Compensation advice please

[SamKay809]

Hi,

My wife and flew to the U.S. in WTP using Avios, and but for the entire flight her IFE didn’t work and mine was intermittent requiring several restarts before I gave up.

The crew were great in that they tried their best, and as it was a full flight they couldn’t move us to alternative seats.

The CSD suggested we make a complaint via BA.com which I did, and they’ve offered £50 as compensation. I did respond that I felt it wasn’t very much, but they say it’s fair.

For an 8+ hour flight, it feels rather stingy, but I’d appreciate your thoughts, and if you agree what are my next steps and what I ought to try and ask for please?

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum (we are Executive Club Members).

[Ihar]

My advice is to outline what consequence it had on your experience. If you missed out on a couple of films, but read books/worked/played films on your tablet, then I suppose it’s not such a big deal. Also if you had a suitable tablet/laptop you could have paid for WiFi and streamed. If on the other hand you twiddled thumbs for 8 hours then that’s a different matter.

I’d say somewhere between £50-£100 is appropriate. (IMHO)

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

If tht is £50 each then I think that’s more than reasonable.

I assume you both made separate indovidual claims?

[JDB]

@SamKay809 – if you have already complained the initial offer of £50 was insufficient and they have not increased that, I doubt a third request will change the decision. £50 is a fairly standard offer for non-functioning IFE, possibly higher in Club or First. I’m not sure how much you would have considered fair but in objective terms, £50 would cover a lot of home entertainment subscription etc.

[Flying Moonwards]

Personally based on my experience with BA this seems like a low-ball offer. I would have thought 10-20k avios per affected passenger might be more in the right ballpark for this, especially if you can explain how this adversely affected you in practice. Having said that I don’t know what factors they take into account to determine what to offer – e.g. they might take Exec Club status / whether it was a cash or avios booking into account to personalise how much they’re willing to give.

[JDB]

@Flying Moonwards – BA does adjust its compensation depending on who is asking, how one asks and the class of travel. Here the OP has asked twice and the offer wasn’t increased. In respect of IFE, I don’t think explaining how it affected one is going to elicit any great sympathy or increased offer. It seems really quite embarrassing for a grown up to be arguing that they are incapable of entertaining themselves for the duration of the flight. A small child maybe.

The offer of 10k-20k (so £100-£200 or a bit less in BA’s terms) would be extraordinarily generous here. I’m not sure how you would objectively justify such a large sum as a proportion of the fare (if on Avios 20k would be more than 25% of the fare and even more when allowing for APD) or on a standalone basis.

[Gordon]

I looked at this yesterday, and was pondering over it.
I do like to use the IFE for taking in a couple of films,

My experience, last year, I had a flight with Jet Blue, CUN-LAX, after take off I found my IFE did not work, one of the crew kindly moved me and my wife to alternative seats together, but that IFE was also not working in the alternative seat, it was not my day!

The flight duration was 5.5 hours, in economy, as oppose to the 8 hour flight mentioned. It was disappointing, but I made do with sorting through my emails and photos on my phone, and reading the in flight magazines, It was not the end of the world, and I did not bother complaining, as the crew did the best they could under the circumstances, also.

I have flown Jet blue several times, and have found the experience very satisfying, I guess it is down to the individual if they do indeed complain, how much they expect for certain inconveniences.

Americans love to complain, and there is a compensation culture in the US, it seems the UK is following suit,
I am aware that there are times that a complaint is justified, but some people complain just for the sake of complaining. That was not aimed at @SamKay809 but just my thoughts on some complaints I’ve seen mentioned.