British Airways ripoff Paris And London, England

My friend and I had to fly from Paris to London, Heathrow to LAX on our way home from a week's vacation. We arrived at Charles de Gaulle at 10am Thur, June 3, 2004. We were told there was a computer failure at Heathrow that morning so in order to ensure us making our connection we were moved from our 1:40p flight to a 12:25p flight.

We went to the next check-in and received a boarding pass were they man said and wrote on our boarding passes our Gate number was B30. So we went through security check and went to Gate B30 to wait for our flight which at this point was delayed one hour.

Since there were no screens displaying flights or their status in the gate waiting area I kept asking the different employees rotating in and out of the area what the status was. I probably asked 6 different people. Each time I was told to wait.

I finally asked another customer waiting if they were headed to Heathrow as well and she said yes but on the 1:40 flight. At about 1:40 we had still not heard anything regarding our flight and we were told once again to wait when I heard them start to board the 1:40 flight. I went and demanded to know what had happened to our flight.

Finally, someone from BA told us that our flight had already finished boarding at gate B27 NOT B30. When I asked why no one else could have told us that, she shrugged. No apologies. We went back to the ticket counter to see if we could get on another flight. They were also rude and could care less that they had made an error that caused us to miss our flight.

We finally were able to get a flight to Heathrow but by that time is was 5pm and we had missed our 4:25pm flight to LAX. The woman at the counter shrugged, no apologies, and said we'd have to wait until the next day to flight to LA. I was crying cause I just wanted to get home. She shrugged, sort of laughed and had no word of comfort or apologies for the error. I said, we have no more money and we're hungry and tired. She shrugged.

We tried complaining about her and the entire situation. We spoke to 3 different people. No one could help us. The only BA employee that seemed to care and said he was sorry for the entire mess was Mr Gavin Powell. He knows what good customer service is. Even though there was nothing he could do, he at least pretended to care.

We ended up having to spend the night in Heathrow and finally caught a flight the next day at noon.

Vasty
Colton, California
U.S.A.