My example, booking flights from Aberdeen to Vegas with a NY stopover. Contacted the executive club and booked WTP flights to/from JFK and upgraded to business with 50,000 air miles. Was offered JKF to Vegas return flights on Delta in coach class, price seemed OK so went ahead and booked. Received two different booking references which didn’t raise any concerns so left it at that. A few days later I contacted BA to enquire what the cost would be to upgrade the Delta flights to business and change return airport to Baltimore and was quoted a cost that was the same price as the cost of a compete new ticket from Delta!!! Now considering I’d already shelled out £600+ I was not best pleased. Tried numerous avenues to get this investigated/corrected with BA customer services to no avail, eventually wrote to Clare Hatchwell (Head of BA Customer Services) directly and did not even get the curteousy of a reply. Decided to wait until I got to NY and contact Delta directly but by then the price had shot up, to make matters worse Delta informed that as the booking reference was BA stock (what the heel does that mean?) then only BA could change. Contacted BA USA to see what they could do only to be told that I’d need to contact BA UK to reolve, now get this, the number they give is a UK number so this would be at my cost! Contacted BA UK again only to get the same BS as before. Giving up hope ever getting a fair deal from BA on the Delta issue I then enquired if I could change the departing airport from JFK to Newark on the return leg as this would make the travel itinerary easier. Was told that this could be done but I’d lose the air miles and would need to travel WTP!

At this point I began losing the will to live so kept on the original itinerary.

Lessons learned:

BA can sell tickets for other airlines and are free to charge whatever the hell they want for those tickets, and do so. There is no regulaionin this area even though the IATA claim a one world, one ticket poicly so I can only assume that this refers to the actual ticket and not the price. Never, ever book any other airline through BA.

BA customer service is currently the worst I have ever experienced and it would appear that they will quite happily pander to corporate entities or high rollers but don’t give a toss about the avergae Joe. My advice, use another carrier.

The executive club is now a worthless entity that offers false hope of free flights, upgrades, customer service etc. This only really applies if you buy full fare tickets and who on earth does that? This kinda backs up my statement that only the big spenders get the benefits.

Finally, if they can’t even be bothered to respond to what I though was a reasonable request (Why they are charging twice as much as Delta for the same seat/ticket on the same flight?) then I don’t think I care too much about travelling with them in future (this does have the added benefit of avoiding Heathrow). I still have some miles left on the account and with some strategic BA Amex spending to get the companion voucher plus accumulation of air miles I’ll look to clear the balance on both whilst taking my last flights as a final goodbye to BA and won’t be spending anymore of my hard earned cash on them. Plus posting my experience/advice on as many blogs/consumer sites relating to this as I can. There’s only one way to hurt big business and that’s in the pocket. After the T5 fiasco Willie Walsh better get the house in order otherwise it’s all downhill from here for BA.

How many points did I get with BA? ZERO.

How many points did I get with KLM? Almost enough, but not quite, to get me to the carribean island of Aruba and back.