i don’t do a lot of posts where i complain, but the cats saga is taking its toll on us. our return tickets were long booked on british airways, but if we knew it’d be such a nightmare to ship the cats home, i think we’d have chosen a more pet-friendly airline. say, lufthansa, where your cats fly with you in the cabin, saving you half the trouble.
the service on ba has been appallingly clueless. first they don’t fly the cats in cabin – only cargo. that’s fine, i guess. so what do we need? we call london, we call lisbon, we call shanghai: nobody’s got a straight answer, always ending up forwarding us to somebody else. in shanghai, they forwarded us to the logistics person who is supposed to know these things, but doesn’t have the foggiest idea… first we’re told they can’t ship them to lisbon, to which we reply “but why, if the flights we are flying in have cargo service as well?”, then they suddenly can, then we need extra documents – documents which the entity supposed to issue says we don’t need…
what are these people doing?! so far, this has been the most stressful issue of the whole move. we don’t want to leave them behind, and we surely don’t want to take them to the airport and suddenly realize we’re missing a paper! how hard can it be to figure out these procedures and get a clean algorithm, step by step?!
this is all i want. kthxbye.
4 replies on “get your act together!”
Oh honey, what a freaking nightmare. I thought I had it tough when I had to fly to Faro from Manchester to be able to take the cat with me, then get a friend to drive me to Lisbon. Cat was not happy – he was hyperventilating so much in the car trip I was beginning to panic.
He’s fine now, though, and he’s completely claustrophobic and scared of his crate which is probably why it was so difficult.
I’m assuming you’ve tried to get information from IATA, too. Also, BA is supposed to let you fly with the cats in the cabin!
My only advice is to get Feliway spray and douse the crates in it, and buy some diaper-like mat to put in there as well. Get all the documents you need and don’t need, because along the way there will be some incompetent twit who will cause problems if you don’t. Also, be prepared to pay at the airport in Portugal – it wasn’t much, but it was still a surprise.
Are you shipping your stuff, or are you returning with just a bag on the plane? I’ve been packing for days and there is still stuff everywhere!
Good luck girl :(
This may not be much help, but leaving a cat behind in the UK wasn’t easy for us, but we decided it was best for the cat, especially since we found the perfect new owner with a larger house and with a garden. We regularly get updates via email and even though we all miss it we’re actually happy that it worked out this way. I actually think the cat is happier now in its new envionment, able to explore a lot more than in the small apartments that we lived in.
I hate to say it (being British) but British Airways customer service is dreadful (and this is a company that claims it differentiates itself from other airlines by their level of service).
I tried to make a complaint to them 2 years ago and despite making numerous calls (in which I could only talk to a guy who takes messages) and numerous emails I never received a response.
I avoid flying with them whenever possible now and I used to be a gold card member.
Anyway, you still here on Sunday? thinking of going out to take some pics if the weather is nice