British Airways Consumer Reviews - Page 5

My one and only experience with them sucked. I went on a trip to Dusseldorf in February with 4 friends, one of who was a BA employee, and a friend of a friend. It was he that booked this 3-day trip. On the third day, my four friends left for the airport before me having not given me any flight details. I followed on the next train and discovered I had missed my flight by 15 minutes.

I was then told I had to pay a further 250 euros to get home! OK fine, I understand the policy about last minute bookings but had the BA employee I was travelling with bothered to give me my return flight details, I would not have missed my flight. I was already stressed and amazed that 4 "friends" would abandon me in a foreign country. What if didn't have a card on me, how would I have got home? Would they have cared?

On my return I contacted Customer Relations, who were quite understanding and forwarded my claim to BA Refunds. BA Refunds however, just completely ignored me. Eventually I got a reply which said the flight was not refundable because I hadn't missed it! My point was that I shouldn't have had to pay for it the first place, to which they said it was not their problem. I then relayed this back to Customer Relations, who I have been told, do have the authority to pay a "goodwill gesture" but after two weeks now, I have still had no reply. The long and the short of it is this:

1. The BA employee I was with should not have left me in a foreign country to find my way home.

2. BA are taking the mickey charging me 250 euros for a single flight back to Heathrow, a completely unnecessary charge in my eyes.

3. Customer Relations and the Refunds department are not worth the time of day.

They absolutely have no time for us, the customers. You are left with the feeling they hope after time you will just go away. Well I won't!! Hence I will post this tale on every forum I can find. My case reference with customer relations is **.

LONDON -- Tried to deal with BA today to get an upgrade from Economy to Economy Plus using my air miles to make my long haul flights bearable. I have 4 times the BA air miles I need to do my upgrade but the staff say I cannot upgrade my seats because of their latest policy. So basically since the credit crunch came in and BA need more money the miles can't be used. You instead need to spend money even though you have the air miles to upgrade. It means the supposedly valuable air miles are worth **.

Come on people not many people are flying it's January for goodness sakes and you want to make things so much worse for us? Come on, get with the real World. People are hurting financially and the mockery, abuse and ridicule I faced today trying to use air miles stung. It really was unacceptable customer service. I dearly hope the nasty people I spoke to today reap what they have sowed.

I was in a good mood and polite when I called and got fobbed off and moved around on the phone where nobody was interested in helping me or in speaking to me like a human being. The whole experience was depressing and miserable. I was crying when my boyfriend got back to our home and so he has also vowed not to fly BA again. Despite my outstanding 'executive' miles I won't fly BA again. I will also tell everyone I know and meet not to fly them and about my experience.

Flew United at Christmas (yep, in economy for 28 hours in total) and had a good experience with them. Why?Their staff are nice to customers! They are human beings and just decent. I am British so it's not as though I am anti BA for nationality reasons. What a let down and con. Bernie Madoff has nothing on BA. They need to sort their customer service training out and to just value their customers. I always fly BA but not after today, no more. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

KEARNEYSVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA -- While in Ecuador I had a medical emergency necessitating a change to my ticket. I called BA and they said they would CONSIDER it, only after I sent them a letter from the HOSPITAL. I was under a doctor's care, require surgery, and want to return to the US for hospitalization, but they would not accept that. Further, they said that Section 14.1 of Executive Club Terms and Conditions, available online, states that no travel can be changed once the trip has begun.

I have been a member since 1997 or earlier, and NEVER in the past 10 years have I received any notice of changes to Terms and Conditions of award travel. And I have my original welcome packet which does not have this statement. In fact, I was told the change occurred June of 2008. Publishing your Terms and Conditions online does not constitute legal notification - even an email of the changes would have been acceptable, but just obscurely posting them to a website does NOT.

And the e-ticket I received, which IS a binding contract, does not reference the Terms and Conditions of Executive Club award travel. In fact, there is a clause that says "where applicable, if you wish to change the date or time of your flight, the cost of doing so will generally be lower on ba.com." But when you go to ba.com, it does not allow you to make any changes.

BA is unlawfully denying me the right to change my ticket (with all applicable change fees, of course), and I intend to hold them accountable for any adverse action that results from my not being able to return to the US for life-threatening medical treatment. Two letters to their Board of Directors describing the severity of the situation have gone unnoticed. I am having to book a flight on another, and much more accommodating, airline.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON -- I had very bad experience with British Airways service as a whole within a year (2008). Not sure if this is happened to others and had suffered a lot. Flight Cancelled in March 2008 for parents who are senior aged. BA forced us to take their alternate flight (indirectly by giving other options which is not suitable to our journey) but we spend about $2500 extra because of flight cancellation. BA is not providing the compensation.

