My complaint:
I was offered a full refund because my children were not allowed to board at the discretion of the supervisor at Manchester Airport on the day. You can check the telephone call which also included her talking to the customer service agent. The call was made at 05:24 to the number 0800 640 4004 for 18 minutes from my number 07985194667. You have it all recorded where I was told I would get a full refund. Had I known this was going to be the paltry amount you would be refunding, I would have rejected that and deferred my flight to next year 2023.
The experience was a terrible and devastating one, especially for my children on the eve of Christmas day, to have that dream of spending such a special day with family crushed before them. I have never experience such a rude and heartless response from anyone in my life. I am a single father of my 2 young boys, 9 and 7, and I try my all to give them happiness in spite of the circumstances. We were at the airport at 3AM to ensure that everything was ok, the children hadn’t slept having woken up at 7:30 on Friday morning all excited to travel after the disappointment of missing the initial flight on the 1312 because the royal mail had lost all our passports. They were not allowed to board because they didn’t have a PCR test, information which was not made available either on the ticket, on the online check in process (which we completed) and which we had be assured both by the embassy, the authorities back home as well as other travellers that a covid test on arrival is an option, which was on the procedure list presented at the baggage drop but which was rejected by your supervisor, in a way that was so rude in her communication and consideration. Listen to the conversation on the phone call and you will hear instances of her rudeness. As luck will have it, after many calls to their mom (imagine trying to get hold of someone at 4 AM), she ed that she had the test for them and sent copies. However, even those were not enough for the supervisor to reconsider because I had the audacity to argue that it would be done upon arrival as well. The fact that the relationship between the children’s mom and I is not amicable, which led to this oversight wasn’t any of her concern (and rightly so), but is it necessary to be so dismissive. We offered to do it at Brussels when the test centres would have been opened and that also was rejected, including paying any fine or taking responsibility if we were unable to continue our trip.
Some fellow passengers hinted at the fact that if those had been white children, the attitude would have been different. Explaining this situation to others has seriously raised the possibility of a racist undertone. I am not in anyone’s heart to know what they are feeling, but I swear I have never seen such expression of rudeness and heartlessness from a customer facing person.
I also have on good authority that the request for covid certificate should have been in Belgium not in the UK, as it isn’t a requirement for the 1st leg of my trip.
Suggested solution:
They should honor the pledge for a full refund as per the telephone call. They record it and they should present it.
