[Anonymous]

[Lionel11]

I am really disappointed with BA customer service, particularly with their way to push away any customer complaint at first so you really need to make your point and write at least 2 to 3 times to get some sort of answer/consideration.

Long story short, I had a ‘bad day in the office’ as it happens sometimes with a cancelled flight LGW-JFK on 02/05/16, replaced with a LHR-JFK. Later the economy seat had no audio, so got a World plus seat. But then I got diner and shockingly had broken pieces of crookeries mixed up with my dish, which I found out once I ate a piece of it.

The staff reacted well and everyone was quite shocked around me. They had me filled a complaint form and that’s when the long exchange with BA started.

After multiples correspondances, they covered my taxi bill between LGW and LHR, and then simply offered me 10,000Avios, dismissing the fact that the incident could have resulted in serious injuries mid-air, which would have had very negative consequences to say the least. Here’s the final words for BA:

”Dear Mr R.

Many thanks for getting back in touch about the issues you experienced on 02 May, when you travelled to New York, JFK in World Traveller. I’m sorry that you’re disappointed with my response to your complaint. I’m afraid our Management team don’t deal with complaints and are here to manage the operation, which is the reason I’m replying to you again.

We certainly don’t underestimate the seriousness of the issue with your meal, and I fully understand things could have turned out differently had you not noticed the broken piece of china. The most important thing for us is to learn from the experience and investigate why it happened internally.

As I stated on the phone, our Catering team have been informed and will identify the reason this happened. We don’t need you to send us the photos you’ve taken of the meal as our cabin crew have already confirmed to us that they witnessed the incident. Rest assured, this is an isolated incident and we’re doing all we can to ensure it never happens again.

I appreciate your reasons for asking, but I can’t provide you with a gesture of goodwill for the problems with your meal. I know this isn’t the answer you were expecting and I’m sorry for letting you down.

I recognise that your flight was cancelled and you had to fly from London Heathrow instead of London Gatwick. The situation would have only been compounded when you got on board your flight and the audio wasn’t working on your in-flight entertainment system. Just to explain once again, this has already been fed back to our Customer Experience team and our Engineering team.

The problem with the sound system has now been rectified, and our Customer Experience team will work hard to improve our service based on your feedback. As a gesture of goodwill, I’ve added 10,000 Avios to your Silver Executive Club account as way of apology for the cancellation and sound problem. Please accept this with my compliments.

Thanks for allowing me to respond to you again. We really appreciate your support as a Silver member of our Executive Club. Please feel free to get back in touch using the blue link below if you have any further questions or queries.

Best regards”

I found this really poor. this is not the kind of answer you would think of if one of your customer was to going through such a rare incident.
Obviously they know that most of people would never go further so be it. Shame.

[rferguson]

Lionel11 – an unfortunate series of events. So just to summarise
– your LGW-JFK flight was cancelled and you had to fly LHR-JFK. BA covered the LGW – LHR taxi fare.
– the audio on your IFE was not working. The crew resolved this at the time and you were moved to World Traveller Plus and able to have full access of IFE?
– crockery in your meal. Again – unfortunate but not as uncommon as some may think. This did not result in any injury and i’m guessing a replacement meal sans crockery was given?

As I understand it Customer Relations works to a ‘compensation framework’ which takes into account obviously the incident/complaint, the cabin you were travelling in, frequent flyer status and previous claims for compensation. The idea is that – broadly – the application of compensation is consistent. For example, in the case of a customer with no working IFE a flow chart is followed. Was the customer able to be offered an alternative seat? Did this involve an upgrade of cabin? Obviously compensation for a passenger in F with no alternative F seat to be moved to would be higher than someone in Y offered a seat in a higher cabin. So i’d imagine you wouldn’t have been offered any Avios for the IFE issue.

Crockery in the meal – I guess people will have different views of whether ‘compensation’ should be given and if so what is acceptable compensation. Obviously had it resulted in injury it would be a different case.

What I can completely agree on is that when complaining it should be resolved from the first contact and within a reasonable time frame. 10K avios and the taxi fare LGW-LHR should have been offered immediately after the first contact given the unfortunate series of events.

