blaze

I'm so sorry, what a terrible thing to have to deal with, how have you coped with everything? I usually love British Airways but the more I read about them on this forum, the more I'm beginning to wonder if they offer any customer service at all. I hope that it is not too tough for you to return to Phoenix and that your mum has plenty of family and friends to support her in Britain. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Bob

BA are normally very good, but it depends on who you talk to because a lot of BA out in the US are contract workers from Singapore Air, rather than BA and get paid far less and proper staff....doesn't help when you end up with a melon though.

woodsey

they were twats when my grandad died, my daughter was due to fly back alone two days later than when we actually flew and they charged us $250 to cancel her original flight then charged us 4 times as much for a ticket on the day we actually flew..we ended up paying $10,000 for 4 economy tickets, however we complained on our return and they came up trumps and gave us a $6000 refund..

Yorkieabroad

Dont want to divert the thread, but I would have thought that an infusion of Singapore Airlines staff could only improve the customer service gene pool at BA.....

Some sad stories on here, and I think its one thing that is often overlooked in expat discussions, yet its one of the hardest things to handle - the death of a loved one back home when you're a long way away. Apart from the immediate impact, I think in a lot of ways its almost easier to enter a peroid of denial - when I got back on the plane to Singapore (where I was when my dad died) it was still a bit unreal. My telephone conversations back home were normally with mum anyway, so the fact that dad wasn't chiming in wasn't that noticeable etc etc. In fact the first couple of trips back, I was still half surprised not to see him sitting there when I walked in. Not at all saying it was easy for the family still there, but I think they came to 'accept' it sooner than I did just because they were confronted with it every day........

Perhaps the only thing harder than death of a loved one at home, is death of a loved one overseas for the family back home. Before I left Sing, I had to look after the family of one of our engineers who had been very badly burned in an industrial accident in the far east. He was medevacced to Singapore (best burns unit in the region) and his family came out to see him. It took him 3 weeks to die....his wife, teenage son and daughter held up indcredibly well, particularly his wife, but she was a seafarers wife, and I think to some extent they're tougher than normal anyway...but after he died, she had it rough. Not only did she have to file all sorts of different police reports, but she had to identify the body on 3 (THREE) seperate occasions. Once when he died, once before the post mortem and once before they loaded him to go to the airport. That final one was conducted in a loading bay, he was totally uncovered on a gurney, showing not only all the pm wounds, but also the full extent of the burns, which she had never seen before. And immediately after identifying him, a couple of orderlies literally picked him up by shoulders and knees and slung him onto a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. The lack of sensitivity was (to our mind) quite horrific/incredible, and it was at that point that she finally fell apart. I'm not a fan of British embassies in general - the Singapore one was worse than useless before he died, but after he died, they were remarkably helpful and did help to clear a lot of the red tape. I think if it all happens within the "normal" parameters, its a bit easier to cope - the procedure is likely to be familiar, and if not, then at least the people are likely to handle things in a manner which is sensitive to your feelings. What this poor lady had to go through in a different culture that she didn't understand, and that didn't understand her was not pleasant.

Bob

It's not really, because singapore air gets in contracted workers with next to no benefits and get paid a lot less than perma singapore or BA staff....so obviously they don't care as much as someone getting paid full time...

Yorkieabroad

Sorry - misunderstood - thought you meant BA contracted in permanent SIA staff...

Bob

naaa, when singapore took a chunk out of BA, they dumped a huge chunk of BA staff Stateside and replaced them with contracted muppets to save money, which is probably costing them in lost business long term...doesn't help people in a bind, especially over here, but they need to actually ring up the staff over in Heathrow and probably get better response...