British Airways (BA) Has No Clue How to Keep Repeat Customers

British Airways has really missed the boat. We travel a bunch because of my husband's business. Most of our travel is very long trips: Copenhagen to Miami, Copenhagen to Melbourne, Australia... like that. Not usually short little commuter hops, but mega-flights. Because of this, we keep careful track of Frequent Flyer Miles as they are very valuable to us for our personal vacation kinda trips.

Usually we make our own reservations, but sometimes his company will call and be all Oh hey we went ahead and booked a flight for you, here it is. Then I need to scramble to match his flight for my own ticket. This is what they did recently. Our last trip to the US was booked by them on British Airways via AmEx Travel. We have been trying like hell to join their Executive Club flyer miles program ever since... to no avail. The problem is that you can only join up via their own website. Let me tell you about that damned website...

It is pretty. It is white and blue. It is inviting. It is also a bitch to try to navigate and find what you want, and once you do find what you want the site glitches and tells you try back later after you have bothered to fill all their forms out. I was pulling my hair out for months over this freakin site. I finally decided to blow them off and write the tickets off... then his company booked him to Australia. On British Airways. ARG.

So. I went to the British Airways website again and tried to join their program. Error after error after error. They demand a ticket number for your flight. None of our US tickets either way even had a ticket number, just itinerary numbers and flight numbers and everything else you could think of to identify us... but not the one number they required.

So I tried to book my flight from CPH to MEL directly through their website. Can you hear me screaming? Error after error after error. For two weeks straight, several times each day, I would go back to them and click click click to get to the actual page to book a flight. You see, their front page only gives you a form to book a return flight. WTF is up with that? Is British Airways mentally deficient or what?

So I would fill out the flight I wanted and all of my personal info, only to be thrown to a page telling me yet again that there has been a problem with their server and to try again later. I finally got fed up and booked on Expedia.

I booked a British Airways round-trip flight via Hong Kong. This is over a 20-hour flight, folks. Not a short hop at all. I got an actual ticket number from them. So off I go back to BA's online site and attempt yet again to join the club for the flyer miles. This time the form actually worked. It turned me down. It said I had not booked a 'qualifying' flight to join.

I immediately shot off an email to them via their website explaining my feelings of utter futility with them and their website. They answered the next day. Tough cookies was basically the response. They said the only way to join is to book a FULL FARE round trip flight directly from their website. After that, you will get miles for every flight with them regardless of where you booked. Are you kidding me? How the bloody hell can I do that if your freakin website won't let me? That is exactly what I shot back to the CS rep, along with a few other things. heh.

She responded within 15 minutes that time, telling me to call their number for website support.

Guess what. They lost a number of good customers that day. They lost the entire bunch of flights for me, Lars, and everyone who works with Lars because he has informed his company to NEVER EVER book with BA again. We'll take our KLM or SAS miles from now on and be glad to do so. These people at BA are needlessly infuriating. For an airline company who claims to have recently lost untold billions because of the bogus Blair to-do, they sure are not concerned about keeping customers. That was a 2k flight ticket, both of them.. No, all three of them because Lars has one person down there with him working also from his company. They should have let us sign up for the freakin program.

Now, there is one other option on their website to join that frequent flyer program: sign up for a BA American Express card through them. This is, I'm sure, the real alley they are trying to get you to go down. But we already have an AmEx. Why the hell would we sign up for another one? Nope. They are flat losing business over their idiocy.

The only useful part of their whole website is you can check on current baggage rules the night before you fly. I could do that pretty much anywhere on the web though, really. They say you can also book a hotel, but given I couldn't even successfully book one of their own flights via that freakin site; I doubt it would be easy to get a hotel booked.

One star. Forget British Airways. There are far too many more amicable airlines out there going to the same destinations.