Is there a right Birmingham?

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 38 total)

  • Anonymous
    Guest

    TominScotland
    Participant

    FDOS_UK
    Participant

    I don’t love it, they lost £1,200 and it’s easily done, ba.com offers MHT as the first option when you type in ‘manchester’, bl**dy ridiculous for a UK carrier.


    MartynSinclair
    Participant

    I saw this post and also felt sorry for the couple who clearly suffered from not being familiar with on line bookings.

    I guess we have all made some kind of booking errors not just over the years, but more recently (or perhaps not). My biggest on line errors and it has happened a couple of times recently, is getting the booking date wrong and turning up for a flight when there is no flight.

    Porto to London last year, I got it a month wrong, and more recently Dublin to London I got it a day wrong.

    Hence why I have started to use “the Forum’s” fabulous TC to book as many tickets as he can…

    So, come on guys and girls… what online screw up have you suffered and own up… interested to hear errors and mistakes that you will take FULL RESPONSIBILITY for.. no one else to blame…. 🙂


    Tom Otley
    Keymaster

    Last Thursday I bought a one way Heathrow Express ticket for early the next morning, except I bought it for the Thursday (the day of booking) rather than the Friday.

    So then I bought another one, for the correct day.

    But then it said on the website,

    What do I do if I have made an error with my booking and entered an incorrect name, date or direction?

    Heathrow Express tickets are fully transferable. Providing the ticket is within the validity period, the name, date or direction on the ticket does not matter.

    So perhaps I didn’t need to do this.

    But then, I had bought the ticket and gained a discount for having an annual Gold Card (Adults: 34% off)

    And… Promotional tickets may have restrictions so please refer to terms and conditions of the promotion.

    So then I did, and saw…

    Discount using the Annual Gold Card only available on Heathrow Express after 10:00 Monday-Fridays and at any time on weekends and public holidays.

    So I now had two tickets for travel at 0540 in the morning, neither of which were valid.

    So I got up at stupid o’clock thinking I would sort it out at Paddington, but there was no one there, so I got on the train, showed the Friday ticket (on my phone) and went to T2 without any problem.

    I still think I was out of pocket, though.


    nibbler
    Participant

    @Fdos_UK 20ish years ago Singapore Airlines sent my luggage to Muscat rather than Manchester as the check in agent at Changi made the wrong choice when printing the label. Maybe the airlines are trying to save us from ourselves.

    One thing they did right; and a clear sign of service differences between 20yrs ago when SQ was awesome rather than mediocre like now, they relayed to the plane the mistake and a stewardess came to apologize. I now check my luggage receipts …


    TimFitzgeraldTC
    Participant

    I imagine there will be a few people going to the wrong San Jose in coming weeks.

    Checked on BA – there isn’t an extra verification saying are you sure you mean San Jose Costa Rica, or San Jose California. It clearly shows San Jose Costa Rica, but I imagine some poor souls may not realize there are two places of the same name (or don’t pay enough attention).


    handbag
    Participant

    A couple of years ago a couple of passengers asked me if we were going to Santiago. We were mid flight and were on our way to San Diego. With there accent, it was very difficult to realise that they were actually saying Santiago not San Diego and initially I said yes were. It had got lost in translation when they had booked the flight in India.

    They were on a multi leg business trip. BA were great with them and arranged forwarding flights to the next of their destination , as they would have missed their appointment in Santiago.


    Poshgirl58
    Participant

    Yes, most of us have made mistakes with travel bookings; some have been costly, others we’ve managed to spot before completing the booking. I’ve just gone into lastminute.com website and typed Birmingham into the “from” box. Two options came up. Birmingham Alabama United States as the first. Birmingham United Kingdom as the second. They clearly didn’t know the difference between US and UK.

    Reminds me of time I had to correct travel agent who incorrectly entered code PAP for my destination. That’s Port au Prince in Haiti, not Paphos in Cyprus. She wasn’t impressed with me knowing more than her!


    Bath_VIP
    Participant

    Twice in recent months, I’ve booked rail tickets for the wrong day. Yes this might be me showing my age but partly it is do with some sites showing weeks that start on Sunday whereas I always think that the week starts on Monday.

    Another mistake was turning up at a hotel in Denmark a day early. Fortunately they still had rooms available.

    The best mistake I was part of was when I was due to meet my Father at Malpensa airport. I arrived first and was starting to get concerned when he rang me from Linate to say he had booked the wrong flight. He hadn’t realised until he was on the plane!


    superchris
    Participant

    I have two examples, both where the supplier had tried to convince me I was in the wrong.

    1) I was flying with my now wife and her parents for a weekend in Mallorca, turned up at Heathrow T1 (remember that?), for my BMI flight (remember them). I had tried to check in the day before but for some reason online check in didnt seem to be working. Horror of horrors, flight not showing on the board. When I approached the BMI desk they said that flight was cancelled weeks ago and they no longer fly on a saturday – I would have had an email she pointed out to me. I recalled an email but only for a small time change – 5 mins or so. Frantic search of blackberry showed that the email had indeed said a 5 minute time change and not a new date for the flight.

    Much running around by BMI to put us, at their cost on a BA flight to Dusseldorf in Business class to get us (and ten others who were in the same boat) to Mallorca that day. And I wonder why BMI are no longer around!

    Example number 2 was landing at Doha from Melbourne at 5 mins past midnight (0005). I had carefully booked an airport hotel room for the night before with associated car transfer. Arrived at the car desk for the hotel to insist that my booking was for 24 hours earlier. They agreed to take me to the hotel nonetheless, and the hotel found me a room nonetheless whilst reiterating I would have to pay from the night before. I just needed to go to bed so was in no mood to argue. When I awoke, I checked the paperwork and guess what, I had booked it correctly and even stressed it multiple times. The hotel had got it wrong. I still had to wait a month to get my money back mind you!


    Cedric_Statherby
    Participant

    While working for an American company a US-based colleague of mine was trying to book a flight from his base in Boston to join me at a conference in Santiago, Chile. We compared notes on our flights to see what time we would be arriving and I noticed he was flying via Phoenix Arizona.

    “Phoenix? That’s an odd routing”.

    “No it isn’t, it is very close. Only about an hour from Phoenix”

    “????????”

    it seems he had booked to San Diego not Santiago. Try saying Tomato in an American accent and you will see the problem.

    He managed to scramble out of the mess though.


    Cedric_Statherby
    Participant

    Handbag I see you also had experience of this US-UK language problem!


    Jimmy111
    Participant

    the best (or worst) one I ever saw was someone who years ago booked to the wrong Sydney – an out of the way mining town in Canada.
    Also, the airport code for Genoa is ‘GOA’ which has caught people out who thought they’d got a bargain many times I’m sure…

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