Something in the Air

Typically I'm used to airlines poor customer service so it came as no surprise when I checked my BA account after my trip home for Christmas and realize they had not awarded me any points or miles for my flight. This was slightly shocking and upsetting especially since the flight to Boston gave me enough points for Silver status - yeah! While I was home I called BA's US customer service number only to be told that they couldn't help me as they can only help US customers and I'm a UK customer. Given the time difference the UK customer support had closed so I had to wait another day.

Once I was able to get through the UK customer support the next day, they immediately saw what the problem with. I had upgraded my return flight to club, as a result this "inadvertently" wiped out the points and miles I should have earned on both legs of the flight. They can over-ride the system to grant me the points but that takes 7-10 day working days. I love this little flaw in their system that they wipe out all points forcing you to call and ask for the points to be credited again. If you're not vigilant about checking you could be missing out significant points and miles.

I called again this week to go through the process all over again for the return flight as that was missing and the rep couldn't fix the account before I took the flight, even though she knew the system wouldn't give me the credit. While I was on the phone I mentioned that I was flying again this week and since the system had not yet credited the points and miles I don't show up as silver this means on my flights this week I won't get access to the lounge. I wasn't actually expecting much but they said they would fax me a letter that I could use for 28 days. Imagine my surprise when I got to work on Friday and they had faxed me a letter.

In other flight news. It was revealed yesterday that some airports in London will be lifting the 1 hand bag restriction on Monday. Of course I fly out on Sunday so that doesn't help me much this week but in the future it will certainly be helpful when flying out of Heathrow. Restrictions will remain at Gatwick but hopefully within the year they will be lifted there as well.