British Airways (BA) Has No Clue How to Keep Repeat Customers

British Airways has really missed the boat. We travel a bunch because of my husband's business. Most of our travel is very long trips: Copenhagen to Miami, Copenhagen to Melbourne, Australia... like that. Not usually short little commuter hops, but mega-flights. Because of this, we keep careful track of Frequent Flyer Miles as they are very valuable to us for our personal vacation kinda trips.

Usually we make our own reservations, but sometimes his company will call and be all Oh hey we went ahead and booked a flight for you, here it is. Then I need to scramble to match his flight for my own ticket. This is what they did recently. Our last trip to the US was booked by them on British Airways via AmEx Travel. We have been trying like hell to join their Executive Club flyer miles program ever since... to no avail. The problem is that you can only join up via their own website. Let me tell you about that damned website...

It is pretty. It is white and blue. It is inviting. It is also a bitch to try to navigate and find what you want, and once you do find what you want the site glitches and tells you try back later after you have bothered to fill all their forms out. I was pulling my hair out for months over this freakin site. I finally decided to blow them off and write the tickets off... then his company booked him to Australia. On British Airways. ARG.

So. I went to the British Airways website again and tried to join their program. Error after error after error. They demand a ticket number for your flight. None of our US tickets either way even had a ticket number, just itinerary numbers and flight numbers and everything else you could think of to identify us... but not the one number they required.

So I tried to book my flight from CPH to MEL directly through their website. Can you hear me screaming? Error after error after error. For two weeks straight, several times each day, I would go back to them and click click click to get to the actual page to book a flight. You see, their front page only gives you a form to book a return flight. WTF is up with that? Is British Airways mentally deficient or what?