My suitcase was at Heathrow Airport a couple of days ago; no one seems to know where it is now. Carting people around the world is a complex business. Stuff happens. I understand that. What I don’t understand is how airlines can have so little empathy for their customers and expect to stay in business.
I won’t go into the comedy of errors and confusion I went through for hours at the Calgary Airport when my suitcase didn’t arrive. Suffice it to say that I was given conflicting information, missed my connection to San Francisco, and haven’t taken my heart medication for four days.
At this point, I want assurance that the airline hasn’t blown me off entirely. For all I know, they’ve dropped the matter.
The dozen times I’ve visited their online baggage tracking system, the message is TRACING CONTINUES. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER. When I call the airline in Calgary, no one answers the phone. When I call the baggage tracing phone number listed on the airline’s website, I am “welcomed” to their automated tracking system which eventually tells me they have no information. Their website encourages me to call Customer Support; unfortunately, Customer Support does not have a phone number. I spend 45 minutes scouring the website for some way to call a human.
The main 800 number is the only way I can find to get anything but a meaningless automated response. I ask the agent who answers how I can get a phone number for the baggage people I spoke with in Calgary. “You can’t.” What can I do? She will check things out for me. I’m put on hold. She comes back to say there’s no information on my bag. I ask what I can do. “You can call us back later.”
When I pay $7,500 for a business class ticket to Europe and back, I expect the carrier to call me with updates, not to disappear. Couldn’t they at least give me an update?
p.s. 4/4/07
When I checked the lost luggage site on the web this afternoon it announced that my suitcase was at SFO. Hallelujah! I received a telephone number from a delivery service and called them back. “We can have a driver in Berkeley between 8:00 pm and midnight tonight. That work?” Sure.
Studies show that your most loyal customer is he who feels he has been wronged and then has his problem solved. They are much more loyal than customers who have not experienced any trouble at all. Think I’ll ever hear back from British Airways? Time will tell.
p.p.s. 4/8/07
As expected, I have heard nothing from British Airways since my suitcase was delivered shortly after midnight a few days ago.
8 comments ↓
Jay, sounds like you should try out the Get Human website: http://www.gethuman.com/us/
It says: British Airways(gives it an F rating for service):800‑247‑9297 Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages.
Good luck!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6524639.stm
Need I say more?
Philip
You paid $7500 for a business class ticket? Must be nice…
I always refer to ‘Business Class’ as ‘Subsidy Class’ - because the business airfares are written off their taxes as a ‘business expense’, which means my taxes are higher as a result - in essence, my taxes are subsidizing the people who are riding in business class.
Every time I get on an airplane I look at them in their opulence and say to myself, “I paid for that.”
So - I’m sorry about your luggage and especially about your medication (I know what that’s like) but you don’t get any extra sympathy from me because you flew Subsidy Class.
Especially since when I pay $2500 for the same ticket - economy all the way for this traveler - I still expect to get my luggage, or failing that, updates. Common courtesy shouldn’t be exclusively the privilege of the Subsidy Class.
Good luck with that though - I really am sympathetic.
Folks, the gethuman site is great; I’ll be back there. Philip, the BBC item is priceless. Worse record of any European airline.
Stephen, is it still subsidy class if a Swiss company picks up the tab? I’ve read that if you summed up all the gains and losses of all airlines since people began to fly, the result would be zero. It is not a very lucrative business. Which leads me to think if they weren’t charging outrageous fees for First and Business Class, you and I would be subsidizing them more directly.
jay
It’s one of the great systems issues of our time . . . how is it possible that millions of pieces of luggage are tagged (physically) with barcodes, but their existence at any particular place and time is basically unknown. And better still the only person who cares is the owner of each piece. I hope the rest of your trip was far more fruitful and fun.
** And next time, carry your pills in your carry-on luggage;-)
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Your story has given me hope that I will see my suitcase again. I was going to San Fran and they told me I was going to miss my connection in Phili so I opted to stay home and try again later in the year. They told me they would have my bag pulled but it apparently didn’t happen. Now my bag, which is clearly in SFO and not on it’s way back to me as promised is still being tracked. Too bad I can’t get in touch with a human to let them know it’s at SFO.
Today is July 7, 2007. It has been three weeks since I last saw my luggage or the clothes and medication inside it. British Airways does not know where it is.
DID I MENTION THAT ONE OF THE BAGGAGE OFFICE AGENTS AT SOF TOLD ME THAT THEY CURRENTLY HAVE MORE THAN 4,000 “MISHANDLED” BAGS AT HEATHROW IN LONDON? Of course, this is the location where my baggage was lost.
I do not expect to see my luggage again. I travel more than 200,000 miles a year, mostly with American Airlines. It has been more than 10 years since my last lost bag. Of the 150-ish people on my flight to Barcelona, BA lost the more than 60 bags.
Pathetic and embarrassing.
Thanks for creating a forum for me to vent.
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