To expect more from BA?

[NorthLondonGirl]

I recently flew with BA and unfortunately our luggage didn't arrive. The ground staff informed us that it would arrive the following evening (30hours later). Not a huge issue for my husband and I but we were also travelling with our two young children (both under 2 years old) which did make it rather inconvenient as there is a certain amount of 'stuff' that they need. We were staying at a villa so had use of a washing machine but no hotel to call upon for loan of amenities.

At the airport we were told that we were staying outside of their courier delivery area by around 5km. We were also told that as our bags new arrival time was Sunday evening it wouldn't be operating anyway. So we naturally decided to make the 110km round trip to collect the bag ourselves.

We were staying fairly remotely so on arrival had to travel quite some distance to three different shops to buy a few essentials to see us through. £111 worth of toiletries and more suitable clothes in total for 4 people which I think isn't excessive. With two over tired children it wasn't a huge amount of fun.

BA compensated us for our essential items but will not cover the 45€ fuel cost. They say that where they are unable to deliver delayed bags they will compensate travel costs but as the airport we flew to does in fact have a courier service that we are not eligible for this. But we were told that we were outside of the catchment? BA have fobbed me off and say that their decision is final, will not change and they will not communicate further. AIBU to be pissed off?

Saying you're 5km outside a designated area you didn't know about, when it's their failure in the first place, sounds pretty poor to me.

And paying for the stuff, but not the fuel you had to use to buy the stuff, is incredibly petty hmm

How have you been communicating with them?

Can you claim on your travel insurance and then they can deal with reclaiming the money from BA?

(too many brackets! )

"...to expect more from BA...."
Pahahahaha 🤣

Sorry, you might have missed the memo where BA decided their new business model is to be more shit than every other airline combined. They have seriously gone downhill and are only just scraping by on the good will earned from their previous decades of superior service. They've got about 3 years left before they will be viewed universally as on a par with RyanAir.

YANBU! They were unable to deliver because, you were told, you were outside of their delivery area. I would be v. hacked off. Twitter can be useful for getting a response when all else fails.

Travel insurance . We spent and got back £2000 when our bags were lost by ba for 5 days. They wouldn’t cover phone calls but gave a daily cash some on a usd card.

Yeah, what imaginarycat said. I have used BA like forever and have a long long haul early next year... for some reason I decided to look at trustpilot. Oh dear. Flying SingaporeAir now. They have really really nosedived (pun intended). Indeed the Ryanair of international airlines.

Have a look at trustpilot. Sadly I don't see them suddenly rediscovering their customer service.

We were surprised how poor BA were when we flew with them. Living off their past reputation me thinks

Go public. Write to one of the consumer problem pages - The Telegraph has a travel one. They may fight your corner.

In the meantime, I fear ImaginaryCat is right.

LOL

My luggage missed a connecting flight and didn’t land with me in San Francisco a couple of years back.

It took them 3 days to get it back to me. That wasn’t even the worst part. They constantly lied about when it would arrive meaning I spent 3 days hanging about the villa for my luggage which they kept telling me would be there in X hours.

If they’d at least been in honest I could have gone out and enjoyed myself. Instead I spent 3 days hanging about in doors waiting for a suitcase after listening to their lies.

And their social media customer service was absolutely horrendous too.

Write to the "DOn't put up with this" column by the travel doctor at the Saturday Times - they deal with this sort of issue all the time and it is curious how often "final" decisions are reversed.

Unfortunately because too many people like self-flagellation and fly with Ryanair, BA changed their service model, at least on short-haul.

A few tweets or the Saturday times as suggested (or even Watchdog) might get some sense, but don't hold your breath.

Of course, be prepared for less chance of compensation when flights go wrong, once the dust from Brexit settles down.

They should have sent your bag in a taxi, wtaf?
BA have been shit for easily 20 years

I fly BA quite a lot and agree the service is poor now. A few months ago I was booted off a early flight despite having silver status and they offered me the next flight which would have got me to my destination for 4pm and I had a early flight home the next day. Pointless.

I wouldn't put it past them not to pay. I'd claim off your travel insurance if you can. Or message them on Twitter - They never really like that...

Quite a few of my friends work for BA. At Heathrow. For 30 years. Being treated like shit.

There is a reason they are known as Bloody Awful around here. Truly a fucking miserable ordeal flying with them.

Well...one small voice in their defence here.

Last month we flew back from Europe to LHR. Our flight was delayed by 2 hours, and we missed our connection to Manchester.

I was pretty cross beforehand, because they could have notified us ahead of time but as they didn’t we had to hang around at the airport (always fun ) for 2 extra hours.

However the staff at LHR were brilliant, and arranged a private hire car with driver to take us on to MAN. Obviously we got home very late, but at least we did get home. They gave us £25 in vouchers for the M&S food shop in T5 too.

Reading the comments here it sounds as if we were rather lucky!

I used to love BA - I’d always fly with them long or short haul but no more sadly. I don’t know quite what they have in mind for the way things are going but it’s a crock of shite and such a shame. Just today I had the choice of BA or Virgin for a business class flight to the USA and it wasn’t BA that got the money. Very sad.

I used to always book BA given the choice (not that I fly/used to fly a lot) and they were pretty good but last time we flew with them they were shit. Also involved a lost bag. No communication with us. Zero. They told us nothing, no update as to where our bag was until it magically appeared (after we'd bought clothes!). In contrast, I emailed our insurers and they called me back within 10 minutes. Bloody nightmare to get the money back too.
Relatives also had problems with them recently with cancelled flights.
Shocking customer service. Will only fly with them again if there is no other option.

I’ve started flying anyone but BA.
Just flown Swissair - on time, cleaner, cheaper, plus you got a small fresh baguette, drink and thank you chocolate on board for free, and best of all the staff didn’t bark at you or patronise you.

These days BA behave like Ryanair but charge way more than Ryanair. Why would you?

They've got about 3 years left before they will be viewed universally as on a par with RyanAir

I wouldn’t even say 3 years, i’d Say now. I agree with pp’s. They have gone massively downhill now. A couple of years ago I was going to fly long haul with them until I saw they wanted to charge for seat selection. A £700 flight x 2 and they wanted about another £40 each way for seat selection for both of us? No. I flew with someone else and won’t fly with them again.

Ba left our children's car seats at Heathrow. Actually they left the entire cart of 'odd' shaped baggage, so ALL the pushchairs wheelchairs and children's car seats that should have been on the plane. So lots of people then unable to leave the airport as they didn't have a suitable car seat for their child.

I flew back from Spain with BA in August and they were bloody marvellous! Flew out with Ryanair, enough said, and the difference coming back with BA was astronomical. Very comfy seats, loads of legroom, endless free drinks and snacks, friendly and helpful air hostesses. However we only had hand luggage so no opportunity for them to lose our bags.

In your case however OP, I’d be fuming.

I've flown with them 5 times in the past few months of which 4 experienced delays of min 30 mins apiece.

www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club-446/

Might be a better place for advice on how to press forward with getting the fuel refunded. Not sure if they still do but they at least used to have a BA exec club rep in there.