I have now completed the conversion of voucher to confirmed ticket for my sister on VS. The amount of keyboarding would have been way too much for her arthritis. Worse, waiting at the PC, starting at the computer to see when the agent would answer, or pose the next question. I can say that, on each occaision, when I 'spoke' with the agents they were all really helpful. I think that I could have completed everything in 2 x 15 min calls, rather than the over 3 hours of waiting and typing.

As I said previously, I appreciate that many pax do not know what they want and ask the agent for a ridiculous number of options and then do not book. I wonder if this has something to do with the days when folks went to a travel agent - or the airline's own city bureaus - and could spend half an hour asking lots of questions.

Good point. The UK is not yet at "shoot first, ask questions later".

I shall not bore you with the details but two more IT fails by airlines:

1) Helping a friend of mine with BA Club account. Despite having booked tickets through the site, the flights and credits did not show up. Upon entering the claim the site rejected the eTicket number - that we had read off their own email... Had to go through Web Chat: Took over 30 minutes to be given a link to send copies of the documents as proof. BUT because they went to a central system the agent could not see them and the site says that they will notify within 28 days. That took both of us nearly an hour and sending three BA documents back to BA.

2) The same friend need to book an internal flight in South Africa. Looked at options and decided on the new company Lift. On reaching the payment page she waited 15 minutes for the twirling lights to resolve before cancelling. Used Web Chat to no avail and told to try again. She tried again and the same. She checked her account and had not been billed. So she turned to Safair and, whilst looking up details - received an email from Lift to confirm the booking. She does not know which attempt worked but was only billed once.

How do they do it?

I wanted to offer a few items to a museum to be part of exhibits they already have but their main email account from their website produced nothing in two weeks.
I contacted a specialist shop about a replacement light fitting through their web page. The web form did not work so I sent to their main email. After a week - nothing. As they are specialists I telephoned THEN they looked into their email.

Sometimes even the small companies are useless.

There is a great response from RyanAir to someone complaining about their process. I read:
They replied to his tweet: Adulting is hard

FR never promised customer service so I think they are justified. Other airlines are available.

The following short YouTube video appeared in my feed and it does a good job of explaining why ticketing is so difficult and often goes wrong. The voice explanation is very fast - I suspect that it is deiberately played fast so as to reduce the overal time of the video. Longer videos are less likely to be played. A fair amount of the imagery is 'stock' but I stil think it worth while, particularly for those who are new to the complexities of ticketing.


A good friend of mine who is a senior software manager and developer has experienced these same problems in other commercial areas - where the cost of upgrading is seen by the directors, rather than the long term benefits.

My son was expecting a parcel on the 14th, containing small items for his business. He’d paid for next day delivery with a large U.K. courier.

At 0720 am that morning our front doorbell camera alerted us to someone on the driveway, via our mobile phones, but the doorbell didn’t actually ring. I was just out of bed and checked my phone. I saw a courier’s large delivery van parked on my driveway, having reversed in. I was obviously expecting the doorbell to ring any second so I hurried through to receive the package.

The bell did not ring. I opened the door to speak to the driver but he was already back in his van and driving away. I looked around outside for the package, but there was nothing to be found. My wife came through and said she had seen the driver walk up to the front door (and the clearly visible doorbell alongside) and post something through the letter box, after taking a photo of it in his hand, in front of the door. It was a card, saying that the package had not been left because a signature was required. Had the driver rung the bell and waited he would have certainly got a signature. I missed him by seconds.

I then reviewed the camera recording. At no time did the driver carry a package to the door. It appears that he got out of his van with the card already written then had gone straight to post it without ringing the doorbell. Had he got out of the van with a package the camera would have recorded it as “Package detected”, which it cleverly does…even if you walk past it with a shopping bag, let alone a box which would have to be carried in front of the person. It would also have recorded the cargo door of the van being opened, which it did not.

My son was very busy yesterday and today so I volunteered to sort out redelivery of the package for him. The card stated that I needed to go online to rearrange delivery. It was at their depot about eight miles away and couldn’t be re delivered until tomorrow, but I could pre warn the depot that I would fetch it, which I decided to do. I took the card and eventually found the depot, basically on a new industrial site, having initially gone to the newer, incorrect building - it was at the older one further round the site.

I was given the package. I noticed that nowhere on it did it say that a signature was needed from the recipient on delivery, nor was I asked for any ID. I made a verbal complaint! I suspect that the driver simply couldn’t be bothered to look for the parcel in his van…no doubt it was quite full so early in the morning and didn’t want to get delayed.

On my return back home, a message popped up asking me to leave a review…..so I did!

Similar happend to a friend in 1990s when utility meters were read by a roundsman. Sitting in his study, he saw the meter reader walk up to the front door with the 'you were out' card already in his hand. The fellow was surprised to find that, before he could put into the front door letter slot - the door was opened. The fellow was reported.

