18 Months And Still No Action By British Airways.

FatAndOld

My Wife and I had a horrendous trip with BA which included Bags lost for 2 and 4 weeks, 24 hour delays both directions, utter chaos at Heathrow and downgrades on two legs of the journey. After being denied compensation for almost everything, they finally agreed to pay for the downgrades. That was eight months ago. Still no payment. I can't get hold of anyone. Is there anyway this can be escalated to a human being. The bot says my case is closed even though the last email was.

An update from British Airways

We're sorry you experienced disruption on your travel with us earlier this year which resulted in the change of cabin on your rebooked flight. I have passed on your booking details to the Refunds team to process the difference in cost.

Thanks for following this up with us and we hope we have the chance to welcome you back on board again soon.

Best regards

Alexia
British Airways Customer Relations

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!

BELOW IS THE  FULL STORY AND WHAT I WAS ASKING FOR. IT ONLY SEEMS FAIR TO ME.

I was a Silver member for over 10 years and have just this year dropped to Bronze.
Philippa is a long time Bronze and Silver member.

The Contracted Booking:

Manchester (Euro Traveller)- London (World Traveller Plus)-Miami (Economy)-Lima
Lima (Economy)-Miami (World Traveller Plus)-London (Euro Traveller)- Manchester

Each of us were to receive 320 Tier points and approximately 19,000 Avios Points.

The outbound flight to Lima on the 11th of December arriving around midnight of the 11th .
The inbound flight to Manchester to depart on the 5th of January arriving around 1400 on the 6th

Summary:

Due to operational issues on both flights, we arrived very late. 0200 on the 13th in Lima and 1330 on the 7th in Manchester. Both flights were 24 hours late.

Both of our transatlantic legs were in economy rather than World Traveller plus.

My bag arrived 11 days late in Peru.
My wife’s bag finally got to Peru on the 27th of December and was not reunited with her until the 4th of January. We saw on her tags that is went to Frankfurt on Christmas day.

 

Compensation sought:

1.       Credit both of our accounts with the full tier points we were contracted for 320.

2.       Credit both or our accounts with the full Avios points we were contracted for 19,000.

3.       Reimbursement of the differential of the economy vs World Traveller Plus legs.
I estimate this from your website at around £1,800.00 (London- Miami return for 2)

4.       Reimburse us for the lost hotel room night and the extra 2 nights we stayed in Lima since we were completely spent from the outrageous trip and had to do shopping to replace our clothes.

5.       Pay us the 2,400 Euro we are entitled to by law for being operationally delayed 24hrs on both journeys.  

6.       Compensate us a reasonable amount for the 6 person weeks of clothing we needed to purchase.  (Two weeks’ worth for me, four weeks’ worth for my wife)

 

Detailed description of what happened

 

1.       Our initial flight was delayed due to weather.

a.       We were loaded onto the plane and left sitting on the Tarmac in Manchester for over 4 hours.

2.       On arrival in LHR –  T5 an entire plane load of people went to the customer service desks to try to get their flights sorted out.

3.       After waiting in a queue for an hour a clearly poorly trained staff member came out to yell at the 50-100 people still waiting.

“We are evacuating this area! You are on your own for both flights and hotels! Try to do it online of phone British Airways booking numbers”

With that the four staff at the desk disappeared.

4.       We went online and found British Airways had rebooked us on Avianca via Bogota to Lima. Unfortunately, that flight had already been cancelled we found out later.

5.       We then went to try to retrieve our bags. No luck. They didn’t come out on the carousel and baggage personnel told us they would be transferred to Avianca.

6.       We trotted off to Terminal 2 to speak with Avianca. There first response was. “British Airways should never have booked you on this flight! There is a technical problem with the aircraft, and we are not flying today. “

a.       They had no idea how to deal with the BA baggage tags and had no idea where our bags were.

7.       We went back to T5.

a.       Queued for a hour to get to the customer service desk.

                                                                           i.      Were told they can’t do anything!

                                                                         ii.      Please try to sort it out online.

1.       If you can’t please call the booking numbers.

8.       Your online system would not respond to our now messed up booking. It just kept saying please call the booking system.

