So some history to start with.
I came back on Friday 31st October from St Louis to home via Chicago.
The weather on Friday was pretty apt for Hallowe'en in that is was frightful. Frightful enough to mean a lot of flights in and out of Chicago were cancelled. My flight took off nearly three hours late, but luckily I had allowed for this after the last return flight on American Airlines had left me stranded.
The landing, in an Embraer ERJ-175, was well handled by the captain. Given there was a 70 miles per hour headwind and sleet and snow in the air, he held the plane about 5 meters off the runway for a few seconds before slamming it down. Having been in a similar situation before the slamming down is an approved method for ensuring the wheels bite the tarmac.
We made the gate at 9:00pm with the BA flight closing the gates at 9:25pm. In a different terminal, and after security. And a train ride.
I made the gate at 9:20 or so, perhaps even earlier and probably leaving a wake of devastation and muttering yanks behind [but then I did drag a few other brits with me too - complete with the phrase "Don't be such a Brit, we're getting on the plane..."]
What I also knew was that whilst I had made the flight, the chances of my bag doing the same were slim to none.
On arrival at Heathrow I did what you do and waited for the "Bags Arriving" sign to change to "Bags Delivered" before heading to the Lost/Delayed bags counter.
And now the fun starts.
Having duly processed my ticket and agreed that the bag wasn't on the flight the agent and I set about to agree when and where the bags would be delivered.
Knowing there wasn't much I needed in the bag, I suggested it be delivered to work on Monday.
"Monday?" says the agent, "We can get your bag to you on Sunday at home. It'll be here Sunday morning, we'll pick it up, give to the carrier and there you'll be."
Short of "Bish, bosh, jobs a good'un" it couldn't have been more chipper. Or less accurate.
So Sunday comes and yes, the bag was on the first flight out of Chicago that landed 6:31am on Sunday morning.
Here's the BA/AA tracking info from their baggage tracking page:
Here's the flightaware data for it: FlightAware-BA294 I like this site by the way. InfoGeek!
And here's the Courier log for it from BA:
Wait a minute, you're going say, you haven't had your bag delivered. But it's Monday. It's the afternoon, and your bag is still sat in the courier's office? How did that happen?
Well I don't know. In fact there's lots of things I don't know.
I don't know, for example, why at 4:00pm on Sunday the bag was still shown as in-transit. This caused me to ring the BA support line to tell them to deliver it to work as sure as apples are apples they weren't delivering it to my home on Sunday...
Then at 6:00pm, the status changed to "DELIVERY PROCESS INITIATED". 6:00pm, what the heck? Why then? I means that pretty much 11 hours after the bag landed. Was that one final sweep of the hall before cocoa?
So, back to BA customer support to say, well, if it's with the courier then send it to my home.
So they entered that address.
Didn't bother telling me that I had less chance of getting my bag on Sunday then I did of winning the previous day's lottery. Nah.
So, Monday morning comes, and unsurprisingly my bag hasn't. So back to BA customer to get the address changed again. It's 8:05am when I call and the agent kindly tells me that I have to phone the courier to get the address changed. But they don't open until 10:00am [so that's hardly a rush job, is it].
And here's a question, why do I have to phone the courier, when it's just a BA sub-contract? Why isn't that automated? What's the point of customer service, if the only thing they offer is that I do it myself.
Actually what happened was that whilst the agent said she wouldn't do anything, when I called back at 10:00am the address had been changed.
And finally, why the fumble is it still sat at the couriers?
Oh yeah, here's the reason:
From the ticket info on the lost baggage site:
Which is a big shoulder shrug of responsibility, isn't it? That's basically saying: We'll get round to it.
It's also important to note that the bag has been more delayed by the handling in the UK than the actual missed connection. Surely that's wrong too.
And "COURIER WILL CALL U" on a web-site? In 2014? That's so professional, innit? Unless you have got time-locked teenagers running the service, in which case you're excused.
And finally, BA, update your phone number on the lost baggage website. If you have a local number [0344] why not have that there instead of the 0844 one?
As Dave Brailsford pointed out it is "the aggregation of marginal gains" that can lead to success.
British Airways seem to be aggregating something else, and it's not helping.
I came back on Friday 31st October from St Louis to home via Chicago.
The weather on Friday was pretty apt for Hallowe'en in that is was frightful. Frightful enough to mean a lot of flights in and out of Chicago were cancelled. My flight took off nearly three hours late, but luckily I had allowed for this after the last return flight on American Airlines had left me stranded.
The landing, in an Embraer ERJ-175, was well handled by the captain. Given there was a 70 miles per hour headwind and sleet and snow in the air, he held the plane about 5 meters off the runway for a few seconds before slamming it down. Having been in a similar situation before the slamming down is an approved method for ensuring the wheels bite the tarmac.
We made the gate at 9:00pm with the BA flight closing the gates at 9:25pm. In a different terminal, and after security. And a train ride.
I made the gate at 9:20 or so, perhaps even earlier and probably leaving a wake of devastation and muttering yanks behind [but then I did drag a few other brits with me too - complete with the phrase "Don't be such a Brit, we're getting on the plane..."]
