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“Stranded because of their mistake”
Written on: 11/07/2012
I had a three leg trip from Barcelona to Houston, TX. I arrived at Barcelona's airport an hour and 15 minutes before my flight to find out that it had be cancelled....yes, CANCELLED. There was no type of notification sent to me at all. I was lucky enough to be there in time to catch the last flight going to my first connection city. Rather than give me all of my boarding passes when they checked me in, they only gave me the boarding pass for the first flight. When I got to Madrid, my flight to London was departing from the same terminal that I arrived in. Since the flight left the next morning, I slept in the terminal and jumped through a few hoops in order to make it to the gate the next morning. When I got to the gate, I stood in line at the counter so that I could have them print my boarding pass. Those of us standing in line were not assisted by any of the four people working the gate until after they boarded the plane. This made no sense to me because only one person was scanning boarding passes while the other three stood/sat around. When they finally got to me, they told me the flight was full. I showed my itinerary to prove that I was suppose to be on that flight and explained that I was not given my boarding pass at my initial check-in. The gate attendant was baffled as to why I wasn't given my boarding pass. Then, I was sent on a wild goose chase from counter to counter where everyone told me that all flights that would get me to my destination were full that day. The staff was very rude and might have well just told me that they couldn't give a rat's tail what became of me. They insisted that I'd have to pay a penalty fee to have a new ticket issued but then that turned into my option being to buy a brand new ticket to possibly fly out the next day. I was told that I was a no-show for the flight and that disqualified me from simply having to pay a penalty fee (which shouldn't have been applicable anyway). To avoid being stranded in Madrid, I paid an arm, leg, and torso for a flight back to Houston. I have filed a complaint with Iberia due to their poor handling of my situation. From what I have encountered so far, it seems that if they make a mistake (in my case, fail to issue my boarding passes), they will simply put the customer at fault and avoid any accountability. Iberia is by far the WORST airline I have ever dealt with. I would rather blow up a raft and float across the Atlantic or travel by mule, than use Iberia for any type of travel.
