Sharing my bad experience with BA customer services

ma0sm

Dear Sir / Madam,

I received a miscellaneous charges order from you months ago due to poor service from BA during a trip to Stockholm. Yesterday evening I phoned your customer support line in order to use this voucher to take advantage of return flights to Madrid leaving on the 17th January from Heathrow (advertised at £51) and returning on the 20th January to Gatwick (advertised at £59). I went through the booking process and discovered during the call that I would need to post the voucher to BA to get the discount applied. This surprised me as most of BA's bookings are made online and you are encouraged to use the online service during the message played while you’re on hold. This implies to me that something as simple as a discount voucher would not be a big deal to apply. The fact that the voucher had reference numbers on it and related to a particular incident trackable to my account made this seem like a confusing overhead. I continued through the booking process with the advisor but before it could be completed she encountered an error due saying that the voucher could only be applied if booking ten working days before the flight. The voucher, nor accompanying letter mentioned anything about this, but the advisor said she'd talk to her supervisor to try and get it overridden.

After a long pause, the advisor came back and told me there was no way this could be overridden and that I would not be able to use the voucher. I explained to her the fact that this voucher had been issued as compensation for poor service from BA and this being the first and only way I could have found out about this restriction. I also pointed out that I had been on the phone for 26 minutes to a national rate number in order to find this out, costing me money. By request she called me back, and put me on hold to talk to her supervisor.

Once talking to the supervisor, he acknowledged that the process was inefficient, seemingly arbitrary and that I had no way of finding this information out any sooner. He was polite and empathised with the reasons why this whole thing seemed illogical. I explained that I needed to fly on these specific dates and had been watching the prices to get the journey booked as cheaply as possible. I was offered an alternative of travelling to an airport to make the booking with the vouchers personally, but this is not a practical solution when considering transport costs to the airport and time involved.

I also suggested the purchase be made at full price, the voucher to be sent then the money refunded once it was received and validated as an alternative. This way, the money would remain with BA until they were sure that the discount was valid at which point they could uphold their offer. I was told that although logical, this would not be possible with the systems they had and he had no way of overriding this.

I offered to send the voucher by guaranteed next day delivery, with the insurance included in that postal method covering the eventuality it's not received, but giving more time than would necessarily be received should I have sent the vouchers by standard post with the full ten days but still this was not accepted as a possible solution.

Realising I could get no further with this person, I asked who I should talk to in order to discuss this further. He recommended talking to customer services but they were closed at that time so I phoned them the following (this) morning.

I checked the online prices and noticed the outward flight had risen by £15. Undeterred, I proceeded to phone customer services. I explained the situation above to the representative who reiterated the previously mentioned stance that they had no point of power to do anything about this. Eventually I was passed through to someone who could bring up my individual case details from before. I passed on my details of the case where the voucher was issued and for the forth time had to explain the entire story to a new person where once again the phone cost was at my expense. This individual reiterated the same point of a lack of power to change anything though originally offered to extend the validity of the voucher as it expires in just over two weeks should I send it in though later retracted this during the conversation.

His manner was significantly ruder than all I had spoken to previously and felt it appropriate to ask me why I'd waited so long to use the voucher, as though the blame lay with me for trying to use it relatively close to its expiry. After trying to explain my case, and pleading for some kind of workaround to the problem he eventually said there were only so many times he could apologise without sounding patronising and abruptly ended the phone call.

So in conclusion, I've wasted my money, wasted my time and have been left appalled by the customer service of British Airways, especially in the face of the reason the voucher was issued in the first place.

M4RKM

Very valid, and very well written...

here's hoping you get a decent compo this time you can actually use!

Voyager2002

markymoo wrote: »

Very valid, and very well written...

here's hoping you get a decent compo this time you can actually use!

Indeed.

But I suggest that you open it with a short paragraph (two or three sentences only) summarising what the letter is about.

WiseInvestor_2

I've just typed VOUCHER into the Search box on ba.com which gave the following:

Travel Vouchers and MCOs can be used as part or full payment towards any British Airways offline published air fare including our "World Offers".

These vouchers are valid for twelve months and are the same as airline tickets in that they are non transferable.

When you use your voucher, our ticket agent will deduct the cost of your travel arrangements from its value.
If there is any value left over it will be put on another travel voucher, or if the value of the voucher is insufficient then the additional will be payable by yourself.

Please note: If you wish to use your MCO for payment towards a flight booking you must book through your local British Airways Sales office, Customer relations or your local Travel Agent, as MCO payment cannot be accepted on ba.com.

Telephone numbers for British Airways in your region can be found if you click here .

Please note: A British Airways MCO can be used as payment in any country, irrespective of which country it was issued in, providing it is used directly at a British Airways office.

Our Customer Relations department has their own form of credit called CR CREDIT.
This is also available to be used towards future travel. When the customer calls in they must have their CR CREDIT number and the value it holds.

Since your voucher is non-transferable, how would a telephone agent verify your identity? Visiting a BA office or having some form of authorisation posted back to your home address would be the only reasonable means of validation.

