✅
Verified Review | Edinburgh to London City. Despite having a confirmed booking, when I attempted to check-in with a prepaid-for bag at 1535 at the EDI airport for a 1655 flight to LCY (domestic flight) I was told I couldn’t as the flight had been oversold. I accepted an offer to switch to a later flight on the same route with Flybe and take compensation but then was told the compensation couldn’t be authorised so I had to ‘wait’. I then stood around for 10 minutes, being asked to ‘move out of the way’ at one point because I was blocking others. I was not given a copy of the compensation scheme details (despite what the BA website claims should be done) and the staff seemed unclear of it themselves. I was simply ignored until I approached the desk again and insisted to speak to a supervisor. None was available nor could be contacted, apparently. I wasn’t allowed to transfer to the Flybe flight “in case” a seat became available on my original flight, so they tagged my luggage but did not check it in. I was told to wait for another 20 minutes. I argued this was not fair to leave me in limbo given I had a confirmed booking in the first place but I was basically ignored and informed this flight is regularly oversold and it’s not their problem that other people had checked-in before me. I was treated as a nuisance. At one point, there were 5 members of BA check in staff doing nothing (nobody else to serve) whilst I was just standing silently there ‘waiting’ and being ignored. After 20 minutes of not knowing what to do, my original flight closed and I was approached by a supervisor (who suddenly was available to talk to me) and given a seat. I asked how it was that a seat has magically appeared if earlier I had been told the flight was already full with no seats available. He explained that the seats had been prepaid for by others who had then not checked in, and as the check-in was closing, they could give me the seat now. I informed him that I resented having been treated rudely by his staff earlier (though the supervisor himself was professional and courteous) and that his staff are untrained to deal with overbookings. I had done nothing wrong to deserve being treated so shabbily, like a problem rather than a customer. I then had a predictably stressful rush through security to ensure I was not denied boarding at the gate for being late (even though I had arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare originally, especially for a domestic flight). As I told the supervisor, if the airline treats its customers with such contempt, do not be surprised that the public ends up viewing the airline with contempt. Under their current policy of overbooking, passengers who do not pay more to reserve a seat in advance are at risk of not getting a seat at all, even though they have a confirmed booking. Some would call this cheating. The saving grace of the experience was that the flight was punctual, and unlike mainline BA, this route is run by its subsidiary BA CityFlyer which still offers complimentary drinks and a snack for which the cabin crew service was efficient. I rate it 2 out of 10 for the stress incurred in checking in.