Kudos for BA Harare
 

As I slither ever closer to OW (and away from SAA and *A), I am taking the first steps towards doing a couple of Circle Indian Ocean trips this year. Naturally Zimbabwe offers the best fares from where I sit so I enquired whether BA locally would compile the bookings for issuance in Harare but was told to contact them directly. After some trouble getting through on the phone and then getting my mails bounced back, this morning I finally got a working mail address and successfully mailed them the details for both trips.

In exactly 2 and a half hours I got the quotes with all my questions answered! I know others have been complimentary but I have to say I'm seriously impressed. :-:

BTW: Don't you think a sticky for e-mail addresses (and even contact names) of likely issuers of OWE's would be a terrific service on FT?

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Some FT'ers hold that public posting of email addresses might subject the recipients to spam. (That's not necessarily my opinion, but it's a consideration.)

I think using FTs private message functionality is a much better way of handling this. I've passed on contact information for Istanbul, for example, several times.

Also it's probably worth considering that many airline folk lurk here and, like with the Mileage Run board, if a too-good-to-be-true deal surfaces, blethering it about, or putting email addresses for some poor agent in Yenevelt out on the web, might have the opposite effect to the desired one.

Fully agree here. Contacting the right office/person etc. is not too big of an issue for someone who has figured out to build the ITN in the first place. If the airlines wanted this information to be public, they'd publish it on their websites...

I would be dismayed if someone published my email address on the internet without asking me first...

Points noted and taken. I did consider them beforehand - that's why I didn't just "blether about" the Harare one right away. ;)

But just a generic e-mail address for each office - you know, the info@... type? I mean most businesses publish that information and BA must certainly be equipped to cope with spam given they must have thousands of e-mail addresses.

And when you're dealing with a country that doesn't have the most reliable telephone service (not necessarily commenting on Zim here) and long-distance calls are very expensive, it really is more efficient. God help anyone who does try to get their ticket issued in Djibouti! :p (If that were possible.)