Another flight which I booked to travel in Nov. 14 has been cancelled. The alternative flight that BA gives me will require me to take off one day from my work in which case I will loose one day salary. Also the waiting time at London airport (for connecting flight) requires more waiting time. But British Airways is not providing me the compensation. Alternatively I asked for different route to the nearest destination airport and last week they provided me with confirmed email itinerary.

However this week, they came back and saying they cancelled that alternate booking with a stupid reason that their rules and regulation does allow. It seems to be that BA is not professional in their system and rules. I haven't seen any customer service center of an organization saying that one of their customer service representative is not right. It is very shame on them.

The third flight which on the return journey flight from London to Seattle on Dec'07 is rescheduled on the same day but 30 min late. This delay is acceptable as this will not affect my return journey except 30 min late. So I am okay with this. However this counts for the British Airways service review as to know how frequently BA fligths are cancelled/rescheduled.

There is no phone number for customer relationship service. You need to email them or fax them, but you wait at least 30 to 45 days to get a response from real person in BA [not autoresponse]. There is 1-800-airways number but they will ask you to contact customer relationship. So if you are in emergency and need to get compensated soon, then BA is not suitable to you.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- British Airways is horrible. I helped my two disabled parents book their seats online. I even spoke to a representative while doing this. We looked at the online diagram to choose the seats and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Seats IJK in row 40 illustrated that there was no seats in front of them. The person who had "helped" us even said he could lie down on the floor seeing that the flight attendant and the person next to them didn't mind.

My father has undergone 3 back surgeries and can't sit for more than 3 hours without there being an extreme pain. They decided to fly on British airways just because of this row. The person on the phone said that these seats offer more room than premiere economy so we decided not to take the upgrade. We even put my father against the window so that he could lean against the airplane wall in order to sleep.

They both got onto the plane and called me and found out that the seats were horrible. They were no different than any other seat. My father is now on a flight from LAX to Egypt with the worst seat that he could have gotten. He is 70 years old. When I told British Airways of this they said that there is nothing that they could do, that these are the seats and that the web page diagram is wrong. They chose to do nothing for him. They both explained what the situation was, I was on the phone British Airways explaining the situation and NOTHING.

The second person I was on the phone with was surprised as well and said that there should not be anyone in front of them. When asked what can be done, the reply was, "NOTHING". I can't do anything for them. I swear to you that British Airways screwed my parents and screwed them hard. Their flight was yesterday and I am seriously hoping to get in touch with someone to see what they are going to do. If there are any lawyers out there, I would love to sue them for anything and everything for doing this to them. Please let me know if there is anything that anyone knows that can be done.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- I would like to know if there are other people out there that have had the same terrible experience with the British Airways Executive Club miles program. According to britishairways.com policy, it allows for online time and date changes free of charge to reservations booked with BA miles. However the .britishairways.com Manage Your Booking pages displays an error message when you attempt to make changes and directs you to contact an executive club agent. I had three reservations and experienced this problem with each one.

After contacting the executive club I was told that any change to a booking made with one of their agents would incur a fee of $70.00 per person. I indicated that I was unable to make time and date changes online which are free of charge due to a problem with their website. Initially they stated that I was wrong and that all changes incur a fee even those made online, but when I directed them to read their policy on the British airways website, they stated that it really did not matter and that they would have to charge a fee of $70 per person.

I was given a phone number to contact their web support to see if they could correct the error and help me regain access to the Manage my booking page. After calling web support I was told that British airways web support does not provide any support to individuals who purchase their ticket with BA miles. Therefore, because that I cannot make time and date changes on my own and I will need to ask the executive club do that, I am compelled to cancel my reservation, pay a fee and lose all the 170,000 miles I have available.

I have contacted Chase, the credit card associated with British Airways miles program and informed them that although I value and respect them as a company I will not be using their credit card due to the unfair business practices of British Airways Miles Program. I hope that Chase will take look at the partnership they have with British Airways because my 170,000 miles translate into 170,000 dollars in expenditures on the credit card.

