Coming to London this summer? Flying a British Airways long haul flight to Heathrow? You too could be a loser in the T-5 baggage lottery. Yesterday we learned Terminal Five still loses 900 bags each day. And that’s an improvement. Complain or demand satisfaction too vociferously and you could find yourself arrested and facing an anti-social behaviour order or jail time. Like them apples?

BAA operated Terminal Five opened under nightmarish conditions on the 27th of March. 1 week later, all was still in such disarray that 20,000 bags were sent by BA via FedEx to Milan Airport to be sorted and shipped onward to customers missing baggage for their entire journey. BA added insult to injury by reducing the hotel reimbursement amount and further mishandling already badly botched customers. 100-days later, its still a mess.

T-5 was heralded as the greatest, most modern and efficient terminal ever constructed. Its miles of baggage conveyor belts hidden beneath the ground were designed to whisk thousands of bags per hour seamlessly and effortlessly to their aircraft. The opening was so disastrous and BA’s handling of passenger disruptions so poor it cost two senior “customer experience” executives their jobs and forced CEO Willie Walsh to refuse his normal bonus.

Tempers have flared in the terminal as BA service personnel face irate customers and yet they are emboldened by a broad new customer philosophy in the UK service industry that now gives enormous power to reps. There are signs everywhere in almost every company touting the zero-tolerance of everything from supermarkets to the National Health Service.

They have the power, you have NONE. Raise a ruckus and they can simply walk away. Raise your voice and they can report your behaviour to the police. The unsuspecting person who thinks because that person has gine in to theback room to get a supervisor to help and that they may finally get satisfaction is instead calling security and the police. You are arrested and denied passage if as a customer you become frustrated with a five-hour delay and, in their eyes, become verbally “abusive.” 

There is zero tolerance (see Naomi Campbell last visit resulting in a life ban from BA and fine/probation in a London High Court) for ‘so-called’ employee abuse yet there is no penalty for the employee or company or even anywhere someone can go after being delayed for hours on end to get real satisfaction.

The EU Community-wide shrug and smile system is the accepted rule. That vacuous stare followed by, in the words of a character on the UK sitcom ‘Little Britain’, the infamous words, “the computer says noooo…”.

Try as you might to get them to break a sweat on your behalf, reason with them, put them in your shoes, even beg… it all falls on seeming deaf ears.

I’ve actually stood in an acute after-hours care centre after told to go there with an ill child and stared down a woman with one hand on the telephone to security/police daring me to say… just one more word, because I arrived without an ‘official appointment time’ so we needed to be worked in at ‘their’ convenience.

It’s an insane customer environment where you as the customer has no voice. Well this too can be your experience and you get to pay extra to check-in a bag and they still could lose it.

How ‘bout them apples? Don’t say you weren’t warned.