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If you’ve tried to get through to British Airways to deal with a booking issue, you will probably have noticed that getting to speak to a fellow human being has become almost impossible. It doesn’t matter what time of day you call, the automated phone service will almost inevitably hang up on you. Fortunately, there appears to be an incredibly simple way to get around this problem and it relies on the airline’s greed.
I’ve recently had a number of emails from British Airways asking me to call in to deal with issues to do with my future bookings but every time I’ve called up (the Gold line) to try to get these issues dealt with, I get an automated message telling me that the airline’s staff are too busy with other issues to handle my call. The line then goes dead and that’s the end of that.
Yesterday, after having been hung up on for the 5th time in as many days, I finally realized that I was being stupid and that I was dealing with BA in entirely the wrong way – I was being honest.
In each of my calls, I had dutifully listened to the instructions given by the automated phone system and had chosen the options that corresponded to my particular issues (problems with current bookings) as I attempted to get someone to answer my call.
That was a big mistake. Right now, BA doesn’t really care about people who have already given it their money. It only really cares about getting more money into its coffers, and that’s where the basic “hack” comes into play – lie.
If you need to call BA because of an issue with an existing booking don’t let the phone system know that’s why you’re calling. Doing so won’t get you anywhere. Select whatever options the system tells you to select if you’d like to make a new booking and eventually, a live human being will come to your aid. You will not get a message telling you that no one is available to take your call.
Of the 5 times that I called up and made the appropriate menu choices for my issue, I got cut off. The first time I pretended that I wanted to make a new booking I got to speak to someone after a 20 minute hold. The second time that I did the same thing, my call was answered in 17 minutes.
Obvious? Yes. But it took me a while to figure out that I was playing the game wrong so this little bit of information may be of help to others.