***Personal opinions only***

[christopheL]

This is a real problem with British airlines, for those of us who are not British

“Many thanks for getting back in touch about the issues you experienced …”
“I’m sorry that you’re disappointed with my response …”
“We certainly don’t underestimate the seriousness of the issue with your meal … but I can’t provide you with a gesture of goodwill for the problems with your meal”
“Thanks for allowing me to respond to you again …”

More than 2 pages of text just to say “tell me whatever you want I won’t change my answer at all but be sure I feel really sorry for this”

It’s all about patronizing, which seems to be valued by British customers but is definitively unbearable for non British customers.

[Carajillo2Sugar]

rferguson makes some good points.

Lionel11 – Whilst I certainly agree that it should not have taken so long to get the written response from BA, the problems that arose on the day of travel were actually resolved, erm, on the day of travel…..

Bearing in mind the facts that BA paid for your taxi, upgraded you to Premium Economy and provided 10,000 Avios, please tell us what, exactly, you were wanting in the way of compensation/recompense?

And, in your correspondence with BA, did you tell them what you wanted?

[canucklad]

Some excellent points made by all…..

First and fundamentally …..
What do you want BA to do next?

Other considerations……
You’re a Silver, so how do you actively use your Avios points?
Is an upgrade not considered as an acceptable resolution?
IS EU 261 applicable for the cancelled flight – delay of arrival duration?
Cause and effect – ironically no UG to PE means no crockery issues ?

And a word of warning, Lionel , an ombudsman / independent arbitrator will probably rule that BA has handled your bad day at the office acceptably well. Excepting for the possible EU261 doubt that I have niggling away

[NTarrant]

ChristophL – there are many British people, self included, who find the patronising tone of some letters as offensive. I also think that if you complain about something and are not happy with the response and escalate to a higher person it is disrespectful to the customer to get the original person to respond.

Some of these customer service people really need to review the manner in which their departments respond to people.

Having said that I’m not really sure what the OP is trying to achieve.

[BA744fan]

Whenever I have a complaint to make I go straight to the very top and email the head of Customer Relations. Complete waste of time going through normal channels. You just get a copy and paste pile of garbage which never answers the query.

[ImissConcorde]

My favourite web page is …..

http://www.ceoemail.com

[openfly]

@ BA744fan and ImissConcorde

Sadly, writing directly to the CEO of BA doesn’t work anymore and is now a waste of time….the emails are diverted to the Indian call-centre. They just use a standard format of wording to reply. If you are Gold you might, with luck, get a begrudging reply from “the Chairmans office”.

Alex Cruz is far too busy counting his pennies/pesetas to be involved in customer service problems. Not like the old days……

[Edski777]

I’m still wondering: Lionel, what would have been an acceptable solution to you for this situation?

The crew couldn’t have done more and neither could the people at LGW.

Looking at what they did so far you got the full treatment. Or is it just the tone of the email that annoyed you?

[BA744fan]

Openfly – If you read my last last post it says I wrote to the head of CR and it worked both times having got nowhere repeatedly going through the normal channels.

Fact is BA don’t care about complaints and only really do something more than a token gesture when they are pushed or humiliated in the public domain.

PS: Twitter is also a good outlet for complaining.

[DerekVH]

“I’m afraid our Management team don’t deal with complaints and are here to manage the operation”

Perhaps if they did have to deal with complaints they might get a better grasp on some of the problems!

[christopheL]

@Edski777

An acceptable solution would have been (i) not to use the patronizing tone BA Customer service always uses when answering complains and (ii) to pay more attention to the crockery issue which may have had more serious conséquences and which is definitively not an isolated case.

My husband had exactly the same problem while flying CE between CDG and LHR a few weeks ago. He realised it when a cut is tongue and start blooding.

The crew was very apologetic and he didn’t made any complaint about it. However I will suggest him to make such a complain to check whether he will be given a similar answer.

[BigDog.]

Off topic but it appears someone at BA may have a genuine sense of humour…

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/celebrity/piers-morgan-mocked-by-british-airways-on-twitter-after-brad-pitt-joke/ar-AAhosbc?ocid=spartandhp

MS and FDOS – being regular occupiers of 1A, you are clearly celebrities 😉

[Author]

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