BA ‘supposed’ IT issues for refunds, customer details on a spreadsheet?

[BajiNahid]

I was supposed to receive a full refund from BA for a flight booking, due to which a call centre agent had mucked up for me.

Back in October 22, I called up BA to change my flight booking before check-in closing due to an emergency popping up on the day of my flight and asked to reschedule.

Called the US number at 4am in the morning for it to go to India and the colleague was in the midst of changing my booking when the call got dropped. She did not call back. I then called again and got put to the South African call centre where the agent advised me that changing my booking was not allowed even though there was time before check-in closure because it was ‘late’ and she denied to change the booking even though the request was made and a note was left on their system to make then change, the agent cut the call on me. I called again but this time the queue was long enough for check in to close and inevitably i was marked as a no show and i couldnt get a refund.

In early November 2022, i called up again and got through to India, and a really helpful agent explained to me that the agent has made a mistake and they should have rebooked me before check in closing, therefore someone from BA will get in contact with me (yeah right!) and cut the call.

End of November 2022, i call up BA again and this time i got put through to the UK call centre where for heavens sake i thought maybe they could help me here! Boy was I wrong, there are new agents on the phone where they are not clearly trained (managers words not mine really!) and were more wanting to put the phone down and passing me on the phone to a manager. After a real 15 minute tussle i was put through to a supervisor/manager who was absolutely sympathetic and understanding. Manager assured me that i would receive my refund. 2 months later nothing has come.

January 3rd 2023, called up yesterday and put through to SA again, was told that refund apparently could not be applied because my card was not working (paid with BA amex and is in date), i told the agent that’s porkies and he says he has to call the refund department, he then comes back and tells me that there has been an IT breakdown at BA Refunds team and that all customer information and details including credit cards are currently on a spreadsheet and staff are apparently working from that spreadsheet as systems are down and BA are not able to refund customers at this time.

Couldn’t believe it at all, and you wonder why BA has data breaches!

[Andrew.]

The whole world runs on comma separated values – whether that’s Big Data tables or running a straightforward Excel spreadsheet.

[Rob]

It is a common misconception amongst people who have never worked for big companies that they have mysterious ways and processes that small companies do not. This is generally untrue. When I was doing financial modelling for billion dollar infrastructure projects in my early banking days it was all done on the same version of Excel you use at home.

The software that runs HfP and which anyone can download for free (WordPress) runs most major magazine-style websites, even the huge ones.