British Airways are really not "The World's Favorite Airline" at the moment (a phrase they felt was accurate since more people flew with them, rather than people actually liking them). We returned from Barcelona on Saturday and whilst we made it, our bags did not. I like to think I'm an understanding person; I know from time to time these things happen and if you fly enough sooner or later a bag goes astray. However, according to the Sunday Times magazine I read recently BA looses more bags than any other large European airline. Even that would be bearable if they had something resembling customer service to deal with these problems. Here's what BA do for you:
Having discovered our bags didn't make it to Heathrow queue up at the baggage information desk. Wait. Wait. Wait some more (there were a lot of people from all manner of destinations who didn't have their bags). The poor people from Vancouver had been waiting two hours for their bags, which were coming out four at a time with ten minute breaks between them. Fill in a customs declaration and give the details of what type of bags had gone missing. Receive a baggage file reference number.
Go home and check on the internet to see what is happening with our bags through the optimistically named 'Baggage Tracer Service'. Until recently that was simply reporting 'Tracing continues. Please check back later'. Since this morning the load on the system has obviously exceeded its capacity and now it either times out or, if you're lucky enough to get the form, the results are an internal server error.
Attempt repeatedly to phone the Tracing Lost Baggage line. Most of the time this gives you a recorded message that BA are experiencing "extremely high call volume, please call back later", i.e. you can't even get in a queue. If you do manage to sneak in you can hold for thirty minutes without talking to anyone, presumably with the idea that attrition through frustration will lower the call load.
This would seem to me to be a text book example of how not to keep your customers happy and get repeat business. Certainly given the way I've been treated by BA over the last six months I'll be trying to use any other airline wherever possible (with the possible exception of Aeroflot, who are even worse if you can believe it).
