Dear British Airways,
I don’t usually dislike entire corporations. I mean, you typically have to do some pretty stupid things to make me start to think negatively about an entire company. But in your case, I think you’ve made the cut. You certainly went above and beyond the call of duty to make me dislike you.
What did you do, you ask?
Well, there was that time in Vienna when you made Denisa and me go traipsing around the city to get a “transit visa” for Heathrow Airport, since she comes from the dangerous country of Slovakia. (Seriously. Slovakia? Did you just go to a map and look for all the countries that ended in -ia and assume they were terrorist states? Lybia. Syria. Serbia. Slovakia. Asia.) Then, after we’d missed our flight and had to pay exorbitant fees for the darned thing, no one ever even looked at it. Yeah. That didn’t do much to make me respect you as an airline, especially when we bought the ticket from you in the first place, and no mention was made of any transit visa.
What a racket.
So I already disliked you. But today, you were heartless enough to be completely unsympathetic to a person in need. When someone finds out someone they love just died, and they’re calling you up to find out about changing travel arrangements, telling that person you don’t do “discounts” for “any reason” and being callous about it–enough to make said person cry–is beyond insensitive and well into the realm of barbaric.
Of course, this is just little old me here. Maybe I don’t amount to much, but at least I can write a Letter to the Internet, informing people that I think you’re a bad company with awful customer support. I don’t plan on using your airline again in the future, and if I do end up being forced to, it will be solely because I have no other choice.
I encourage all my readers to do the same.
