[mayfam]

My wife checked in at Venice (VCE) with an online award ticket to fly to LGW and on to Tampa (TPA). The papers showed the itinerary, the amount paid in fees and taxes, and the ticket number. BA even sent her an invitation to check in online.

At VCE airport's BA check-in desk, the BA agent found her reservation out of order in the BA system. A previous reservations agent had erred with an entry concerning the VCE-LGW leg. Rather than remedy this herself, the agent sent my wife to call BA in Milan!!! My wife does not speak Italian, but had to buy a phone card, and learn to use the local phones to call BA in Milan. Milan promised to get it fixed, leaving my wife to go back to the check-in line and hope the matter had been remedied. Eventually it was.

If my wife had not scurried so successfully, BA might have been liable for an overnight stay at VCE, a canceled overnight stay at LGW, and fresh tickets for VCE-LGW-TPA. In other words, my wife saved BA a ton of money.

I cannot believe a BA check-in agent can be so ill-trained as to not have sorted this out herself on her own computer. But to expect the passenger to go on a runaround to call BA herself (luckily finding the other BA office "in") takes quite some insulting nerve.

BA does not dispute that the error was their own fault by the original reservations agent.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE END OF IT. BA'S CUSTOMER SERVICE ONLINE PRODUCED A GRUDGING OFFER OF A SMALL CREDIT OFF FUTURE PAID TRAVEL ON BA. SINCE WE LIVE IN TAMPA, FROM WHERE BA'S ONLY FLIGHT IS TO LONDON, THIS AMOUNTS TO US PAYING $1000 OR MORE FOR THE RIGHT TO TAKE A FEW DOLLARS OFF THAT TICKET PRICE. Why? The compensation cannot be used on award travel, or even on the portion of award travel that are airline-imposed fees. In other words, even the portion of an award ticket that we pay cash for (like the so-called fuel surcharge) cannot be paid from the BA offer.

That, at any rate, is BA's Mr. LaBott's offer. Clearly BA doesn't grasp the seriousness of making a passenger, who attempts to check in at a BA check-in desk with normal BA-reservation papers for a ticket already charged for, go hunting at a foreign airport for the means to make a phone call to another BA office to sort out a BA reservations error that the check-in clerk should have sorted out herself.