Due to getting stuck in two ENORMOUS traffic jams, one in Lucerne, the second around the Zurich ring-road on Thu PM, a 4h30 road journey across the heart of Switzerland from Zermatt became a 7h30 nightmare.....and meant we missed our flight from ZRH to LCY on BA at 19h10.
All the while, we try and raise BA by just about every means we can think off....while burning up the ££'s on mobile's (when we can get reception that is). But we can reach no-one, despite 20 mins sessions of calling CS, Exec Club, the works.
When we eventually stagger into the airport, the BA checkins are all closed and we queue at their ticketing office to be told by the polite and friendly lady that she can do nothing for us, as we are effectively "no-shows" and we'll need to stump up something of the order of £300-£700 to get home in the next 24-48 hours.
Ended up buying 2x£300 BA and EasyJet tix just to get home as was given no other choice.
Understand there is only the vaguest chance of a refund through travel insurance, but would have to get the local authorities to give some kind of evidence of the local traffic situation at the time. Not holding out too much hope there.
Has anyone else been in this situation?
Realise is not strictly BA's problem in the first place, but we ended up forking out for new tickets due to the difficulty of getting hold of them. And why the incessant reminders to "go online"?!? (the last thing you want to do while moving about abroad and that's if you can get a connection at all....)
Interestingly, several airport staff told me that this is a "recession thing"...in the old days, if were polite and genuine, they would have simply put you on the next available seat (remember experiencing that myself in the past), but not any more, it's "process ahead of humans....". Any truth in that I wonder?
PS. Well, two bankers, who played their part in creating the recession in the first place, behind us in the queue, and who had also been stuck in the traffic, just quipped "hey, it's only £700, what's the problem?" Enough said....
