Traveller's Tales

The nightmare started ten days ago at Terminal Five, a potential beacon of British brilliance and now forever a synonym of terminal incompetence. As (bad) luck would have it, my family and I were booked on one of the very first flights out on opening day and we arrived to a barrage of brightly coloured balloons, camera crews and scores of smiling recruits wearing T-shirts with the slogan “How can I help?” and carrying empty clipboards. The first clue that something was amiss was when I tried to change one of our tickets to a later flight and the process that should have taken 30 seconds took 30 minutes. The ticketing lady explained that not only were they getting used to a new building that day, but a whole new computer system had just gone live too – and no-one was entirely clued up on how it worked. Undeterred, we climbed aboard with excited children looking forward to their annual trip to the Austrian Alps. After an hour and a half on the tarmac due to ‘technical difficulties’ we were finally away and soon landed at Zurich airport. An embarrassed announcement from our Captain then informed us that although we had indeed left Terminal Five, our luggage had not… Joining the end of a plane-long queue we filled out the requisite forms, quietened fractious children and received a small plastic bag from British Airways containing a dirty T-shirt, toothbrush and deodorant sample. BA has lost my luggage before, so I know that you are also always entitled to a small amount of immediate cash compensation before leaving the airport to buy essentials (unbelievably, no-one tells you this - you have to ask!). We left the airport with no luggage but the assurance that it would follow on ‘shortly’.

A few hours later we arrived at our friends’ house high up in the picturesque Arlberg and on hearing our plight, our hostess opened her bathroom cupboard to reveal a stash of Liz Earle goodies. I don’t think I have ever been so thankful to see one of our mini essentials travel kits in my life! It was just perfect after a long and highly stressful journey to finally enjoy the skin soothing (and mood calming) botanical benefits of cleanse, tone and moisturise – followed by the lengthy soak in a tub filled with delicious Orange Flower Botanical Body Wash. It made me determined to stock my own cupboards with a few mini kits of my own, ready to greet and revive future visitors at home.

Days passed since our arrival in Austria and daily calls to British Airways to try and locate our luggage were met with deafening silence. We trooped out en-masse to buy a few basic bits of clothing for ourselves and children - not an easy task in a tiny Tyrolean village unless you fancy full-length dirndl skirts and leather Lederhosen. We resisted the temptation to dress like the von Trapp family and managed to mostly borrow from kind friends and hand-wash most nights. A few days later and two suitcases had arrived. However, the remaining three (including mine, of course) had seemingly vanished into thin air. With my mini travel kit running low, I made a call to the Island and spoke to our Customer Centre. “No problem” said Sarah, “I’ll have some things sent out. It was an interesting exercise to see which of our 30 or so products would make it into our emergency rations kit: For me, the absolute must-haves were a Cleanse & Polish starter kit, Instant Boost Skin Tonic spritz, Superskin Moisturiser  (two jars of this magical skin cream – just in case…), Orange Flower Botanical Body Wash, Nourishing Botanical Body Cream, Hand Repair and Superbalm. Being in a ski-resort with snow-glare and high-altitude rays I also slipped in some Sunshade Face Protector SPF 25. In future, I will make sure I travel with our mini-sizes of at least one each of these face and body essentials (together with extra underwear, nightie, tights, a jersey non-crush dress and pair of decent shoes). As a special Thank You to my skin-saving friend Lorna, I asked for an extra jar of Superskin Moisturiser, our latest addition which she had not yet tried.

