Creating a good corporate reputation: a case study in how not to do it

I posted this story at 2.20pm on Monday 16th December as I walked into a meeting, and spoke to a journalist who called British Airways at about the same time. By the time I came out of my meeting at 3.30, it was all sorted without any problems. While I am delighted, you have to ask: why don't companies just sort out issues which have simple solutions, rather than insisting that the computer says it's not possible and making their customers mad as hell?

This is the story of British Airways' case reference number 11736919. I know that's its case reference number because that is as much as they offered me for a problem, along with a few insincere apologies, rather than a solution to a problem which had only existed, at the time I called them, for less than a minute. It goes a long way to explaining why British Airways has the corporate reputation that it has.

My parents are going abroad tomorrow morning, and they asked me if I could check them in online because neither was going to be at a computer when online check-in opened. I duly went on to do so as soon as it did.

I was offered an upgrade for both of them, from World Traveller to World Traveller plus, for £288. Why not? I thought. It's Christmas. So I bought it, and went on to check in.

The moment I got to online check-in, though, I discovered a problem. The only two seats available in World Traveller Plus were in different rows, and both stuck in the middle. So my parents were going to be going from sitting together and able to get out, to sitting apart and not.

This would be irritating at the best of times. But Ma, at 72, has been struggling with a bad hip of late, and the idea that she could get out to the loo - more often, as ladies do, than you or I might - squeezing past people she doesn't know... Well, it didn't make a lot of sense. Shame, I thought. I had better change it back.

Only, you can't. I called the salesdesk. No, you can't change it. I called the Helpdesk. No, sorry. I called the Executive Club, thinking that, as a Gold Card holder, I was likely to find some sense. Nope, none there either. We know you booked it a minute before you called, but no - you've bought it, chum. You can't change it back.

So... British Airways have sold me two seats which are quite evidently inferior for the passengers than the seats that they had in the first place; they've pocketed nearly £300 for them; and they're  very sorry, but it does say on the terms and conditions that you might not sit together , so it's  really not mis-selling, is it, and - get this -  you can write to us as much as you want but to be honest you will get the same answer . Oooh. Get them.

It is honestly beyond parody. I don't even care about the £300 - they can keep it. I just want to book them back down in economy, in an aisle seat, like I was trying to do in the first place before they dangled pretty things in front of me. But no, you can't do that. You are now in the system. In World Traveler Plus. In the middle. Where you can't get out. Live with it.

Thanks BA. You're a bloody disgrace.