Contacting BA

[rambocat1974]

Hi All

I know this has been discussed before, but here is my experience this morning.

Persevere with the Chatbot, I kept typing speak to an agent and after about 5 attempts, was suddenly number 25 in the queue. This dropped to 20 and then suddenly I was online with a very nice lady.

The reason I contacted them, was to try and cancel my Car and 4 Hotel booking to get a voucher for the £200 deposit we had paid.

I attempted this online, but got a rejection email as I did not qualify due to it not being a BA Holiday. So imagine my surprise when the lady on livechat told me she could not help as they don't deal with BA Holidays booking, which mine was!

Long and short is that Livechat is much better than the phones, but she said that they can only deal with flight only bookings, not those that involve car hire or hotel and that the BA Holidays team do not work on live chat, just phones. (Transcript below)

Rob

"I do apologise you would have to contact our Holidays team in relation to this query. Unfortunately, we cannot handle bookings involving Hotels or Car Hire via this channel currently, please call our centres on 0344 493 0787. We're doing our best to get to every customer and apologise for the current wait times."
"The Holidays team do not operate on live chat. They can only be reached over the phone."

[guinness_79]

I have got through to live chat many times, and invariably get through to flight only however my experience is they just transfer you to the holiday live chat?! Perhaps they were none in on this occasion... but agree live chat is far better than trying to get through on the phones!

[rambocat1974]

Originally Posted by guinness_79

I have got through to live chat many times, and invariably get through to flight only however my experience is they just transfer you to the holiday live chat?! Perhaps they were none in on this occasion... but agree live chat is far better than trying to get through on the phones!

See more...

That's interesting as she clearly stated that they do not use Livechat, so perhaps its a cost cutting measure introduced by BA?!

[Softy]

They do use live chat.
You get through to flight only and they have to manually try and put you through to the holidays queue, which 99% of the time is full as they only seem to have the capacity to have a queue of around 5 (I’ve been 99 for flight only).
Some will make multiple attempts to get you in the queue, some will try once and then quote the above, some won’t try at all and fob you off.
I last got through to holidays on live chat last week.

[Princess Ariel]

I was about to chip in and say the holidays team do use live chat, I’ve spoken to them and changed holidays quite a few times via live chat.

[Egon]

Originally Posted by rambocat1974

Hi All

I know this has been discussed before, but here is my experience this morning.

Persevere with the Chatbot, I kept typing speak to an agent and after about 5 attempts, was suddenly number 25 in the queue. This dropped to 20 and then suddenly I was online with a very nice lady.

The reason I contacted them, was to try and cancel my Car and 4 Hotel booking to get a voucher for the £200 deposit we had paid.

I attempted this online, but got a rejection email as I did not qualify due to it not being a BA Holiday. So imagine my surprise when the lady on livechat told me she could not help as they don't deal with BA Holidays booking, which mine was!

Long and short is that Livechat is much better than the phones, but she said that they can only deal with flight only bookings, not those that involve car hire or hotel and that the BA Holidays team do not work on live chat, just phones. (Transcript below)

Rob

"I do apologise you would have to contact our Holidays team in relation to this query. Unfortunately, we cannot handle bookings involving Hotels or Car Hire via this channel currently, please call our centres on 0344 493 0787. We're doing our best to get to every customer and apologise for the current wait times."
"The Holidays team do not operate on live chat. They can only be reached over the phone."

See more...

They told me over Live chat that they couldnt cancel my flight in May and that i had to phone them. I was on hold for around 30 minutes before i had to hang up. Its a bit frustrating.

[katiec68]

BA are certainly creating lots of issues at the moment with their customer service.

We used the chat function on Sunday and they change our BA holidays booking with absolutely no issue - although I have no idea if it was BA or BA Holidays that DH spoke to.

Ringing them is a really painful experience too - you can only speak to someone if your holiday is up to 7 days away - otherwise you get the big "computer says no" tablet!

There is no consistency and only good customer service if you are lucky (or so it seems!)

I think the bottom line is if you dont get the help or answer you need just keep going until you do - especailly with live chat - but definately not on the phone!

[Louck]

I got through on live chat to flights, which was what I wanted, and at first they stated they couldn’t help me.
I persevered, politely, as they helped me on the same issue two weeks before on the same booking.
Turns out they could help after all and they fixed the issue!

[munmun]

I spoke with chat twice yesterday, very simple got through quickly all sorted in 30 mins

[Donaldfan]

I want to cancel a hotel and flight booking. I've given up on phone, Messenger and Live Chat and have sent them a letter in the post.