Wilson James Anmeldelser 24

Disgraceful wheelchair assistance at Heathrow Terminal 3

We arrived at Heathrow Terminal 3 today with pre-booked wheelchair assistance for my 88-year-old mother, and the experience was completely unacceptable.

After disembarking, she was left waiting until all passengers had exited the aircraft. When assistance finally resumed, wheelchair users were pushed at excessive speed by an operator on an electric platform, forcing family members to run just to keep up.

My mother was then removed from her wheelchair and told to wait for a buggy, with no seating provided despite her age and condition. I had to find a wheelchair myself and push her through the airport.

Staff showed a clear lack of care and organisation. One assistant briefly offered help, pushed the chair for less than a minute, then walked away. Another passenger who had arrived from USA in a wheelchair was left alone and unattended.

There was also poor communication, staff could not provide basic information such as baggage carousel details and showed little willingness to assist.

This experience was not only stressful but deeply concerning. Passengers requiring assistance should be treated with dignity and care, not as an afterthought.

This is in stark contrast to other airports such as Miami, where assistance is coordinated, supportive, and consistent from arrival to exit.

Heathrow’s current system is not fit for purpose.

Michael, of Wilson James Company at Birmingham Airport organising Assisted Travel - I found to be extremely helpful. Can't praise this Gentleman enough. Splendid care given to me, both kind & courteous. Thankyou Michael - hope to see you again on my travels!

If only I could give 0 stars! An absolute joke to work for, avoid at all costs. No thought for your well being, ignorant management. They will ignore your concerns.

When you are 89 and having to get up at 4am to arrange special assistance for a flight at 8am
to Cyprus, from Gatwick, it makes a huge difference to meet a man with a smile called
Bob, ( Mr Bhutendra Patel ) who works in the office, ground floor South Terminal.
The
Who then arranged for Mr Tony Harley who was responsible for my assistance right through customs, who was equally cheerful, responsible and so so helpful.

Please may I ask Wilson James to acknowledge this feedback and thank Bob and Tony for their kindness to us old folks.

I strongly recommend avoiding Wilson James at all costs. This company is plagued by extremely poor management, blatant favoritism, and a complete disregard for staff wellbeing.

Promotions appear to go only to those favored by senior leadership, especially Mark Dobson, who seems to care very little about his employees. The company proudly lists core values like respect, honesty, responsibility, safety, and communication, but they fail miserably to follow their own principles.

Managers generally lack proper skills or experience in managing people or operations. Many promotions come from a small, long-standing group, certain families like the Lords are obvious favorites. Hayley Lord and her partner are ineffective in their roles, yet they've advanced through close connections and favoritism toward Mark Dobson. "Private Dinner Parties" Cough Cough

Pay is well below the going rate for the industry and responsibilities involved. When you ask for a pay increase, you're told there's no margin in the budgetyet in the same breath, managers casually mention spending over £2,000 -£3,000 on drinks/dinners or other luxuries the night before. The hypocrisy is glaring.

On the IT/support side, you're stuck using their broken service desk system, which is managed by Hayley Lord. No surprise: tickets sit open for months with zero updates. The support staff themselves are decent people (some even try hard), but they're stuck by the same poor management and need higher approval for anything meaningful. The "IT Director" is a friendly guy, but he lacks real IT knowledge though he can sometimes get things moving if you keep pressing him.
From a logistics standpoint, management has no real clue. They overpromise and spout nonsense to win contracts, then leave frontline staff to scramble and make it work. Their Fulcrum software is inadequate and buggy; complain, and you're told "we know, we're working on it" (via the product manager Will), but nothing ever gets fixed. Customers complain constantly about being unable to book, and you're powerless except to log another useless ticket.

If you're ex-military, you're likely to be worshiped and fast-tracked by this crowd another example of their favoritism. We even had the privilege of Gary Sullivan chairman (military background) visiting site; he walked around, listened to complaints, pretended to care... but absolutely nothing changed or got actioned.
All in all, the company needs to fire most of the current management team and hire skilled, competent people who actually know what they're doing including Mark Dobson, who should step away from the company he founded, as he clearly doesn't have a clue. stick to the "private dinner parties" There are many other names I could mention, but they're all part of the same ineffective, self-serving culture.

I'm glad they lost the contract I was on the new company actually knows how to run things properly, pays fairly, and supports staff.

