British Airways are rubbish

John Boileau
My House
The World

4 September 2006

British Airways Customer Relations (S506)
PO Box 5619
Sudbury
Suffolk
CO10 2PG

Dear Sir / Madam

Re: Compaint / Case Ref: 4764826

This is my second letter of complaint to you regarding this issue. My first letter of complaint, sent to you 1 August 2006, outlined a tale of poor customer service dished out by your woeful company when you cancelled the flights to Belfast for my 9 friends and myself just 25 days before we were due to travel. I’m sure you’ve read the details and remember that it cost my party over £400 in extra costs to fly with BMI Baby at such short notice and also resulted in us having to fly out of one airport and back in to another which was a right, royal pain in the arse (and cost us loads in trains and parking). I even tried (perhaps foolishly) to book new flights with BA but your booking website was down (see previous letter) and in the end we had to use BMI Baby (whose website was working, natch). Incidentally, I wished I had chosen BMI Baby to fly with in the first place as they actually managed to get both the outbound and return flights landed ahead of schedule, which in the current flying climate is pretty remarkable - perhaps you could contact them to send some managers on work experience there? To save me have to write to BMI Baby under separate cover to thank them on this success I have simply copied them in to this letter, thus killing two birds with one stone. Thanks BMI Baby.

Eleven days after sending my letter I received an e-mail from someone asking for further information. I hit reply and sent the information required. After hearing nothing for the past month I re-opened the e-mail and noticed, at the bottom in the signature that you can’t reply to e-mails from BA Customer Services, it has to be through a URL weblink. Annoyed that I didn’t notice this the first time, I clicked on the link (https://www.britishairways.com/webmail/custrelreplies?case=4764826). This doesn’t work either. Perhaps this link has been cancelled along with our flights to Belfast? Or maybe it’s been programmed by someone who does your booking website? Does anything work on BA.com? I thought I’d try your phoneline…

… but I gave up after 45 minutes of listening to that annoying BA theme tune played on a Spanish guitar and a women telling me that I was important and that BA were very busy. Incidentally BMI Baby managed to actually fly us from Birmingham to Belfast quicker than BA could answer a phone. Again, very impressive BMI Baby.

Therefore I am resorting to sending the information you require via letter as I cannot seem to contact you any other way. Can I suggest that BA follow the rest of the free-thinking world and allow two-way communication via the medium of e-mail? I assure you it is much more effective than a link that doesn’t work.

Hopefully a cheque will be in the post very shortly for my friends and I which takes in to consideration how much of a pain in the arse you have been (including making me miss Hollyoaks whilst writing this letter. Although I can keep up through the Sunday omnibus edition it just isn’t the same, is it?).

Yours Sincerely
John Boileau

P.S. You wanted my booking numbers for the flight. Obviously there was more than one John Boileau flying from Birmingham to Belfast with 9 friends on 26 August 2006 so you weren’t able to look them up for yourselves. Here you go:

2HQ578
2HFCHY

cc. – BMI Baby Customer Services Department