AVOID AVOID AVOID (bmibaby)

Member Name: BumpyBump

Product:	bmibaby
Date:	16/09/09 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can book online

Disadvantages: Charges for "extras" & severe lack of customer service

I flew with BMI Baby from Birmingham to Glasgow two months ago. It was the first time I had used the airline and I only chose as it happened to be going to and from my required destinations and it was cheaper than the train (although only just). BMI have one of these dreadful rules whereby you have to pay extra for pretty much everything you want to do; things that I would not consider "luxuries". I was expected to pay £6 to check in with a human at the airport rather than doing it online at home. I was expected to pay for luggage to go into the hold. I was expected to pay to choose my seat beforehand (okay, I can understand this one to some degree, but I still wasn't prepared to pay for it). I paid for none of the extras as I was only going to be on the plane for an hour and I felt I could get away with just hand luggage for my weekend. So that was all fine for my purposes, but I wouldn't have been happy if I needed to take a suitcase and then had to pay for the privilege.

A month before my journey I was emailed to say that my return flight had been cancelled and instead of flying at 4 in the afternoon I had been allocated a seat on the flight at 8 in the morning. Outrageous! That was a whole day of my mini-break stolen. No offer of a refund either, which I was disgusted with. A few days before my journey I received another email informing me that me outbound flight had also been cancelled and instead I was allocated a seat on the flight leaving 1 hour later. Okay, not the end of the world, but the fact remains that I was now not actually flying on either of the journeys that I had originally booked. Again, no refund offered.

The day of my outbound journey arrived. I got to the airport in good time. I waited dutifully for my flight to call for boarding. At the expected time, instead of receiving a call to board there was an announcement to say that the flight had been delayed by 2 hours. No explanation, no nothing. The 2 hours came and went and still we were not being called to board. Another half an hour went by before we managed to get on our plane and, when we did, we were informed that there were no sandwiches on board as they hadn't had time to restock. Marvellous. We ended up leaving 2 and a half hours later than planned, not to mention the fact that the flight had already been put forward an hour the week before.

I was absolutely disgusted with the service from BMI Baby. They seem to show utter contempt for their passengers and it really is all about the money for them. If they're going to cancel flights then surely they should allow passengers the opportunity to cancel with a full refund?

Summary: You really do get what you pay for.