I was refused to board a flight on the basis of insufficient documents. I was to fly to India from Vancouver via. Heathrow. The British Airways airport authorities told me that since my Canadian Visa has expired I would not be allowed to board the plane. This was unexpected for me because : 1) I had my valid Canadian Work Permit 2) The purpose of my visit to India, was to renew my Visa, since I cannot renew it in Canada; therefore I have to fly out of it and get the Canadian embassy overseas to renew it. I was not informed by the travel agent from whom I bought the ticket that I would need any documents, even upon telling him that I am not a resident in Canada he said all should be OK since India is a part of Commonwealth, and promptly issued me the ticket. After being refused boarding I was told by the airport BA official to seek help for rebooking. We talked to one of the officials who cancelled my flight before couple of hours departure. I come back home and talk to my agent, who says it was not his responsibility to inform me of any paper work, but my stand is that he should not have misinformed me either, he could have avoided the whole Commonwealth issue. Now I research the www.britishairways.com to find information on Visas, only to find the following. Passport and visa information is temporarily unavailable on this site, we hope to restore the service soon.” I have a legal passport, I have valid work permit , so these documents provided by Indian and Canadian government are useless for my 1 hour commute over Heathrow. I was not staying in London for even a day or overnight, only till my next flight took off. On 26th I talked to a British airways representative over the phone and she said that the only way to deal with this situation is to rebook my flight for a future date, which would still leave me with my problem of not having a valid Canadian Visa. But I would try to get my documents to salvage my ticket. Another agent Kimberley said rebooking would be possible only through the agent, so I called my agent again, he said that the notes on the ticket did not talk about the cancellation before departure and I have to get a note from the authorities at the airport saying that I cancelled my flight before departure in order to get any refund or rebooking. So I had to go to the airport again. How can the officials be so irresponsible as not to add such important data to my file, however, the mistake was rectified and note added. So I would think I can still rebook my flight for a future date since 2 BA agents had told me that I could rebook it and in the mean time I can try and get a transit visa. However, on 27th I called again at the BA information center to rebook my flight , and they said I could not get a REFUND, I cannot REBOOK and I cannot TRANSFER my ticket to someone else and I need to talk to my agent. What sort of a policy would this be, if you check out BA.com it is not that British airways is doing all it can to inform their customers. I don’t think it is my fault at all, since I went home last year under the same circumstances, I flew Cathay Pacific and I had no problems at all even though my visa was expired even then and I was goinmg home to renew it. I think BA and Flight centre need to polish the way they deals with people and not have irresponsible staff who forgets to mention entries and who mislead customers saying that rebooking can be done. they need to have correct information on the website and above all they need to have employees who understand individual problems and do not constantly repeat "We can do nothing about it, it is not our responsibility.” these people just wash off any responsibility by mentioning misleading information or “ Passport and visa information is temporarily unavailable on this site, we hope to restore the service soon.” They dont have to ask customers to run to airports and get documents. Their are lots of airlines out there but British Airways is simply a misanthrope. This has been such a cruel and horrible experience and I would recommend people never to fly British airways, because they are all psychotic and unreasonable. In the end I have not got any money back lost time and effort in getting people to listen to me and have been held responsible for everything.
and I never got a call from flight centre to follow up on my isuue after the first 2 days, after that I went and visited thenm a few times but they were all smiles with less than a hello to say.

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