbury

I assume they were not revenue pax give one was bumped, they certainly seemed very happy they got to retain 1E&F.