British Airways. Aaaaargh!!

[Sarajevo]

I have been a happy frequent flyer of British Midland International (BMI) for many years. They are a small airline, and despite having fallen on hard times recently, I still liked them. They were recently bought over by British Airways and I am not lying when I say that I thought that this was a recipe for disaster.

I have been putting off transferring my frequent flyer account, but thought I would do it tonight as I had some spare time. Big mistake. 1 hour later, I am really annoyed and reconsidering whether Easyjet or Ryanair might not be so bad after all... "Combine my Avios" is the BA-chosen phrase for transferring frequent flyer points from newly-acquired airlines.

Here is a copy of an e-mail I just sent to the BA complaints department (when I eventually found them....). What do you think? I will post updates if/when I get them.


"I am a BMI Diamond Club member (account no. xxx) and have been trying to transfer my DC membership points to my newly-created BA account. Every time I follow the links to combine my Avios, I receive a notice telling my session has timed out and that I have to log in again. I have now done this 4 times and received the same message every time. You have managed to turn a relaxing Saturday evening into a stressful one. Well done.

I should add that I only managed to get to the Combine my Avios page after much to-ing and fro-ing, bouncing about your website endlessly. The same applies to finding out how to complain.

When I heard BMI was being bought by BA, I thought that the hitherto-excellent BMI service would be brought down to the levels of BA (lost baggage, T5 fiasco, etc.). It seems that I was right to be concerned. You really have managed to disappoint me, at every opportunity, on my first interaction with your company.

It would be most wonderful if you could let me transfer my BMI points to my BA account. I am not holding out too much hope. By the way there are only two acceptable outcomes to this query: (i) yes we can and (ii) no we cannot. I don't want any rubbish about taking my complaint seriously, failing to satisfy expectations, etc."