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“Unhelpful and uninterested ground staff”

written by Frequentflyer01 on 29/04/2012

Today was meant to be my 4th trip from UK to Singapore in 14 months. I foolishly decided to book a ticket with Singapore Airlines even though it cost nearly 500 pounds for a single ticket, counting on its previous great customer service. It turned out to be the worst decision in over 20 years of flying.
I was returning to Singapore after a long absence. My movers had accidentally left a number of things unpacked the night before flying and having no weighing scales and a looming exam in 10 days, turned up at Manchester Airport with an overweight hand luggage full of my dismantled computer parts and books more than an hour before departure.
There were 2 counters open, one with first class written over it and the other internet checking. I went to the latter to be redirected to a security queue and after 10 minutes was told that that was the wrong queue and then redirected to yet another wrong queue. Eventually, I went to the counter with first class written over it. The woman ( calling her a lady would be too inaccurate) weighed my checked-in luggage and told me that I had to move them to another counter as the flight was nearly ready for boarding. She then found my hand luggage overweight and just told me that I had to abandon it and even proceeded to make me put my prada handbag on the not quite clean weighing belt.
There was no attempt on her part to give me any options and even though I informed her that I was moving to Singapore and could not just leave my bag with my friend who turned up, especially with my books needed for my impending exam. She informed me that I had no time to partially unpack my hand luggage. We had to ask her about the cost of the excess luggage which she reluctantly provided. When asked about upgrading to business class, she informed me that that was not an option! She just kept insisting that I should not fly that day after my friend mentioned that I had a flexible ticket.
She asked for a customer officer to approach so that she could take me off the flying list. It was only when we asked her again about upgrading that the customer officer offered that it would cost another 1400 pounds. At this point, the first woman still kept insisting that it was not possible to check in another 20kg even with upgrading. We found her attitude so appalling that we decided not to fly that day. Fortunately my dog who was due to fly out with Quantas the next day had also postponed for a week.
In fact it would have cost me a lot less to fly with another airline and paid for the excess luggage. At the customer service counter, there was a lot of mention of extra charges if I were to rebook (not mentioned BEFORE taking me off the flight) and a lot of mention of different class, etc. I had a fully flexible ticket valid for a year but was made to feel like I had bought the ticket for 20 pounds! However, it was the whole attitude of the first woman behind the counter that put us off. We saw her going for her break about 2 minutes later so evidently was trying to get rid of us so that she could go for a break. Helpfulness is not a word in her vocabulary.
My opinon is that if I had to do it again, I would travel with ANY other airline but never again with Singapore Airlines. What a letdown.