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Trapdoor in a rowing boat

Posted by: Simon Ritter on 07/11/2007

That's a great analogy for just how useful British Airways customer service and baggage tracing is.

The good news is I finally got my bag back! I got home from Malta on Saturday morning and checked, once again, the baggage tracing web site. "Tracing continues, please check back later". A few more futile calls to their telephone number and I just accepted that I'd have to continue my wait.

At 11.15 that evening I was tucked up in bed when the phone rang. I just got to it when it stopped ringing. Back to bed. Two minutes later, the phone rings again. Again, I get to it just as it stops ringing. Whatever. In the morning I get up and find a card has been put through the door telling me that BA tried to deliver my bag last night and getting no response have left it with a neighbour. Of course, at 11.15 they couldn't find many people awake so it's half way down the road.

Like I say, as useful as a trapdoor in a rowing boat. BA say they'll deliver baggage until ten at night. Well, 11.15 is definitely after ten pm. If the delivery monkey bothered to ring my phone twice, why didn't he try ringing the doorbell? To make things even more ridiculous, I checked the web site and it's still saying "tracing continues, please check back later".

Still, according to the BBC news I'm not alone in having to wait for my luggage. The fact that BA needed volunteers to help with the backlog of luggage speaks volumes for their organisational skills.

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About Simon Ritter

Simon Ritter

Simon Ritter specialises in looking at emerging technologies including grid computing, RFID, wireless sensor networks, robotics and wearable computing. Simon has been in the IT business since 1984 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Brunel University in the U.K.Originally working in the area of UNIX development for AT&T UNIX System Labs and then Novell, Simon joined Sun in 1996 and started working with Java technology; he has spent time doing both Java development and consultancy.

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