Q. This past summer, a friend and I were scheduled to return from India with a stop-off in Barcelona for a few days, and then a flight home to Chicago, all via British Airways. We were slated to leave Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi at 2:20 a.m. on June 18. Unfortunately, we goofed, and instead of showing up in the wee hours of the 18th, we showed up at 10 p.m. on the evening of the 18th, thinking that that flight would leave at 2:20 that next morning. Big mistake.
Once we discovered our error, we were told by B.A.’s information desk that the airline’s policy was to charge us $250 plus the price difference between our ticket and a new one, as long as we were within 24 hours of check-in for the original flight.
But the cost of a new ticket, we were told, was $1,800 apiece, over $900 more than the price of the original flight. While arguing about this new price, B.A. employees told us to wait to the side as they handled other customers. Three hours later, a B.A. rep called us back to the counter to tell us that we had exceeded our original flight’s 24-hour check-in window. That meant we were no longer eligible for the $250-plus-fare-difference deal, even though the 24-hour window had closed while B.A. employees ignored us.
(The Haggler can almost hear the murmurings: “Pshaw. You call that a nightmare travel story? Why, let me tell you about the time … ” But keep going, dear reader.)
Any sort of questions we had were met with condescending answers until an armed security guard was called. We gave up. For reasons related to the airport’s security protocols, we worried that we’d have a hard time getting back into the checked-in area, and wound up spending the night at a coffee shop.
(See? And it gets worse.)
Ultimately, we bought a ticket through Etihad Airlines to Barcelona at a cost of $1,109.24 apiece. Our flight out of Barcelona to Chicago — part of the original British Airways reservation — was to leave at 10 a.m. Monday, June 25. But it turned out that B.A. considered us no-shows because we had missed the Delhi-to-Barcelona leg of our trip. So we had to buy two more tickets, this time with Aer Lingus at $1,183.80 each, to make it home to Chicago.
In sum, we spent $4,586 on new tickets. If you add the original $860 we each dropped on the original B.A. flight, our flights home more than $6,300. We are college students and this has wrecked our budgets.
Our efforts to get any kind of refund from B.A., however, have failed. Can you give it a shot?
John Gallagher
Flossmoor, Ill.
A. O.K., all you travel nightmare victims — you’ll need to top $4,586 in losses, not to mention 36 hours in a coffee shop and a cameo by an armed guard. That is our new standard for a hassle.
Actually, the hassle continued for Mr. Gallagher for weeks after he got home, as he began trying to get back some of the money he had spent on the unused tickets. He says he would continually get the brushoff from B.A. phone reps, who eventually pointed him to the refund section of the airline’s Web site. Time and again, he’d enter his information, press submit and get an error message that read “404-Page not found.”
So the Haggler e-mailed British Airways. A spokeswoman named Caroline, who did not provide her last name, wrote to say that she could not address the three-hour delay at the Delhi airport that appears to have cost our travelers so dearly, though she did say she “was really upset” to hear about it.
What about making them buy a new ticket in Barcelona, if they already had one? Well, she wrote, “the conditions of carriage on all tickets require that the customer fly all legs of their journey. This means the onward ticket becomes void if the first leg is not flown.”
This seems unfathomably idiotic. Efforts to fathom this policy, which isn’t exclusive to B.A., weren’t fruitful in follow-up emails last week, probably because Caroline was on holiday break.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Gallagher said he had heard from B.A.’s refund department and was told that, “after penalty fees were deducted,” he and his fellow traveler would each get refunds of $621.25. They were also given a single $500 travel voucher “as a gesture of our concern” over their treatment in India.
The Haggler, as regulars know, is no fan of the gift voucher, and hasn’t been ever since a restaurant that gave him food poisoning offered, as restitution, a certificate promising “free food for life.” The last thing the Haggler wanted to do was dine again at this restaurant, and, given a choice, Mr. Gallagher might well choose another airline.
Which gets us to the final reason that the Haggler dislikes air travel nightmare stories. They never seem to end with meaningful reforms. Will British Airways alter anything about its customer service — at the Delhi airport, on the phone, on its Web site — as a result of this yarn? It seems doubtful.
But ever the reluctant optimist, the Haggler will open our next episode by asking if B.A. will take concrete measures to at least lower the chances that ordeals like Mr. Gallagher’s happen again. Look for an update in the new year.
E-mail: haggler @nytimes .com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/your-money/a-missed-flight-and-a-4586-travel-nightmare.html?partner=rss&emc=rss