A happy ending!

BA's useless web site was driving me to distraction again. I tried to book some flights but everytime I pressed the "pay" button -- after typing in loads of family details which are not stored in a cookie until payment is confirmed -- the system hung up so I was eventually driven to phone them. I was only on hold for about 20 minutes this time, and the woman I spoke was at east efficient. But if you book on the phone they make you pay extra so I complained and -- ta da! -- I got a refund on the telephone surchage. A minor victory, but worth broadcasting.

I finally, after all of this messing around, and after spending god knows what on their 0870 number which wasn't reimbursed -- I know, I've broken my resolution to refuse to do business with companies without an 800 number -- I look back in to manage my booking, sort out the seats, type in contact number, press the button to print the boarding passes and get

I don't think BA is having much luck with IT. It's as if they've outsourced it to the people make tax credit systems for the government and that sort of thing. On a very long and dull flight to Singapore yesterday, I was heartened when I turned on the in-flight entertainment to find that it was a new video-on-demand system with loads of movies and TV programmes. Great. I went to the menu. There was a brief flash of something about welcome to Windows Media or something and then... it didn't work, naturally. In fact, it didn't work so badl that the cabin director who was dealing with with the complains from hundreds of extremely bored passengers came on the intercom to explain that (in true Windows fashion) his control console had crashed as well, so he couldn't anything. Still, I'm sure version 3 will be serviceable.

Lucky I had my iPod, and even luckier that I had the audio cable with it because in my room at the Grand Hyatt in Singapore they have a great innovation. The desk that I'm typing at has a VGA connector so you can project your laptop screen on to the big TV in the room as well as audio inputs so you can listen to your laptop, iPod or whatever through the speakers in the room, even in the shower. Brilliant.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

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