Air Media Rage
Can things get any worse for British Airways? You would have thought not until a senior executive from gambling company, Ladbrokes, made public his dissatisfaction with a trip from Barbados with his daughter and her friend. So disgruntled was he that he has persuaded his company to veto any business trips with British Airways in the future. To be fair to BA, many of us have been to the check-in desk and been offered money to take another, later flight so I’m sure it’s not just BA who are guilty of this type of activity. But Ladbrokes’ Chris Bell had very valid points about two fourteen-year-old girls traveling alone back to the UK (bet they were gutted to miss this opportunity for some very grown-up freedom!)
This blogger is genuinely interested in what bad publicity like this really does to compensate for the now uniform placatory statements and sad vouchers now issued by airline companies and the like to make up for rubbish service. What PR can claim that they have neither contemplated or actually resorted to threatening customer service representatives with ‘going to the press’ with complaints along the lines of ‘do you know what I do for a living?’ or worse still ‘do you know who I am?’
I am embarrassed to admit that I have done both and it has never achieved any results. My last attempt at forcing BA to own up to something that was wholly their fault which ended up costing me a small fortune merely resulted in me writing to the Daily Telegraph’s travel advice page in the hope that my letter would be published (it wasn’t but I did receive a very nice reply.)
Either large companies such as BA are now so wise to customers yelling at them about how well they know the Daily Mail or they genuinely don’t care any more (and perhaps this is true given the amount of complaints they must receive.) How much I have wished in the past that I could have taken my revenge on BA so sweetly. And I’m not saying that the ‘threat of media’ is necessarily the right route but I have to admit that I felt more than slightly envious at the amount of press coverage generated by Chris Bell’s complaint – in addition to several front pages it also made the Today Programme.
Again, I’ve had terrible service at some point on most other airlines so why is this a big story? Perhaps the media just hate BA so much now that any criticism makes good copy. And I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog in the first place about anyone else.