I had a great experience with the Wilson James staff today at Gatwick airport. A member of staff saw that I was struggling with my partner with dementia and he did everything he could to help me. I think his name was Jamie Bolton - thank you so much. Impressive customer service which is rarely seen these days!
Please note that I hadn't booked assistance prior to the flight but Jamie knew I needed it once we landed at Gatwick.
Angela

Over the past two years, my family and I have had consistently poor experiences with Wilson James’ mobility assistance service at Heathrow Terminal 2.

These involve elderly passengers aged 84–87 with significant mobility and health issues. Despite repeated advance bookings and very clear instructions, the service has failed on most occasions.

Problems start with the phone operators: they are frequently rude, dismissive, interrupt constantly, and in some cases refuse to take booking details at all. Communication is poor and the attitude often suggests a complete lack of concern for vulnerable passengers.

Operationally, the failures are serious:
Wheelchairs not provided as requested
Agents arriving very late or not at all
Elderly passengers left unattended at baggage reclaim
Passengers forced to walk long distances despite explicit medical and mobility limitations
On multiple occasions, my parents were abandoned mid-journey, left to retrieve luggage themselves, or made to wait 20–60 minutes with no assistance. In one case, my 87-year-old mother was left alone after baggage reclaim and had to walk through security by herself. In another, only one wheelchair was provided for two elderly passengers, despite clear advance notice.

I have raised these issues repeatedly, including formal written complaints and in-person discussions with Wilson James managers. Nothing has improved. The same failures continue to happen year after year.
This is not a minor inconvenience — it is exhausting, distressing and potentially dangerous for elderly passengers.
The service is unreliable, poorly managed and completely unfit for purpose.
I would strongly advise anyone travelling with vulnerable or elderly passengers to be extremely cautious.

Big shout out for Buggy Drivers 'Denise' & 'The Blonde lady, whose name we didn't catch!' ONE word describes these two.....'BLINDING' On time, pleasant, great drivers, knew exactly what they were doing, where they were going and all delivered with great sense of humour despite it being late on Boxing Day evening!.....Thanks ladies you made such a difference to our homeward journey & it was so much easier.....Thank you! Owen James are so lucky to have you two on board!!! Geof 'n' Angie (With the leaking Duty Free vodka!)

I fly from LHR on a regular basis, I require a wheelchair. I can honestly say without a doubt, this Company is a joke, They NEVER have enough staff, half the time the staff are surly or don't know what they are doing. I can't remember a time that I have managed to shop at LHR as they leave it until the last minute to take you through, even though we arrive 2.5 hrs ahead of a short haul flight. They don't take any notice of customer complaints. Heathrow need to look at changing them to a company that care. Any complaints need to be passed directly to LHR to get them to change supplier

Worked 3 years for them realy is the worse company I ever worked for . First 3 months my pay was wrong over £2700 short with missing days and no phone number to call any one then no double time pay at Xmas wasn’t resolved . 3 years never saw one manager relief guards turning up over 2 1/2 hours late.now after losing contract for my site there not paying me holiday pay for pre booked holidays just glad to be finnaly rid of them

As a former employee, my mother was hospitalised for a PERFORATED BOWEL, PERITONITIS AND SEPSIS, she was in an induced coma and critical.
When I explained this to my employer at Wilson james, they fired me and were not sympathetic or understanding.
I took 5 days off work and let them know every time.
This is disgraceful and a breach of my rights.
If this is how they treat their employees I wouldn't want to be a client.

We were provided with immediate care and she immediately took me on my wheelchair(when in Heathrow) to the right places without me getting lost or confused. She took me to the place to get my luggage and later on, showed me the way to the exit. We also talked casually as we were being taken to our destination.

Employees with a service standard as good as hers are very rare these days. I would give a solid 5 out of 5 stars to Ms/Mrs Meenaxi Pinto for her outstanding service she provided me this morning. Well done!!

Doesn’t even deserve a star this has to be one of the worst companies out there, can’t even pay their staff on time and also some payments will go missing and when you ask them they act like they don’t know what’s going on. Management is really poor and rude the place is in shambles they have no clue on what to do or even how to manage their staff, if you want your time wasted and work for free then this is the place for you.

Wilson James who care nothing for employees.

A Wilson James manager and HR lady at the Science Museum were asked by my union rep and i in 2018 to make me redundant on health grounds and did nothing.