Can this not be achieved by January 17th?

ma0sm

Pardon my ignorance, but I'm not sure I understand your point with "Since your voucher is non-transferable, how would a telephone agent verify your identity?". The details they have for my case reference, which correlates to a previous booking would include my passport number which could easily be matched with the passport number being used to make the booking. In my correspondence, when I offered to pay full price and receive a refund, this was under the assumption that the verification between the sales department and complaints department may not be immediate, giving them time to deal with the issue. I would assume they would have records of all MCOs distributed as otherwise they leave themselves exposed to forgery, though you make a good point if the system is so primitive such that this is the case. I may have missed your point completely here though

Thanks for your point about purchases being possible from British Airways Sales Offices in addition to airports though. After a quick search it would appear that one of these exists in Central London (http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070711135344AAxmokF) though again I'm surprised that the BA staff didn't suggest this to me as an additional option.

The prices have gone up again now though, so I'm thinking that even with the discount, Ryanair seems a more appealing prospect (never thought I'd say those words).

WiseInvestor_2

Out of interest, are you a member of their Executive Club?

totallybored

I could be wrong but these vouchers are probably given in hope that they will never be used and people will find them difficult to use. I have a few $100 of these for American Airlines, I have no idea if they can be used on any flight, on web fares and if I can just call up and use them for an online fare. They didn't seem to come with many terms and conditions. I was also offered vouchers to be bumped off another flight recently with KLM and decided it wasn't worth it as I'd be stuck with vouchers that probably couldn't be used on a flight I wanted and I'd possibly end up trekking to an airport to try to use them.

WiseInvestor_2

You're reading my mind TB!

I must stress that I am NOT a representative for British Airways and therefore do NOT speak on their behalf, but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't particularly want the OP to fly with them again (hence I asked whether he/she holds an Exec Club Card that can be checked for 'value to the business')!

The original post suggests he/she has already complained once (Stockholm) so is more likely to do so again and has now taken up hours of valuable Call Centre time for what ..... a bargain basement shorthaul flight worth £110rtn that the OP hopes to pay even less for.

If I were a businessman I'd do everything possible to disuade this consumer from troubling me again.

qwerty123456

An MCO is an accountable document and as such is as good as cash to an airline. They need to collect the MCO from you so that they can issue a ticket in exchange. If they issued a ticket based on the document number over the phone, who's to say that you can't walk up to a ticket desk and making a booking using exactly the same MCO.

I think that you can't really blame BA for running up your phone bill as you were the one who kept pushing and pushing and pushing for an outcome that suited you when you were told it was not possible quite early on.

I would put this down to experience and try and use it another time. The ONLY thing they have let you down on is not telling you that you need to give 10 days notice to use it over the phone, although it can still be used at an airport up to the time of check in closure for your flight.

It isn't BA's fault that you assumed you could use it on ba.com and it isn't BA's fault that you run up your phone bill. It also isn't BA's fault that the price wen't up by £15. What you should have done is gone straight to a BA ticket desk at either Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Heathrow, Gatwick or City to buy your ticket as soon as you were told it wasn't possible over the phone.

ma0sm

Dear Sir

Thank you for writing back to us.

I am sorry you are unable to use the voucher while booking your tickets. I am extremely dismayed by your account of how our staff treated you when you recently called us. I realise how upsetting this must have been for you. There is absolutely no excuse for this and I do apologise for the inconvenience caused.

We have recently introduced a policy, that if a passenger wants to use his voucher, we recommend that he makes his booking at least 10 days before he travels. I know that you were not aware of this policy and I do understand your disappointment.
We do take pride in our standards of service, and this certainly includes courteous and helpful staff. The behaviour you describe is unacceptable and a report has gone straight to the line manager of the staff in question.

I want to reassure you that, we will follow up what you have told us thoroughly to do all we can to improve for the future. I want to reassure you that we have a number of initiatives underway to address shortfalls in our customer service and to improve the products and services we offer. Our customer feedback is very valuable to us and is used to help us identify and prioritise these improvements.

I would like to offer you High Life Shop! vouchers in exchange of the travel voucher. You can put them towards items on British Airways flights where the High Life Shop! range is available or by completing the mail order form. The expiry date is shown on the voucher and they are not renewable.

If you would like to buy anything of greater value than the voucher we've sent you, you can do so by simply making up the difference. You can find information about High Life Shop! and our full range of products on our site, www.ba.com/giftshop.
If you wish to accept the offer, please send back the travel voucher to the address mentioned below marking our Customer Relations reference number on your next correspondence.

We know we operate in a very competitive market and genuinely value the confidence and trust you place in us when you choose to travel with British Airways. Your feedback is welcome and valuable and will be put to good use to help us improve for the future.

Best regards

British Airways Customer Relations

ma0sm

1. I'm not an executive club member, and your theory on whether I make a cost effective customer based on their past experience is one that I would definitely consider a possibility for the reasons you have already mentioned.

2. Perhaps I didn't stress it clearly enough in the original message, but I had already been on the phone with them for just shy of 30 minutes before I was first told that they would not be able to honour my voucher.

3. I concur that most importantly all this boils down to really is a lack of update about their change of policy with their 10 days notice, the rest just a series of unfortunate circumstances. It was a shame that they didn't inform me of all of my available options whilst I was on the phone with them, as found by WiseInvestor noting a trip to Piccadilly Circus which would have proved far more cost effective and convenient than travelling to an airport to make the purchase as I was advised.

As you say, best to put this down to experience and move on.