What I also knew was that whilst I had made the flight, the chances of my bag doing the same were slim to none.
On arrival at Heathrow I did what you do and waited for the "Bags Arriving" sign to change to "Bags Delivered" before heading to the Lost/Delayed bags counter.
And now the fun starts.
Having duly processed my ticket and agreed that the bag wasn't on the flight the agent and I set about to agree when and where the bags would be delivered.
Knowing there wasn't much I needed in the bag, I suggested it be delivered to work on Monday.
"Monday?" says the agent, "We can get your bag to you on Sunday at home. It'll be here Sunday morning, we'll pick it up, give to the carrier and there you'll be."
Short of "Bish, bosh, jobs a good'un" it couldn't have been more chipper. Or less accurate.
So Sunday comes and yes, the bag was on the first flight out of Chicago that landed 6:31am on Sunday morning.
Here's the BA/AA tracking info from their baggage tracking page:
Here's the flightaware data for it: FlightAware-BA294 I like this site by the way. InfoGeek!
And here's the Courier log for it from BA:
And here's their log that I grabbed at 12:05 pm Monday 3 November.
Well I don't know. In fact there's lots of things I don't know.
I don't know, for example, why at 4:00pm on Sunday the bag was still shown as in-transit. This caused me to ring the BA support line to tell them to deliver it to work as sure as apples are apples they weren't delivering it to my home on Sunday...
Then at 6:00pm, the status changed to "DELIVERY PROCESS INITIATED". 6:00pm, what the heck? Why then? I means that pretty much 11 hours after the bag landed. Was that one final sweep of the hall before cocoa?
So, back to BA customer support to say, well, if it's with the courier then send it to my home.
So they entered that address.
Didn't bother telling me that I had less chance of getting my bag on Sunday then I did of winning the previous day's lottery. Nah.
So, Monday morning comes, and unsurprisingly my bag hasn't. So back to BA customer to get the address changed again. It's 8:05am when I call and the agent kindly tells me that I have to phone the courier to get the address changed. But they don't open until 10:00am [so that's hardly a rush job, is it].
And here's a question, why do I have to phone the courier, when it's just a BA sub-contract? Why isn't that automated? What's the point of customer service, if the only thing they offer is that I do it myself.
Actually what happened was that whilst the agent said she wouldn't do anything, when I called back at 10:00am the address had been changed.
And finally, why the fumble is it still sat at the couriers?
Oh yeah, here's the reason:
From the ticket info on the lost baggage site:
Which is a big shoulder shrug of responsibility, isn't it? That's basically saying: We'll get round to it.
It's also important to note that the bag has been more delayed by the handling in the UK than the actual missed connection. Surely that's wrong too.
And "COURIER WILL CALL U" on a web-site? In 2014? That's so professional, innit? Unless you have got time-locked teenagers running the service, in which case you're excused.
And finally, BA, update your phone number on the lost baggage website. If you have a local number [0344] why not have that there instead of the 0844 one?
As Dave Brailsford pointed out it is "the aggregation of marginal gains" that can lead to success.
British Airways seem to be aggregating something else, and it's not helping.
Update!
So it's now Tuesday and I have good news: I have my bag.
Here's the delivery log from City Bags:
Yes that is 23:16 when I signed for it.
If you look a bit closer at that log you'll see that the bag was loaded onto the delivery vehicle at 15:28. And that was when the driver gave me a ring to say that the delivery time would be between 10:30 and 11:30 pm.
So, once again, I had to change the address, cos y'know offices are pretty closed at that time of night. Actually, so are most homes.
And the saddest thing? The poor sod was not done yet. He still had another few bags to deliver. Folks are being asked to stay up past midnight, that's not customer service. And it's not the driver's fault either. Were I jet-lagged that's a big ask.
So what would I recommend to BA to get things sorted.
Well,
- Don't promise and then fail to deliver. I knew from the get-go that Monday was the most likely day that my bag would be delivered. Although I hadn't reckoned on how close to Tuesday we would get. It also meant that I was waiting in on Sunday for a bag that was never going to arrive.
- Don't have a system that lets folks see how inept you are. The phone line tells you that you can track your bags online. Actually, what you get is to see a bag sat lonely on a conveyor belt waiting for someone. Someone that will never come... And then you can track that your bag has gone for a rest in a warehouse somewhere. This is not reuniting you with your bags.
- Have customer service agents that could give two hoots. At this particular moment in time, and you're lucky this was on the flight home not out, the contents of that bag are important. Were I sat in a hotel wondering where my next pair of skivvies was coming from, as happened once in Cuba, then humour and patience will be at very low levels.
- Try delivering at reasonable times.You can't say that 11:16pm is because you wanted to get my bag to me as fast as possible; if that were the case the 11:16pm on Sunday would be true. So would 11:16am on Sunday. In fact the earliest you could have made this was by using BA1541/AA90 [a godawful flight - I know from experience] which would have landed at T3 on Saturday night, less than 12 hours after I landed at T5.
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