Today I have to add Avis to my list of tech failures. I needed to add a second booking for a trip we have soon and found that my account had no record of the first booking. The phone app did not know about it either. Unfortunately for Avis, whenever I make a booking online, I take a screen shot (or a multi-page download if needed) and record the booking ref. They will never reveal what happened but I'm going to guess that a system was 'upgraded'.

I can also add Aviva to this catalogue but they are not travel related so you are spared. Suffice to say that a company who keeps different policies on different computer systems and ne'er the twain shall meet. When you want to update one, there is a set of requirments. When you then discover you have to update the other? Totally different requirements. This included asking me for my mobile phone number, despite having sent me some details on that number less than five minutes before. They want me to prove my address - which is normal - but if I send them proof of my address they will not accept it because I want to CHANGE my address ...

We all have horror stories about delivery drivers - but you get what you pay for - or rather what the supplier will pay for .

Last week I was tracking a delivery and the driver was 2 streets away delivering Parcel #20 (at 09:00) - he arrived on time and I mentioned I'd tracked him doing #20 - he laughed and showed me the app - I was #27 20 minutes later - the companies drive these guys to deliver vast amounts every day or lose their jobs.

Logged into Avis to check new booking and - amazing - the original booking was also there. Yet, when I wanted to change the time by a few hours, it forced me through most of the booking pages and then said that the numbers of my credit card were not correct. That surprised me as they have them on file ... Eventually got it to believe me THEN it said the CVV was wrong 'code must not have any letters or spaces' since I had only entered digits, this surprised me. Third time round, it believed me. :ugh:

Also discovered that John Lewis have two customer service paths. One for purchases online and one for bought in store and they do not overlap at all. :hmm:

They're no the only one - a number of places I go have one path for ads/purchases, a completely different one for accounts and another for "service"...........

Asturias56
Your tale reminds me back in the last century and early this when I was a loyal BA customer flying out of Manchester world wide, though long haul via LHR apart from JFK. Invariably bags would not make the shuttle, or indeed shuttle cancelled for operational reasons. However if I made the flight, and bag did not it would come North later, and be brought to me via Fred the Transit White van driver. To say we were on fist name terms would be a misnomer. I always made Coffee for him and learnt that he preferred Dark Chocolate Digestive biscuits. Our relationship came to an end after a very bad Business trip to Boston when bags lost for sometime, and my then MD bag never reappearing. We moved to LH, SQ,EK and when I formed our new company those were the carriers I took with me.

Cheers
Mr Mac

Used to be like that in Aberdeen - BA used to bump bags for passengers - especially on a Friday afternoon - and the local taxis would be hired to deliver the bags which all came up on the last flight from LHR. Regular fliers got to know most of the drivers personally ................ In fact most of us used to carry a set of already partially completed missing baggage forms.

Wow! I am fortunate to have never had that regular bag loss. I recall a tight connection MUC~FRA~DTW, we were late into FRA and I knew that the bag would not have made it. At DTW, so many people were shocked that their bags were not there. Early on I learnt the mantra: When your bag is checked in - you must presume that you will never see it again.

But, does the Cabin think that bag mishandling/loss has improved?

TBH it's amazing so few get lost - the problem is when there's a problem that builds up a mountain of the stuff somewhere or it's institutionalised as in the BA ABZ case

I haven't seen much change

Paxboy
Your local airport is LHR , for the rest of UK it is not. Hence the drop in BA passengers and drop in shuttle flights. BA will claim its rail etc. Frankly it’s not, it’s just the rest of the country has learned to miss BA and LHR. We use ME3 , KLM, LH etc, no brainer as we will still have to change somewhere and LHR has more issues than others.

Cheers
Mr Mac

Paxboy
One other thing the other carriers I mentioned will not stick you on a bus for along trip up the M1 and M6 after flying into LHR from wherever. That happened twice to me over the years the last time due to traffic on a Friday night the ride to Manchester took longer than the flight from Kuwait !!!

As for are there less bags lost , I don’t know, but I have not had one misplaced yet, and I am not aware of any in my company. However next month I have a just over an hour connection in Munich from inbound LH from Manchester to outbound Oman Air to Muscat, and I will have hold luggage 😧😧😧
Cheers
Mr Mac

Thanks Mr Mac. Yes, LHR is my local and has been since 1978 when I first moved to London, I now actually live in South Bucks and (not rush hour) it's about 45 mins. LTN is my secondary and a similar time in opposite direction. This does mean that the greatest amount of my travel has been point to point.

I have used Lufty a fair amount over the years via FRA+MUC and it worked well. As I get older, I don't mind paying extra for P-to-P. That said, when I look at the options for the indirects, there is not often a big saving. Perhaps in Y but not in PE or C for obvious reasons.

PAXboy
My normal route to Muscat from Manchester would be EK. However on this trip I am having to be in Manchester the day before I fly and need to speak to a colleague who is coming from Munich before meet in Muscat. Interestingly the savings from EK are substantial, as if she came to Manchester, and we flew EK from there, returning to Manchester for argument sake, the saving is £4k. Not insubstantial.

Cheers
Mr Mac

Alas Smith and Jones - The Stakeout: