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Closure

February 19, 2024 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/flat-vintage-travel-poster_4661673.htm#page=2&query=airplane&position=47&from_view=keyword&track=sph&uuid=8990c9ee-9876-4a5f-93b5-870f42785c91">Image by pikisuperstar</a> on Freepik“The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday”

Steve Maraboli

My last post to this journal ended with this sentence:

“Anyway – I feel that it will not be long until the news here, at least, takes a turn for the better“.

The very next day…

Quite enough has been written in these postings over the last ten months concerning our abortive attempt at a trip of a lifetime, featuring an all bells and whistles safari to Botswana. If you somehow missed the saga of how British Airways wrote off our epic adventure (along with a considerable chunk of our savings) then simply use the search feature on the home page. A search for “British Airways” or any one of a number of expletives should return the information that you seek.

Back in December – shortly before Christmas – this post brought regular readers up to date with the current status of our long (out)standing insurance claims – by means of which we hoped to recover at least some of our outlay. At that point (back in November) the girl had received a partial payment from our main insurers but I had heard nothing. The post ended thus:

“We must, of course, needs be patient yet and wait and see what happens…”

So – back to where we started:

The very next day…

…I received in the post a cheque from our insurers. It was for the full amount of the claim (actually by a small but discernible margin rather more than I was expecting).

Hoo-bloomin’-rah!

Delighted as she was for me, The Girl was understandably put out that she had been left out of this little bonanza.

However – the very next day (again!)…

…another missive arrived from the insurers, this time including a cheque for the residue of her claim.

Hoo-bloomin’-rah-some-more!

Where does this leave us? Well – all the claims that could be met and all the payments that the various parties could not avoid making – are in. We have, between the two of us, recovered something in excess of $24,000 (CAD). That might seem impressive had we not laid out just slightly less than $40,000 (CAD) on the trip and the recovery operation as a whole.

Well – we did get a (hugely expensive) week in the UK, though much of that time was spent either on the phone to British Airways or being unable to sleep because of a growing sense of panic.

No matter. ‘Tis over and done and we have all the closure we are going to get.

I promise that I will do my damnedest not to mention it again.

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Adjusting the sails

December 23, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

William Arthur Ward

I promised a catch-up… Here is part one!

When The Girl and I booked our ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to Africa (‘never in a lifetime’ as it turned out) we spread the financial load by each using our own individual credit cards. This seemed a perfectly logical thing to do – at the time – but as things turned out it created more difficulties both before the trip and in the aftermath.

During the build up to the trip the ‘delightful’ British Airways took it upon themselves to change various features of our itinerary (flights, planes, routes etc) on a number of occasions – each time seating us in different parts of the plane regardless of our protestations that they knew perfectly well that we were traveling together. Each incident took considerable phone-based efforts on our part to correct.

In the aftermath of the fiasco, our attempts to recover as much of the costs as we could – through refunds from the airlines and payments from the insurance policies that we had (thank goodness!) taken out beforehand – has also proved tricky beyond belief. British Airways gave us the bare minimum that they could get away with legally and refused to compensate us for the additional $1,500 that they had changed us each to get back to Canada.

As a result of the bookings having been made separately we were obliged to submit separate but virtually identical insurance claims (two apiece) at virtually the same time. In the case of the lesser claim I received a cheque first but The Girl had to wait nearly another month for hers. For the larger claim – the which covered the safari package itself – she received a cheque (though not for the full amount!) back in October. I have yet to hear from them!

The explanation for The Girl’s partial payment – according to our insurers – is that some items for which we had claimed were ineligible for a coverage. The Girl pointed out to them that the safari packages had been sold and billed as a single items and must therefore either be eligible in their entirety or not at all. As we did not get to go on any part of the adventure (or even to share a continent with it) we are firmly of the view that we should be reimbursed the full whack.

We must, of course, needs be patient yet and wait and see what happens…

 

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Singing in the lifeboats

July 3, 2023 in Life as we know it | 2 comments

“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats”

Voltaire

26th & 27th May

Though we did not get back to the hotel until after 1:00am in the early hours of the morning of 26th May, The Girl was awake again at 4:30am and calling BA on the phone. Following a lengthy exchange she was able to get our Johannesburg flight switched to the following day, 27th May. We rebooked our connecting flights in Africa accordingly.

At around 10:00am I took a taxi back to Terminal 5 to try to locate our luggage. There were long queues of unhappy passengers outside the baggage office but they were not answering any queries. The BA management staff in the terminal would only say that we must log our missing baggage online and await a response. There was a heavy security presence in the terminal which was a good thing as the arrivals hall was teeming with unhappy travelers. Whilst I was there one hysterical young lady threw herself at one of the BA managers – apparently (though perhaps unsurprisingly) aiming to do him some harm. Shortly thereafter the security presence was reinforced by police officers. I beat a retreat.

During the afternoon we tried to log our missing bags online but the system was not working properly and would not record the details. We spent several more hours on the phone to BA and the missing luggage was finally appropriately recorded.

On waking on the morning of the 27th May we found that we had been sent email notifications overnight to the effect that our safari bags had been flown to Johannesburg on 26th May, but were by that time enroute back to the UK – though on different flights. A rapid calculation of flight times made it very clear that we could not be reunited with our bags in time to check in for that evening’s flight.

As detailed in my initial Africa posting, our trip was to have been a safari, staying in remote lodges (without wifi, Internet or cellular access) and traveling between them in small planes. We had purchased bags specifically sized to the requirements of these internal flights (maximum (W) 10” x (H) 12” x (L) 24”) and all of our clothing and other accoutrements had been chosen to be as small/light as possible.

We were supposed to have flown to Johannesburg, switched within a few hours to a local airline for the short hop to Maun, where we would have been met off the plane and transferred immediately to a small aircraft to be flown to the first safari lodge. There was no feasible way that we could have replaced our missing luggage whilst on the journey and without these items there was no possibility of completing the trip as planned. We had by this point rebooked our African internal flights twice – with no hope of a refund – and it felt as though we were just spending more and more money with no guarantee of being able to reach any of our destinations.

With immense reluctance we decided that we had no choice but to abandon our trip of a lifetime and to head back to Canada.

Much of the 27th May was taken up with a series of phone calls to BA, trying to change our booking to get us back to Victoria by any route. The BA agents told us that it was not possible to do this without paying extra charges and that we would have to find a further $1,500 CAD each to get home via Vancouver. This was adding insult upon injury for something that was never our fault.  We were not – at any point in the whole sorry saga – offered by BA the alternative of abandoning our trip and going home.

Again it seemed as though we had no choice but to pay up, which we reluctantly did on the afternoon of the 27th May. Further anxiety was induced when BA initially charged the wrong amount to my credit card, which – when they subsequently corrected it – resulted in my card being blocked until I had made another international call to my credit card company to resolve the issue.

We flew back to Victoria via Vancouver on 30th May, after the Bank Holiday on the 29th and, to our surprise (having received no notification), found my wife’s missing safari bag on the baggage carousel at Vancouver. It was another four days before I finally received notification that my bag was also enroute to Victoria and I had to go to the airport myself on the 4th June to collect it.

The whole experience was enormously stressful for us both. We did everything we could to join our safari and to continue the trip, but British Airways thwarted us at every step. We are well aware that BA has form in such matters and that this not by any means being the first such IT related incident. Little – if anything – seems to have been learned about how to resolve such self-inflicted issues.

With the exception of the small number of staff who did their best to support anxious and confused passengers, British Airway’s handling of the whole sorry saga was in the main obstructive, unhelpful and dismissive.Their only response (when questioned) was to state that all must be resolved online – which is richly ironic given that their IT systems were in meltdown. When we resorted to the inevitably extremely lengthy phone calls (during which we were almost driven insane by the endlessly repeated ‘hold music’) we found ourselves speaking to agents who were clearly a very long way away on different sides of the planet and who were equipped with a limited script outwith which they could not venture. Anything further meant an agonising wait for a call-back (which might or might not materialise) to inform us of the outcome of some other unknowable procedure that had been suggested by a faceless BA ‘supervisor’.

If I give the impression that we are angry about the whole fiasco – then that is because we are! We are still trying to recover whatever we can of the considerable outlay that we had made on this supposed trip of a lifetime, but as you might expect – BA (and others) do not make it easy so to do.

Well – I think… I hope!… that that is quite enough about this particular subject.

Moving on!…

 

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No way to run a railroad!

June 30, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us”

Henry David Thoreau

Thursday 25th May

On Thursday May 25th  – having taken a couple of nights to recover from our extended flight from Canada – The Girl and I arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 a little after 2:00pm to check-in for our 7:05pm flight to Johannesburg. We had attempted to check-in online before leaving for the airport but the online system was not working. On arrival at the terminal, we found that none of the check-in stations were working either. We were told at the Club Class check-in desk that there had been a major IT systems failure (the which would ultimately lead to well over 200 flights being cancelled). We were checked in by hand and headed for the Club Lounge.

We could immediately see from the departure displays that European and domestic flights were being cancelled in increasing numbers, though long-distance flights seemed at that point still to be operating. At around 5:00pm there was an announcement that all European and domestic flights after 6:00pm would be cancelled – and shortly thereafter came an announcement that our flight would be delayed overnight!

As we had a connection in Johannesburg for an onward flight to Maun – in Botswana – to join our safari, we immediately endeavoured to find an alternative flight that would arrive in time. We were directed to a variety of different gates, waited patiently in queues, talked to BA reps who had no idea what was going on… but it was clear that they really just wanted people to leave the airport and to go away. After a couple of hours of this we finally we gave up and returned to the Club Lounge. We enquired at the BA desk there and the agent was able to find spaces on a later BA flight – scheduled to depart at 9:25pm. We were only able to get economy seats, but we felt this was worth the trouble as we had a connecting flight and a safari to join.

As soon as the departure gate was announced we headed for Satellite C and joined the throng of passengers already there. We could see the aircraft from the gate but shortly afterwards there was tannoy announcement that this flight would also be delayed.  We learned that the aircraft had a mechanical fault which was being worked on. As time passed all of us at the gate grew increasingly concerned that the flight would not get away and, sure enough – at around 11:30pm – it was finally cancelled. By this stage we had been in the terminal for nearly 10 hours.

We were told that we must leave the satellite and walk back through the underground passageways (alongside the no-longer operating transit system) to the main terminal building – collect our baggage from the allotted carousel and make our own arrangements to stay the night somewhere.  As this was likely the last flight that was cancelled that day, the thousands of other disrupted passengers had already found accommodation and there were no hotel rooms to be had anywhere in the vicinity.

Our luggage did not appear on the carousel. The only BA staff in the terminal rapidly disappeared and there was no-one to assist us. Whilst I searched for our bags The Girl contacted the Club World Desk to enquire about flights the following day. She was told that they were fully booked and that there was nothing that could be done to help us.  I called the hotel at which we had been staying for the previous few nights and they took pity on us and found us a room.

My brother – extraordinarily kindly – went above and beyond in getting out of bed and driving over to the airport to rescue us and to take us to the hotel. We definitely owe him for that (and for many other things) – big time!

The day had been exhausting and scary… in that we had no idea what would happen next, or how we might save our trip of a lifetime from coming to a premature and expensive end. To find out how things turned out the gentle reader must needs check in to the final installment of this saga…

…next time!

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The universality of incompetence

June 26, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant…I have accepted the universality of incompetence.”

Laurence J. Peter
‘The Peter Principle’

Long term perusers of these gentle meanderings will no doubt be aware that – the occasional rant aside (usually concerning matters political) – I am not in the habit of ‘trash-talking’ anyone or anything that might – for whatever reason – have of late aroused my ire.

Should you utilise the search function built into this site to seek out occurrences of the term ‘incompetence’ – for example – you would find but a handful of posts, of which only two concern the performance of an organisation with which I was obliged to deal. Those two posts refer to a single incident back in 2014 when the UK’s national communications carrier – British Telecom – contrived to leave us without telephone or Internet access for six weeks over Christmas and the New Year.

Given our recent experiences in the travel line you will probably not be surprised that I am about to add another couple of posts (or more!) that will share the same tag. Regrettably this example also involves a corporation that lays claim to be a UK national carrier – though of a rather different commodity. I refer, of course, to British Airways.

Back in 2019 we were also out and about around the globe – paying our first visit to the UK since emigrating in 2015 and adding on at the end a rather lovely little cruising sojourn in the Greek islands as a means of relaxing and recuperating. We flew from London to Athens and back (somewhat against my better judgement) on British Airways – who proved to be all too competent at extracting from us the cash to cover the pre-booking of extra legroom seats – but all too incompetent in the manner in which they re-assigned those seats on the return journey to other people and bumped us to the window-less back row of the aircraft. Naturally they also subsequently omitted to reimburse us. I swore mightily that I would never again fly with BA – an oath which I sadly let slip upon discovering that they alone had the best price/availability for this year’s attempted safari trip to Africa.

Now, I apologise in advance for the length of this diatribe, but I am eager to reveal the exact extent of the amateurishness (with further apologies to real amateurs) of the service provided by pretty much all concerned in this wretched business.

Here is the first part (or pre-amble):

Having decided upon our long-dreamt-of trip to the African continent (specifically a safari excursion to Botswana and to Victoria Falls) back in December last, we duly booked flights with British Airways from Victoria to London (via Seattle) for 22nd May – and on to Johannesburg for 25th May. We made a further onward booking to Maun in Botswana with a regional airline. The return flights were booked for 6th June from Johannesburg to London and then back to Victoria (via Seattle) on 11th June. All BA flights were booked in Club Class except for the short hop from Victoria to Seattle and back.

The Girl and I each made our own bookings so that we could use our own credit cards and/or points, but were assured that the two bookings could be ‘tied’ together.

Over the ensuing five months until we traveled we spent a great deal of time and money purchasing specific clothing and gear for our safari as detailed in previous posts.  The excitement was building.

Over the months leading up to our departure BA made a number of changes to our bookings; altering the time of the Seattle/London flight; cancelling the return Seattle/Victoria flight (which necessitated us staying an extra night in Seattle at our expense); changing the aircraft type for the Seattle/London leg (and seating us in different parts of the aircraft in the process)… before finally – 24 hours before our departure – cancelling the following day’s Seattle to London flight and re-booking us on an American Airways flight in economy! After a long and feisty phone conversation with a BA agent (on the part of The Girl), we were re-routed on an Aer Lingus flight from Seattle to London via Dublin – in Club Class.

Our journey from Victoria to London was at least for the most part comfortable and pleasant (kudos to Aer Lingus), even if rather longer than originally planned.

You will be unsurprised to hear that none of our dealings with BA to this point inspired confidence. The experience was, however, nothing compared with that which was to follow…

…for talk of which the gentle reader must patiently await the next post.

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Out of Africa

June 3, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

The Girl and I have always believed ourselves to be a lucky combination – a notion based largely on evidence drawn from direct experience. An example of this good fortune would be the sale of our Buckinghamshire apartment in the UK back in 2015, the year that we moved to Canada.

We had been trying to sell the property for nearly four years – without success – before finally doing so just a week before we emigrated. This might seem to stretch the definition of good luck were it not for the fact that the sale was completed just as the sterling/Canadian dollar exchange rate hit its most fortuitous level for the best part of a decade – a figure that has not been matched since.

It came as a considerable and most palpable shock, therefore, when our latest adventure – the African safari trip trailed in my last post – imploded spectacularly over the last week.

That is right… we did not get to Africa… we did not go on safari… we finally retreated to the west coast of Canada to lick our wounds in a state of considerable shock.

In short – we are not happy!

I am not going to catalog in detail the entire fiasco here, though I will undoubtedly be naming names in a subsequent missive. Those who live in the UK may well have seen the news items of a week ago which recounted the spectacular and catastrophic failure of British Airways’ IT systems that laid waste to much of the operation – ticketing – check-in – baggage handling – online services – etc, etc… On what was touted as being the busiest travel weekend since the COVID pandemic British Airways cancelled well in excess of two hundred flights and wrecked the travel plans of thousands of customers.

The ‘highlights’ of our particular experience include having one flight delayed overnight and a replacement finally cancelled at around midnight – after we had spent ten hours in the terminal. We were told that we must collect our checked baggage and leave the terminal building – to join an already extensive queue of folk trying to find a room in the airport hotels. This was the point that we discovered that BA had lost our safari luggage!

Over the following three days we spent many wearisome hours on the phone trying to reschedule flights (including connecting flights in Africa for which we will  get no refund!) and to search for our missing bags. When it became apparent that there was no chance of both us and our bags coinciding in Johannesburg we finally gave up and spent another day trying to persuade BA to let us go home – the which they would not do without considerable further outlay.

Now we have to attempt to recover at least some of the cost of this ‘trip of a lifetime’.

This whole has been a deeply traumatic experience for us both and has left our confidence considerably shaken. We both had moments in which we could not see how the situation could be resolved – and I think it may take a while before we again attempt anything similar.

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Into Africa

May 25, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | 1 comment

Back at the beginning of the year I announced that The Girl had decreed that this would be the year in which we finally achieved that long-dreamed of bucket-list item – the visit to Botswana for an African safari.

I recall also writing that I would be giving much more detail – chapter and verse – as the event approached. I feel quite guilty that I have not been keeping my part in that bargain. Sorry about that…

Well – here we are! I am writing this from a hotel room in the UK. We flew in yesterday and we are busy acclimatising ourselves to the time-zone change before heading south tomorrow to Johannesburg, from which we immediately set forth for Botswana. Once there we will be out of Internet range for much of the expedition, so further updates – and, of course, pictures – will have to await our return. Expect the full meal deal then, though.

It is a good thing that The Girl enjoys the planning process. Even in these high-tech and enlightened times setting up such a trip is a fairly major operation. Two matters in particular have complicated things. In Botswana the transfers between safari lodges will be effected in small planes. Small planes means small luggage, so we had to purchase really quite diminutive duffle bags and to pack with particular care.

The matter of what to pack was complicated further by the likes and dislikes of the wild-life. The big (and small) beasts do not care for bright colours, or for whites. The bugs and mosquitoes – on the other hand – really have a thing for blues and blacks. Clearly there is good reason for khaki being the colour of choice for African explorers.

All of this meant that an almost entirely new wardrobe of high-tech and lightweight clothing – in taupe and khaki – was required. Fortunately Canadians are passionate about the great outdoors and there are many outlets that provide just the sort of gear required.

When it came to packing we did the obvious; we packed our safari bags and then loaded them into bigger suitcases – along with the additional items that will see us through a few days in London once we get back. My brother will kindly look after all those items ‘not required on voyage’.

Yesterday’s flights from Canada were long and tiring. This is not the time or the place to vent about what used to bill itself as the ‘world’s favourite’ airline, but that will definitely come later. Suffice to say that I was not surprised when – the day before we set out – the airline contacted us by email to tell us that our flight from Seattle (don’t ask!) had been cancelled and instead of our business class trip into Heathrow we had been re-booked on a lesser airline in economy!!

The Girl, naturally, hit the roof! After an intense hour on the phone we found ourslves in business class again – this time on Aer Lingus – but with an additional stop-over in Dublin!

As I say… that whole sorry saga can wait until later. For now – let’s go… on safari!

 

 

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