BWIA
I am posting this for a friend, can anyone help?
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Our Family Christmas Story....I am not usually so forthcoming with personal experience in the kind of forum (unless it is good news of course!) but this one is for sharing....
1. Tough year so we opted to try to save a few bucks and use BWIA as the carrier so that our daughter could come for a much needed holiday with her family. They had the dates open that we needed and $400 is a big difference to us. She has not been home since May so coming not home for Christmas was simply not open to debate – it had to happen.
2. Red eye flight with a path from Toronto – Piarco – Barbados....great timing as she had the flu so it gave her the full day to get ready and then time to sleep on the way here. Flight was lovely and uneventful – Trini hostesses were attentive and very friendly.
3. Once back here in Barbados the **** started....a bag was lost. Of course this was the one that contained 90% of what she really needed for her holiday - all her clothes and most personal items/Christmas tokens for her brother and sister, granny and auntie/special things that my family were sending for their grandchildren.
4. Bag reported missing on arrival – followed all the rules – filled in forms and were told we would be contacted within 24 hours.
5. About 48 hours went by and WE HEARD NOTHING FROM BWIA. Now it was my turn to get PISSED.
6. Called and blasted whoever the poor guy was on customer service duty that evening and told him exactly what I thought of the whole thing. While knowing it was not even remotely his actual fault I explained that I do my very best provide superlative customer service as mandated by my company. So now when it is my time to RECEIVE customer service I get NONE? Karma....huh...what’s that? Wonder how this would have been handled if she would have been staying at Sandy Lane?
7. They then started calling 2x daily (at least they actually heard me) - but of course only to tell me there was no news but they were still diligently looking for the bag....bull****. Every time they called they asked new questions only providing us all with a sense of false hope.
8. Yesterday the **** hit the fan and the meltdown started – she has been AMAZING to this point and very mature about the whole thing. I am exceptionally proud of her but we are all very tired of this whole thing and not getting any results or even a bit of empathy.
9. It had now been 7 days so she was entitled to an “inconvenience compensation” for being without the bag for 7 days...”Please come to the airport between 3-6pm and there will be an envelope with your name on it. Hopefully this will help until the insurance claim can be filed and processed”....off we go to the airport. Envelope was of course NOT there. After much back and forth about filling out insurance forms out by hand in triplicate (which are available to submit on line BTW and we did inform them that this was what we intended to do) she was given $100BDS. Hmmmm...$100BDS – FOR REAL??? 7 days of wearing borrowed clothes and 7 days of worry and stress and concern – thanks so very much for that. It was a great deal of help.
10. Time to fill in the forms....and then wait.
This is where I ask for help....does ANYONE know a contact in the upper echelon of BWIA in Trinidad – CEO name/Regional Customer Service name/perhaps someone who will be honest and sympathetic to the situation? I firmly believe that it was stolen – it’s gone – I have no false hope of it being returned – ever....I and others in my family have lost bags on Air Canada, AA, Liat, West Jet, not to mention BA, Lufthansa, as well as a few other EU based airline but I think the longest we ever had to wait was 48 hours until the bag was delivered by cab directly to our front door. While I can respect that this may very well have just been a bad set of circumstances – I want some service and I do not want to wait 6 weeks for her to be able to replace her lost things. Has anyone ever actually LOST a bag and not had it recovered?? ANY advice or direct contact information would be GREATLY appreciated.
Merry Christmas? Debatable – but as always – there is hope for 2015.