Wilson James Supervisors at the same museum who were made aware by me about other staff doing nothing such as not patrolling galleries,leaving assigned areas,late for duty and reliefs and did nothing to them and the said former colleagues continued..

Now i've been told that they had told hard working and long serving former colleagues at the Science Museum that they were going to change the terms and conditions and if they didn't like it then they could resign and many did.

Not a nice way to treat people.

If you’re considering a job with Wilson James at Luton Airport, think twice. The management is horrible—they have their favorites and pick and choose who to blame when things go wrong, especially when passengers miss their flights. There’s no real support from them, and staff are constantly under pressure in a stressful and chaotic environment.

The airport is always busy, yet management does nothing to ease the workload or show appreciation for employees. The work atmosphere is toxic, with many inexperienced teenagers who have no clue about customer service. In just three years, the station manager has changed three times, showing how unstable things are. Worse still, they promote people to duty manager roles without any actual management experience, which only makes things worse.

If you value a supportive work environment, fair management, and career growth, Wilson James at Luton Airport is not the place for you.

Their passenger assist services at Heathrow Airport is truly horrific - a clear example of how the dignity, respect, rights and customer experience of passengers with a disability have been completely ignored in the pursuit of 'safety' policies - I was subjected to abject humiliation as they insisted that I was wrapped up in their undignified and demoralising sling - which requires 3 people to use - in front of all the other passengers (as the personnel arrived late to assist) as this was their policy. I had my own transfer seat, which served both safety, comfort and dignity criteria, but was not allowed to use it. My customer experience was shocking - I travel extensively on business as a wheelchair user and I have never been made to feel so disabled, disempowered and disregarded. Shocking! Wilson James - you need to be trained better - not by medical staff, but by customer service experts with lived experience of disability - Hear your customers, and you will learn a thing or two about effective, safe passenger assist done with dignity.

Extremely rude and racist British company that operates within Heathrow airport, such a shame that Heathrow Senior management using Wilson James agency and does not know what really is happening inside the company this is a second Omniserv company that got kicked out by Heathrow Management and permanently shut down, some people were calling Omnislave ( modern slavery). Looks that Wilson James only has British name but down deep it is using discrimination against non British that were not born in the UK.

Had to use assistance 4 times recently at Heathrow terminals 3 and 5. As a disabled frequent flyer, this is the worst experience I’ve ever had at any airport. Staff treated me worse than baggage, none existent conversation, no concerns except excuses for delays, rough handling and no awareness of client needs or interest to find these out. Also a few safety concerns. Complaints have received detailed explanations and worthless apologies, all supported by erroneous information. I’ll fly connections through Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin in future

Arrived Gatwick South terminal flight Athens/london
Yesterday afternoon 4/1/25.had requested wheelchair
Assistance as I am 91 years old. My seat no. 35A which is at the back of the plain consequently I have
To wait all passengers before meto leave. Cabin crew told me to wait and then assisted me to the front entrance of the plane and sit down. The plane door was open and it was terribly cold . told the assistance was there and taken another passenger all knowing that I was waiting for assistance. After about 45 minutes assistance arrived. I asked him why he did not wait for me and he said that cabin crew told him there was no one else which is difficult to believe of course you realise the
Taxi driver charged me £110 when I usually pay £80.waiting time
As I am an anxious person due to age I always arrive at assistance desk early however people arriveing after me get assistance because their flight is before mine l should have assistance to go thru the formalities
Assistance at Gatwick is the worst I have experienced suggest you seek with other airports.
Never the less travelling from Gatwick again I doubt

REQUELT & MAHENDRA
THANK YOU !

Good evening
I am writing to express my appreciation to Requelt and Mahendra

Last week we were on a BA flight back to SA from London

It was delayed until 22:30
Then cancelled til the following morning

As I needed wheelchair assistance I had to wait in the Business class lounge

I was the last passenger to be fetched by Wilson James assistance

I was unbelievably lucky to have Requelt push me in the wheel chair

She realised it was almost 1 am in the morning and helped my husband who was struggling having just had knee surgery and obtained assistance with Mahendra . The two of them wheeled us to the City Lodge.

What an absolute pleasure they were
Kind
Efficient
Professional
Caring and
Fast and it was incredibly late at night

Please may I ask you to show them this letter of appreciation.

Thank you so very much Mahendra and Requelt.

Please let me know they received this feedback
Kind wishes
Jill and Michael Back ( grey hair and glasses)