DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
I'm currently sitting at a hotel on Heathrow airport waiting to catch a flight at 11pm tonight, one which I should have been on last night.
Story goes that my original flight itinerary was to catch a connecting flight from Glasgow to Heathrow and then Heathrow to Cape Town - my plans changed during the trip and I was going to be in the Oxford area on my return date so I decided to change the flight and cancel the Glasgow leg and just hop on at Heathrow. Firstly you cannot do this via e-mail or live chat, you have to phone them which I did.
Monday 29th I made the first call to do the change, was put on hold for about 20 minutes while the woman tried to figure out what she needed to do and how much they were going to charge me for the change. Eventually she comes back and says it'll cost me 109 pounds and I'm ok cool, that sucks but let's do it.
Wednesday comes by and I my card hasn't been charged nor have I received any confirmation that the flight is changed (I'm due to fly Sunday), my booking is still the same. I call up again to check what's going on, I'm told it's waiting to be sent to the right department but it normally takes about 3-4 days (ok what, but anyway). This is fine as I still have time.
Friday comes by. Nothing. I phone again, this time I'm told don't worry my change has been put into the priority queue and it will probably be processed that day or latest on Saturday morning. I'm starting to get nervous now as my trust in their ability is dwindling.
Sunday rolls by, day of the flight. I still haven't got confirmation of the change so I decide I'm done phoning them and decide to just go to the airport early before my connecting flight was even due and just go to the BA desk at Heatrow and talk to a human there. I Google'd earlier which incorrectly informed me that there was a BA desk at Terminal 5, but no worries I asked around and a lady at the check-in counter is able to help me. I explain the whole story again (by this time I've memorised all the flight details). She looks up on the system and is like okay no that's fine, she can just do the change there and issues me my boarding pass with no additional cost involved. By now I'm relieved as I've got my boarding pass and didn't haven't pay anything extra.
I still have like 7 hours to kill at the airport so I just booked in to one of the lounges there as it's way better than hanging around in the terminal.
Boarding time arrives, I try scan my boarding pass and it won't let me go through the gates, a lady at the boarding gate just lets me through and asks me to just wait for a bit while she looks what's going on. Everyone walks past and boards, last call is announced and I'm still sitting there like a kippie. Eventually everyone has boarded and they realise there are no seats left on the plane. Turns out they just cancelled my ticket due to the Glasgow leg still being on the booking. I had to try really hard to remain calm but I'm pretty sure the could see how the steam was coming out my ears at the point. I had done literally everything humanly possible to change my booking and they still managed to bugger it up. The crew at the gates were really nice though and they were just doing their jobs, the one guy was quite frank about how bad he thought the call center was.
I now have to go all the way back on the transit back to arrivals to the flight connections desk so they can try rebook me for the next available flight. I spend another 30 - 45 minutes there waiting for them waiting for other people on the phone. Good thing is they can see all the references to the calls I made on the booking, so they know they've screwed the pooch royally here. They are able to book me for the next available flight and had to put me up in the Sofitel hotel which is luckily situated just outside the terminal. I'm extremely glad I hadn't checked in any luggage as that would have been another PITA.
So they managed to do the bare minimum to rectify the situation, nothing more than a rebooked flight and accommodation. Didn't even give me lounge access, a seat upgrade or any compensation for my day wasted at the airport. Their website has a claims page which I'm going to definitely use but if their department which handles flight changes isn't able to perform one simple task I'm doubtful a department which give you money back would be any better. Needless to say I will be avoiding BA like the plague on any future flights, useless bunch that Errol.
That was my rant, I had to just vent and kill time while sitting at the hotel coffee bar. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
TL;DR: try to avoid flying BA, and if you are in the situation where you need to change something good luck and don't just assume the check-in counter did their job properly.
Story goes that my original flight itinerary was to catch a connecting flight from Glasgow to Heathrow and then Heathrow to Cape Town - my plans changed during the trip and I was going to be in the Oxford area on my return date so I decided to change the flight and cancel the Glasgow leg and just hop on at Heathrow. Firstly you cannot do this via e-mail or live chat, you have to phone them which I did.
Monday 29th I made the first call to do the change, was put on hold for about 20 minutes while the woman tried to figure out what she needed to do and how much they were going to charge me for the change. Eventually she comes back and says it'll cost me 109 pounds and I'm ok cool, that sucks but let's do it.
Wednesday comes by and I my card hasn't been charged nor have I received any confirmation that the flight is changed (I'm due to fly Sunday), my booking is still the same. I call up again to check what's going on, I'm told it's waiting to be sent to the right department but it normally takes about 3-4 days (ok what, but anyway). This is fine as I still have time.
Friday comes by. Nothing. I phone again, this time I'm told don't worry my change has been put into the priority queue and it will probably be processed that day or latest on Saturday morning. I'm starting to get nervous now as my trust in their ability is dwindling.
Sunday rolls by, day of the flight. I still haven't got confirmation of the change so I decide I'm done phoning them and decide to just go to the airport early before my connecting flight was even due and just go to the BA desk at Heatrow and talk to a human there. I Google'd earlier which incorrectly informed me that there was a BA desk at Terminal 5, but no worries I asked around and a lady at the check-in counter is able to help me. I explain the whole story again (by this time I've memorised all the flight details). She looks up on the system and is like okay no that's fine, she can just do the change there and issues me my boarding pass with no additional cost involved. By now I'm relieved as I've got my boarding pass and didn't haven't pay anything extra.
I still have like 7 hours to kill at the airport so I just booked in to one of the lounges there as it's way better than hanging around in the terminal.
Boarding time arrives, I try scan my boarding pass and it won't let me go through the gates, a lady at the boarding gate just lets me through and asks me to just wait for a bit while she looks what's going on. Everyone walks past and boards, last call is announced and I'm still sitting there like a kippie. Eventually everyone has boarded and they realise there are no seats left on the plane. Turns out they just cancelled my ticket due to the Glasgow leg still being on the booking. I had to try really hard to remain calm but I'm pretty sure the could see how the steam was coming out my ears at the point. I had done literally everything humanly possible to change my booking and they still managed to bugger it up. The crew at the gates were really nice though and they were just doing their jobs, the one guy was quite frank about how bad he thought the call center was.
I now have to go all the way back on the transit back to arrivals to the flight connections desk so they can try rebook me for the next available flight. I spend another 30 - 45 minutes there waiting for them waiting for other people on the phone. Good thing is they can see all the references to the calls I made on the booking, so they know they've screwed the pooch royally here. They are able to book me for the next available flight and had to put me up in the Sofitel hotel which is luckily situated just outside the terminal. I'm extremely glad I hadn't checked in any luggage as that would have been another PITA.
So they managed to do the bare minimum to rectify the situation, nothing more than a rebooked flight and accommodation. Didn't even give me lounge access, a seat upgrade or any compensation for my day wasted at the airport. Their website has a claims page which I'm going to definitely use but if their department which handles flight changes isn't able to perform one simple task I'm doubtful a department which give you money back would be any better. Needless to say I will be avoiding BA like the plague on any future flights, useless bunch that Errol.
That was my rant, I had to just vent and kill time while sitting at the hotel coffee bar. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
TL;DR: try to avoid flying BA, and if you are in the situation where you need to change something good luck and don't just assume the check-in counter did their job properly.
