British Airways are touted as a premium airline. Unfortunately they fall well below their perceived standards. A little bit about me, I’m quite an experienced traveller, I have flown the London to LAX to route over 100 times in the past 6 years. I normally fly with Air New Zealand and before that Virgin Atlantic. I decided to give BA a try as they had the new A380 plane and we had recently been collecting there Avios points on a credit card (big mistake, I have since terminated the card). When booking the flight the plane seemed very busy and therefore the seats were quite expensive so I opted for economy with the intention of upgrading at check-in. The booking process online was quite simple and the email communication after booking very very good. Unfortunately the staff on check-in were simply the rudest check in staff I have ever encountered and made me doing an upgrade almost impossible. After join 3 queues at Heathrow I managed to get in front of someone who would process an upgrade for me at the cost of £500 for 2 people to Premium Economy (or whatever they call it). The A380 aeroplane was amazing and a true testament to engineering excellence, unfortunately this amazing plane was let down by moody uninterested staff. Half way through the flight I walked to the back of the plane to see if they had any snacks (i.e Crisps or Biscuits) as they do on Virgin and Air New Zealand. I was told by a very put out air steward that they had ran out of snacks and that I should have asked earlier. I was shocked how does a plane carrying 469 people run out of snacks in 4 hours into a flight. On my way back to my seat I spotted a different air steward whom I asked the same question, they replied “hold on I will check”, thankfully this steward was helpful and returned with one Twix. Our inbound flight was even worse than our outbound. One day prior to our flight I called BA (50 Mins on hold) with an enquiry about delaying the flight for one day due to the birth of my wife's niece. I got put through to a helpful customer service representative who told me I could change the flight for the change of ticket fee. I was very happy at this news and said ok I will call back. As I had to check with my wife. The BA employee said no problem call back when you are ready, I asked for a name and direct number but she didn't give it to me and instead said I could speak to anyone there. I put the phone down and spoke to my wife and made arrangements i.e hotels, transfers & work. I called back as soon as I could (1.50 mins later) only to be told “sorry sir you're within 24hrs now. To change your flight to tomorrow it will cost £6000 in economy as we have to issue a new ticket at short notice.”. I asked for the manager who came on the phone and very aggressively told me that it was my fault. I explained that the Manager should listen to the call, I clearly stated that at no point did the BA call centre rep say anything about a 24hr period where the flight would increase by 20,000%. The manager listened to the call agreed that I had not been advised but said there was nothing she could do and that I would need to pay the money or start packing! Not being made of money we decided to pack our bags and not see the new born baby girl, my wife was heart broken. On arrival at LAX we were greeted by another disgruntled member of BA staff who said through gritted teeth "Hi how has your day been." I simply replied "not great.". Its wasn’t her fault so I didn’t go into our recent experience with the call centre. I enquired about an upgrade and was told it would be $1400 per person, I thought this was expensive but due to my wife’s upset I felt it was the least I could do. I said "ok lets do it , I would like to upgrade please". The lady then said "oh sorry you can't upgrade" I was flabbergasted, you just made me an offer I accepted then you retracted and said I couldn’t have it. I asked if it was because it was sold out she said no, its because of another reason but she could not give me any more details. I was utterly shocked and appalled. She said economy isn’t busy I will give you a 4 together in economy, I grudgingly accepted and jokingly said “it's not by the toilets is it!”. With hindsight I should have pressed this point more, but she kept saying they were good seats. When we boarded the flight I was shocked to find that we were on the absolute back row (which on the A380 is row 44) up against a gang of 4 very loud toilets. My seat had a brown blanket over it, when I lifted the blanket I was blasted by the smell of stale urine. So now not only am I sitting next to the toilet, I'm actually going to be sitting where someone actually went to the toilet. Great! When a steward asked me why I wasn’t sitting down, I pointed to the seat with the blanket and explained that, thats where the smell is coming from. They picked the seat up and swapped it with the seat next to me. So now I’m not sitting in urine, I’m sitting next to urine. Great! After 40 minutes and being told that there was nothing the steward could do, the steward eventually moved myself and my wife to two middle seats in a gang of 4, not ideal but far better that next to the toilets and the urine seat. When I arrived back in the UK I contracted BA immediately with my issues. They gave me this boiler plate reply: “We appreciate how frustrating this must have been for you and are sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused. We'll also pass your comments to our Customer Experience team for improvements. Thanks for letting us know what happened.” I find it such a shame that an iconic British brand has been dragged down to such low levels of customer care. I actually feels sorry for the staff, they seem to be just going through the motions with very little passion or enthusiasm. My advise, to all London to LAX travellers is to give Air New Zealand a go. There plane is amazing, the staff are very helpful and knowledgable. Plus when things do go wrong you get a sympathetic ear instead of having the blame reversed and pointed directly back at you.