1. It’s a silly policy, but it’s *our* policy
2. I understand you spend tens of thousands of euros with us annually
3. We’re tired of you doing so, please give that money to another carrier

Below is the actual response. Simply put when I book a rewards flight with miles my family does not benefit. Frankly I’m astounded. BA is deciding to lose thousands of euros for a 100 euro service fee. And yet airlines moan all the time how they lose money. Perhaps it’s poor customer service like this for their best customers?

Dear Mr Steckler

Thank you for coming back to us.

I am sorry that you are unhappy with our response, which was well reflecting your concern about your family not being able to select seats.

Our seating policy is in place since 2009 but you may not have realized it as as a Gold Member you were still entitled to a free seat selection for your personal travels.

I understand you remain unhappy and I will certainly pass on your comments to our Management Team to let them know your impressions.

Thank you again for contacting us and for giving me an opportunity to look at your case again. I hope our decision will not deter you from flying with us in the future.

Best regards

[name deleted]
British Airways Customer Relations
Your case reference is:[case reference deleted]



After accumulating hundreds of thousands of air miles I decided to take my family on a trip. And here is where the problems start.

1. There are no flights available. But hey, we are flexible and rather than fly to Seattle we will fly to Vancouver and drive down.
2. There are no business class seats available. Well darn. I have a lot of miles and wanted to treat my family to the upgrade experience. But okay, coach it is.
3. What’s that? In order to select seats for my family I need to spend 25 euros per person each way? Huh?

So I called BA. I asked about issues 1 and 2 but really, I can’t get that excited about this. Next time I will book a little earlier. But issue 3? You are seriously going to nickel-and-dime me on this? I spend loads of money on flights each year, certainly even skipping one flight with BA will cost them more than they will ever earn from this pathetic surcharge.

As a business I expect BA to have a customer support team and they do. So I write. And get essentially a form letter back explaining that BA instituted this cool new feature so people wanting seats could pay for them. Hello? Did you read my email where I explained that according to their own rules as a Gold card member I don’t have to pay for this? Or I don’t know, did it occur to anyone that perhaps this is my last flight on BA and will now switch to Air France which is overall more convenient?

In my response today I pointed out that this is penny-wise, pound-foolish. Do you think they will care? Do you think anyone will even notice as they lose a valuable customer? I await their next response to see how bad their customer support is.

Best part had to be K playing his guitar along the seawall.

It’s not a wilderness hike, it’s not quite as rugged as we were looking for. But on a lovely spring day when we had no plans it fit the bill nicely.

Here is the map (surprisingly Live maps found something in Switzerland. That is a first!)

—

* How do I get umlauts in Live Writer? Alt+0252 should do the trick but Writer misinterprets this. So does Word of course which has it’s own key combination which I can never remember. In Word you type Ctrl+Shift+:,  then the letter and voila, umlauts. This doesn’t work in Live Writer though.

The flight from Seattle to London went without a hitch. We landed and then the problems started. I ostensibly had 50 minutes from the time my flight landed to catch my connecting flight to Zurich. As we sat on the tarmac waiting for a gate, I got a little worried. I was now down to 30 minutes, then 20. Heathrow’s Terminal 4 is enormous so getting from one side to another is a challenge. And getting through airport security is always hit or miss. Do I remove shoes? What about belts? Laptops? The answers in Seattle are different than the answers in London or Zurich, fun fun fun.

The plan finally gets to the gate. I storm up the gangway and frantically look for my gate. Ah, the sign says "Flight will board at Gate 17". I speed-walk towards 17, cursing at the people who wobble as they walk. You know the kind, they slowly amble along, meandering and suddenly careen into some duty free shop with never a signal or head-check. I get to gate 17 and it’s sort of quiet. Uh oh, did I miss my flight? There are no signs anywhere.

On the off chance there has been a gate change (with no announcement or signs by the way) I walk back out of the terminal arm to a monitor… yep "Go to Gate 5" flashing which means final boarding. Thanks BA!

I steamroll to the other side of Terminal 4. This time I think the steam coming from my ears helped people see and avoid me. I get to Gate 5 technically as the gate is closing. But hey, who knew, they aren’t really closing the gate, they are just opening it. Surprise! As I give my ticket to the agent I mention that of course my luggage will be lost. The agent replies, "no, the baggage guys know about gate changes before everyone else, plenty of time".

You of course know the punch line. My bags of course did not arrive in Zurich. Oddly BA thought that one bag did and one bag didn’t. But nope, no bags. The last time we flew BA they let our bags sit outside in London for 4 days. We received sodden, soaking gear with no apologies. We’ll see how it goes this time.

People, myself included, complain about the enormous amounts of luggage people take on airplanes. There was one guy yesterday who flew into Zurich for a business meeting. He flies out today. BA is promising him his luggage "within the next few days". How handy for him to know his luggage will arrive in Zurich by the time he is safely back in London. I assume that guy will never, ever trust his luggage to BA again.

So I feel bad. SAS unveiled their US replacement for the much-loved advent calendar yesterdaytoday. The new campaign is called Kiss a Scandinavian which does definitely sound better than looking in a horses mouth. It’s a nice special, very nice. Anyone wishing to visit us in Zürich should look into their SEA-ZRH deal, $279 each way is pretty nice. Flying through Copenhagen is always a treat too as they have an Ecco store there. Ecco for those who don’t know are a brand of shoes for men with sort-of wide feet. Super-comfortable.

But I digress… I don’t like the new campaign. I want the advent calendar back. Yes, the new campaign is nice because you get to see all the deals at one time. But I liked having to wait each morning for a new present. I liked seeing each city unfold throughout December. The new campaign is like getting all your Christmas presents on December 4th, unwrapped, and then told to bask in the joy and wonder for the rest of the month. It’s like an old married couple who pick out their own presents and then have to act surprised on Christmas Eve (my family does presents Christmas Eve. Susan’s does them Christmas morning. We do them both so my kids are lucky).

SAS: bring back the advent calendar please. It’s not too late. I know you can do it since I received my Swedish version this morning (Stockholm to Dublin, how cool of a trip would that be!). Others have noticed too.

Oh wait… my colleague Steffen* has pointed out that if you are Swedish you can find an advent calendar here. I decided to sign up. Unlike the US advent calendar SAS sends email for the Swedish version. Frankly I like clicking on the web page animation better, but that is a nit. Today the featured deal was Stockholm to Bangkok for 6595. 6595 what I am not 100% certain since the line simply says "6505:-t/r". Swedish Krona is the favorite in the "which currency are we talking about" sweepstakes.

Krona is an interesting word and one that before Saturday when I looked it up I never would have guessed at. My guess was kroner, which is the Danish currency and sounds fairly close.

To keep the season bright, here is an advent calendar. It’s not nearly as cool as world-travel but it is kind of fun to understand more web scripting, right.

* I promised a cup of coffee for the first info-provider. But since Steffen provided the link in Swedish only I will pay that out with something Swedish. Do Swedes go in for lutefisk or is that only in Norway?

–update–

Steffen sent me http://www.sasjulekalender.no which is a really nicely done site for the advent calendar. I cannot understand Norwegian but the site has some humorous elements; try clicking ahead a page. C’mon SAS, do one of these for the US. Or if the dollar is too low these days how about one for Switzerland?

With a little poking around the main SAS site I came across the Danish version. It’s not as rich as the Norwegian version but still very nice; festive, light, informative, ice-skating penguin. It looks like we have a hierarchy of calendars here:

1. Norway
2. Denmark
3. Sweden (no calendar but they get nicely formatted email)
4. Finland (nothing at all, you’d think they weren’t part of Scandinavia)
5. Others