On March 27 I had the great misfortune of being the 3rd flight to arrive at T5 from Johannesburg on BA #56. With all the great fanfare at the departure gate in Joberg, I.e champagne for all, quartet of live music etc. To date 3 weeks later, I have still not received my luggage. To call BA is a total waste of time, as they do not pick up the phones at all. Emailing, I got an answer from the manager in Tel Aviv, that he will forward my email to customer service. Of course, I never heard from them.

I flew on a round the world, very expensive ticket in first and business class. No distinction was made whatsoever. Was made by them. You might as well have been seated in their toilet, and would probably have gotten better service! In my opinion, BA has no will, or care to return lost luggage to their rightful owners.They will not help anyone unlucky enough to have flown them. Mind you, I am an emerald member, the top tier on One world, which is their alliance.

The emotional distress equals or is greater than temporary loss of baggage. No compensation, words of encouragement, or a offer of help by the stuck up people in BA is being offered. There is simply no one to talk to there. It is 3 weeks and no end in sight to my, or anyone else's plight. In the age of Fedex, DHL, TNT and others where you can get packages sent and received anywhere in this small world in 24 Hrs. you would think they would make the slightest effort to return the bags. NO, ALL THIS VENTING DOESN'T MAKE ME FEEL ANY BETTER, It just makes me more upset.

I do hope that many people will sue their asses off for the discomforted and mishandling of the situation. I will join any class action suit against BA and hope the thousands of other passengers will do so as well. They (BA) don't deserve to be called an airline! If there is anyone who could help out in this dire situation, it would be greatly appreciated.

STOCKHOLM -- I flew from Canada direct flight to Sweden as a student on August on a 1 year open ticket. At the time of booking the ticket they informed me that they only have return flights for up to 6 months after the booking date and that I would have to call them again to change the flight which I thought was entirely reasonable. In fact up to departure I was able to change my flight details online.

Once I left Canada the problems began. I had updated my address on their system to the one where I would be staying in Stockholm, big mistake! After doing that I was no longer able to make changes to the flight at all and worse yet, the online system won't let me change my address details back to my Canadian information. On top of this the assistance you get from customer service over email is pathetic. They never do anything to answer your question and tell you to contact the service centre in your area.

Do they realize that you're not able to call their Swedish service center over mobile phone for some stupid reason? What kind of company would block mobile phones from their service centers!! I sent a fax to them updating my details back to the Canadian ones and it's been a week and still no change. On top of this, I am not able to adjust my return left of my flight to Canada to another date from the one that was booked when I departed. The idiot customer service gives me a US based long distance number (read, not the toll free one) to call to change my flight details and politely informs me that there might be additional charges for changing my flight.

The people at British airways are idiots and I would be quite interested in filing a claim against them in court for all the time and stress they have caused me. In two months of back and forth email, nothing has changed or been fixed. I'm a student, I have to spend time on my studies, I don't have time to ** around with an airline.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS -- Buyer beware! British Airways is now officially in the business of extorting money from unsuspecting travelers. I have been a British Airways Executive club member for over 5 years now and it (used to be!) was my carrier of choice - NOT ANYMORE!

My wife and kids are traveling to India - BOS-CCU via Heathrow along with my sister in law. They had no problem boarding a BA flight from BOSTON to LHR and LHR to CCU. On return travel, the incompetent ground staff at CCU barred them boarding the flight demanding to see their transit visa for UK!

Huh!? Transit visa to sit in terminal 4 at LHR for 6 hours with no need to go through immigration? How come this was not needed when traveling to India? At any rate, they did not get on their scheduled flight and after a herculean effort and some very helpful individuals at the British High Commission in CCU, they procured the transit visas at the cost of approx $100 each.

Now comes the fun part. BA "obliged" us with seats on the next flight out after a lot of complaining when the seats were clearly available, and now want $200 per ticket as the ticket was changed. No amount of speaking to any of the reps, either in India or in USA yielded any results and all I got was some extremely rude customer reps - Michelle, Ruthie, Alan and finally Mrs. ** from the Executive club service. All I heard from them was that the passenger is responsible for the travel documentation. Really!? Then why did their staff in Boston not ask for the transit visa prior to boarding the out bound flight?

I am so disgusted that I cannot even think straight. Needless to say that I am canceling my Executive club membership as well as returning the British Airways VISA card I have. My suggestion to any one wanting to travel by BA is to think again and reconsider some other carrier. As there are only a couple of carriers to Calcutta, I am sure I will take the other one and only if caught between a rock and a hard place will I even consider stepping foot into this extortionist organization. I am seriously considering taking this matter to the authorities that regulate airline industry.