We moved on into our hotel and a few days later I received this note from Lorna:

“Dear Liz,
Thank you so much for the Superskin Moisturiser. I have been searching for a cream to give me that little bit more - what can I say – the mountain air, lack of time, pregnancy hormones, late nights and early mornings have all taken their toll!!. I have spent so much money and tried so many products …(she then went on to list a huge number of well-known brand names which I had better not mention here…)… and nothing did the trick – until just now. When you left, I washed my face and tried Superskin Moisturiser, I swear it felt like “a blanket of youth covering my skin” and it’s now an hour later and my skin still feels silky smooth. As I babbled away with excitement telling my hubby he smiled and with fake enthusiasm told me I looked younger, who knows maybe after a week of use I’ll be able to look for a toyboy – and then we’ll see who’s smiling…
Many thanks, Lorna xx”

A week went by and Lorna was still loving her Superskin but our relationship with BA was less positive and no more suitcases appeared. Following the news on the BBC website we learnt that our luggage was most probably amongst the many thousands of bags sent on airplanes to Milan for sorting out. How bizarre. You would have thought that those with baggage tags labelled Zurich would be sent to Zurich, Geneva to Geneva and so on, but perhaps this is too logical. Then – cue trumpet fanfare – my suitcase arrived! Hoorah! … Just in time to be loaded into the taxi as we were about to leave. When I say we were about to leave, I mean that we had checked the British Airways website for flight information and it assured us that “all flights to and from Terminal Five today will be operating normally”. Excellent news. But, just to be sure, I stopped by our hotel reception to check-in on-line. How strange – the system didn’t seem to be working – why couldn’t I check in? You’ve guessed it – our return flight was cancelled. British Airways were eerily silent and their ‘customer service’ phone lines rang unanswered. Eventually we were told we might be able to be booked on a flight home… two days later.

With several live QVC TV shows looming I just couldn’t wait that long to get home. Many hours of phone calls later and we found ourselves an Easyjet flight the following day that could take us from Innsbruck to Bristol. So, we trekked down the mountain and arrived in plenty of time, checking-in with ease at this tiny provincial airport. The café was shut and so there were no refreshments for tired and thirsty children, but never mind, we won’t be here for long. Or so we thought. As I type this on my laptop by the departure gate, I can see a screen announcing that our flight has just been cancelled – and Innsbruck airport is closing due to fog. I am too exhausted to continue this Blog right now, so this little traveller’s tale will have to be continued….

Traveller's Tales (continued)

Well, we finally made it home from the last flight out of Munich airport last night, having found a man with a van who could drive us across the border into Germany and we landed at Stansted 36 hours later than expected, facing a four hour drive home. The good news is that our luggage actually arrived with us – apart that is, from the bags still circumnavigating the globe courtesy of British Airways on-going fiasco of ten days ago (will my luggage get air miles?). Apart from some useful hints on what to pack as cabin baggage (don’t forget a mobile phone charger, foreign adapter and plenty of Rescue Remedy), one of my most useful discoveries in all this has been a real-time flight information website called www.flightstats.com, which usefully gives cockpit information on take-off and landing times for all aircraft in the skies. Very handy if you’re waiting for someone to arrive or you just want to check on the progress of a flight in the system while waiting for an airport announcement.

Arriving back in the UK I’m catching up on the news about Terminal Five and the scale of the chaos defies belief. I know that a new building and new systems require time and planning (we did it ourselves last year when we moved our entire business operation overnight into our new purpose-built eco-building - without a hitch) but what about staff training? As many of you will know, we pride ourselves on our level of customer service and on the same day that I experienced such appalling service from BA, I also received an email from our Greenhouse HQ to say that we’d just had a very busy day, with a record number of around 3000 orders dispatched on time. Each order is highly complex, contains many parts (often personalised) and is sent to a different address. Our success rate is exemplary (over 99.9%) and when (as can very occasionally happen) something does go wrong, we go to great efforts to put things right in a swift, friendly, personal, calm and efficient way. As a business, we don’t chase profits, we intently strive instead for happy customers - as that’s the surest way to build a successful company. For example, had I been planning the Terminal Five building, I would have made the loos easy to find and made it fast and simple to buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper by the departure gates, as in every other major international airport. Obvious really. Perhaps the bosses as BA might like to spend some time with us to find out how to make their customers happy?? Just a thought.