BAstards or BAAstards?

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Originally uploaded by danlinwood.

It's been two weeks. Two weeks since I left my personal stuff on a BA plane as it landed at Glasgow, two weeks of complete frustration verging on rage as I tried to contact someone who might be able to tell me something of its fate. Apart from the hours spent hanging on the phone, I have now visited Glasgow Airport (at a cost of £5 for parking) and spoken with two managerial types - one from BA, the other from BAA. No joy - the BA chap reckoned it would have been dumped. I think this too - probably after my rather nifty little earphones had been removed - but now want to focus on the process.

The first breakthrough came in finding the number to call Glasgow Airport: 0870 0400008. You get an automated voice giving you options, and press button 3 to get to Lost Property. You then press button 3 again to get to "property left on an aeroplane", and then button 1 to get to "property left on a BA plane". Then, at last, a phone rings. By this time hope is welling up - will a real, live person answer?

Dear reader, the answer is a resounding No. Not ever, at whatever hour of the day or night you phone. I have now lost in the mists of despair the routes by which I did talk to a helpful but brisk chap in Gatwick (but no-one answered the number he gave me) and a nice girl in Glasgow Airport who sent someone to check the relevant office for me but rang me back (yes!) with the news that there was no-one there. By this time Mr B's boarding pass was covered in phone numbers and I was losing the will to live.

I psyched myself up a bit for a visit to Glasgow Airport, but in fact the meeting with the two aforementioned chaps has been, in the end, as useless as anything else. The Customer Services Operations Manager did try the novel experiment of phoning the same chain of numbers as I had, and promised to get back to me when he found out what the correct number should be and what was going on. He rang me once to tell me he was still working on it, and I rang him when he failed to phone again. On that occasion he told me another, direct number to phone: 0141 207 9018. Guess what. No-one answers that phone either.

Did I mention that I'd also used the website to mail an enquiry? The final mail from the person who is dealing with it ended with these words: "I realise we have not met our usual high standards this time, and I hope that there will be more for you to enjoy when you next fly with us."

Maybe I shall fly with BA again. I know it was my fault that I was so dozy that I forgot my stuff. But it must happen all the time. If this is the useless procedure that BA have in place to make a perfectly reasonable attempt to contact them, there must be all sorts of lost baggage chucked into black bags. Let's just hope someone, somewhere, makes a security check first.

Things that you can't buy ...

I may chuck something at the telly next time I see this ad - I pictured it in French as being less irritating for today, when I realised that there are mega problems associated with buying more than a Marks & Spencers' semmit with my MasterCard. It's a question of enhanced security making life difficult, not just when I tried to buy online tickets for internal flights in the US - understandable to think that someone had run off with my card there, I suppose - but today, when I tried to pay for the new telly in a local shop. That's the telly I'll be chucking things at ...

It seems that if you actually spend the amount of money that it actually would be inconvenient to have on your person, it's a problem. You can be there, have put in the correct PIN, have heard the retailer give your security numbers off the back of the card, be known personally by said retailer - who happens to own the business you're trying to pay - and still some lassie far, far away with the accent to match won't let you use the card unless you tell the retailer the first two letters of your private password so that he - not you - can pass it on. I refused to do this in a crowded shop where your business is everyone else's, so the deal was cancelled.

I then went home to a serious-sounding call-back message from my bank's security; a further 15 minutes passed before I could actually remonstrate with a real person with a Scottish accent. Apparently it was "such a big sum of money". I had no idea I was turning into a big spender - it didn't strike me as ferociously big bucks. And I'll have to go through the business of contacting them again before I go to the US because that'll be another new spending pattern.

I dunno. I guess I'll have to stuff dollars in my bra or something. Dead convenient. "For everything else there's MasterCard" - but only if it doesn't cost too much.