9.       The booking numbers were so overwhelmed that they wouldn’t even put us in the queue.

10.   We went back to T2. Avianca told us to come back at 1700. Which we did. They then gave us the flight details for an extra flight they had put on the next day. Still no sign of our bags.

11.   We flew late the next day. As expected, there was no sign of our bags. We filled out the paperwork at 0200 in the morning in Lima. Avianca said the bags were not handed over and that they had no record of them. Clearly BA was in meltdown. But we had no idea that we would be without our bags for most of our trip.

12.   My bag finally caught up with me in a little town called Jaen, Peru. We had to stay and extra day and wait for it further reducing our time to explore the country.

13.   We were notified on the 27th that Philippa’s bag had arrived in Peru. However, it was not tagged correctly. The name on the bag was Mark Pollard. This person does not exist! Peruvian customs were therefore unwilling to release the bag. Was BA responsible for mis tagging the bag? After a couple of hours in the Lima airport, with the help of Avianca, and much showing of passports, documents, pictures, business cards, messed up itineraries, they reluctantly gave my wife her bag. It just added insult to injury.

14.   Our return journey was again delayed due to “One Worlds” operational issues. The flight was cancelled as there was no Captain available to fly the aircraft.

15.   Therefore, missed connections and again being downgraded to economy for the transatlantic portion of the trip.

16.   We were almost exactly 24 hours late arriving back in Manchester

17.   On a bright note, all bags did arrive with us.

 

 

mdann52

Few bits you might want to change here...

Credit both of our accounts with the full tier points we were contracted for 320./Credit both or our accounts with the full Avios points we were contracted for 19,0000

This is known as "original routing credit", it's usually best to submit a separate request for this or phone, if you included this in a general request this won't always be done correctly.

Reimbursement of the differential of the economy vs World Traveller Plus legs.

You're legally entitled to up to 75% of the amount paid for the leg, minus taxes, not the difference in fares. There's a guide to calculate this at https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26864509-post636.html

Reimburse us for the lost hotel room night and the extra 2 nights we stayed in Lima since we were completely spent from the outrageous trip and had to do shopping to replace our clothes.

Air operators aren't usually obliged to compensate for lost hotel rooms (this is a travel insurance job). They may be liable under the montreal convention, but this isn't straightforward. If you had to stay for longer due to the delay, they will compensate you for that.

BA are usually quite good with clothing compensation with receipts, you'll have to claim the exact amount spent. 

Personally, I'd post over at FlyerTalk - https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club-446/ - as they are the experts in dealing with BA, and know of several routes to chase stuff up.

bagand96

FatAndOld said:

Compensation sought:

1.       Credit both of our accounts with the full tier points we were contracted for 320.

2.       Credit both or our accounts with the full Avios points we were contracted for 19,000.

BA should be able to do this without much issue.  Did you speak to BAEC at the time, rather than general complaints?

3.       Reimbursement of the differential of the economy vs World Traveller Plus legs.

I estimate this from your website at around £1,800.00 (London- Miami return for 2)

As @mdann52 says you have a claim for Downgrade under EC261 rules.

4.        Reimburse us for the lost hotel room night and the extra 2 nights we stayed in Lima since we were completely spent from the outrageous trip and had to do shopping to replace our clothes.

Not normally the airline's responsibility.  Travel Insurance may have cover.

5.       Pay us the 2,400 Euro we are entitled to by law for being operationally delayed 24hrs on both journeys.  

Outbound:  You've suggested that the delay was caused by weather?  In which case BA will not be on the hook for EC261 compensation, as the weather is outside of their control.

Inbound:  More information needed, who's flight was delayed?  "One World" are not an airline and don't have pilots.  Who was the operating airline who had the shortage of crew?  You may be able to claim EC261 compensation from them, if their flight being delayed caused the issues.

6.       Compensate us a reasonable amount for the 6 person weeks of clothing we needed to purchase.  (Two weeks’ worth for me, four weeks’ worth for my wife)

Airlines do have limited liability for lost or delayed baggage, but often only for essentials.  Did you submit a separate claim for this? (BA website has a dedicated form for this on their website).  Citizens Advice has more information Get airline compensation for lost or delayed luggage - Citizens Advice  Your travel insurance may provide additional cover.

I also agree with @mdann52 that FlyerTalk BA forum may be worth asking for advice in addition to here.
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