Forums › Payment cards › Barclaycard Avios › Cabin upgrade voucher › Reply To: Cabin upgrade voucher
@Froggee – I love a well written tale with a happy ending hopefully soon to land in your inbox.
In the olden days BA telephone staff (and in the Travel Shops – monster Air Miles bonuses for using those!) were incredibly well trained, knowledgeable and helpful plus ticketing trained even if they didn’t usually issue tickets. They had wide discretion to assist (particularly status) passengers in remarkable ways that ultimately management probably thought excessive, so they took discretion away to almost zero. That made the job harder and more boring so most of the experienced staff have left.
Now they seem to find completely clueless nincompoops who either aren’t trained or are incapable of being trained. They sound so unmotivated and one can hear that they don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Often totally distracted WFH to add to the skills on their CV.
They don’t know their own rules or how to use their own systems and, as you experienced, anything using a voucher is manual and thus beyond many of their capabilities.
They have so few ticketing people (and even fewer experienced or sensible ones) that they can’t manage the ticketing queues fast enough before PCI-DSS compliance kicks in to delete full payment details sending the passenger round the circuit again.
I think that is unfair and rude. The majority of staff I’ve spoken to in the call centres have been great and try to help as much as possible, often going above expectations.
It’s very fair unless one has been living in a cave. Fair enough it’s not just BA, but the level of service & professionalism has fallen off the cliff. The simplest tasks/queries necessitate escalations. Sadly common send and efficiency is not in the DNA.
New to Head for Points?
Welcome! We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.
Latest Forum Posts
-
BA Flyer IHG Stayer on Diamond Status challenge
-
caj2310 on Chat thread – Wednesday 12th February
-
BA Flyer IHG Stayer on MMB?
-
markymarc2000 on Diamond Status challenge
-
JDB on Original routing credit
-
Bill on Chat thread – Wednesday 12th February
-
squawk7700 on Chat thread – Wednesday 12th February
-
phantomchickenz on MMB?
-
phantomchickenz on Original routing credit
-
andyhg2025 on Has anyone else lost interest too?
Check reward flight availability instantly for free!
Booking a luxury hotel?
Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.