Unfortunately, I got to be the pet toy of a big company called British Airways, which royally and effortlessly screwed me over with joy from their mighty big company throne.
The incompetence and greed of this company cost me over 600 euros, 6+ hours of call time, and an optimism that those big companies were ‘not that bad’.
After all, they should have plenty of money for courses to train their people, and they should have plenty of research done how to optimize their service, one would think.
Being able to change the date of my ticket -after specifically having requested so on purchase (from the British Airways desk at the airport, mind you)- should be a possibility within one of the possible future worlds, I hoped.
Whether changing the ticket was possible or not seemed to fluctuate by the day, if not by the hour. One employee said it was possible, the next one said it was not.
Canceling the ticket, even worse. Not only was it possible and impossible depending on the employee I got on the phone, the way in which I would cancel was even more random.
I kept coming up with new ideas, new plans, my mind was peaking to explore and think about any good solution. I wanted to go home earlier, and more importantly, could save 600 euros.
To their great sadism, for every theoretically perfect plan I came up with, they jokingly threw new problems at me. I could have never imagined how many things they made up to obstruct me from simply changing or canceling my ticket.
I persisted and kept thinking and planning and trying and calling and trying and calling and calling and calling …
If you let people wait for that long, make your waiting tune of better quality, and a bit longer, please. I know it by heart now.
The joke? All failed.
All of the 10-20 different things I could come up with for all the various problems they threw at me, were not possible. I could not gain the 600 euros, I could not change the date of my ticket, I could not cancel, and I could not change the place of it.
At one point I was talking to a random person, who was willing to help me out, to make the payment since my card didn’t work and the card I could use from my mother wasn’t allowed because it was on her name (so? I can pay ..), getting back with them on the phone after a 4 hour call earlier where they confirmed that I could change the flight – with date, airplane number, exact fee amount and all, ensuring me that multiple seats were still available – simple to laugh at me those 30 minutes later that it would now cost me 400 euros instead of 50 to change.
Just to give an idea of the mess it was! And that was just one thing.
But I’m sure I’ll laugh about it at some point.
In the meantime, please don’t fly with British Airways if you can – You would do me and the world a great favor.
Happy reading
– A poor me.