VH Website Changing Booking - Loss of Discount

I experienced something slightly odd the other day when trying to change my holiday booking via the website. I wanted simply to add two excursions - thought I might as well get my 10% FV discount - which should have increased the holiday cost by 135 pounds (150 less 10%). It actually increased it by about 600 pounds, as in doing so it wiped out a raft of discounts. Needless to say I didn't confirm and will pay for the excursions on arrival. Anyone any idea why this is happens - I presume its fully recalculating the cost of your holiday and losing early booking discounts and the like. I notice another thread on the forum relating the name changing where this happened to someone else. I didn't bother with the call centre as (IMO) they are only looking at the same set of screens as you are and don't add a great deal of value to the whole booking process.

I don't often book holidays abroad with anyone other than VH (though given recent service run ins on misnamed tickets and accommodation that is cancelled 5 days after booking my wife is seriously cross with them) so do other travel companies impose a surcharge for using a cc ?

Paul

Paul,

Interesting post.

I have had a booking in the system since May 05 for a holiday this September.

Last Friday I went to the "manage your booking " section of VH to do the same as you and add some excursions. I noticed while I was on the site that they didnt have my mibile number or email address - so I added this and then a screen came up asking me to confirm - which I did.

When I went back to the booking a number of details had changed and the price had altered - and I had made NO changes in the itinerary or booking at all. My outbound flight had changed, car hire had changed - it was really different.

I checked against my Invoice and then called VH - got through to the call centre in India ([V]) and after about an hour they told me that the internet system had shown that changes had been made to the booking. I wasnt to happy with this and after much prodding got the direct number for the VH service centre in the UK - these ladies and gents are truly wonderful and within 10 minutes and resolved it all.

I now have the holiday back to how it was before this all happened and they are doing an audit on the internet system as it appears there is a bug or glitch. I have already spoken to a guy from their systems team as to what happened.

I did add the excursions via the UK service centre who made sure the FVC discount applied.

At the moment I dont feel inclined to trust the web based "manage your booking " system

I read this with interest as well. Yesterday I paid the balance for our trip to LA in August. I was very tempted to do this on the VH website but as the England game was on I rang the call centre and got through straight away to a very bright young lady who sorted everything out in no time at all.

Having read your posts I'm now glad I took this route rather that doing myself. I did check the website an hour or so later to confirm that the balance was clear which of course it was.

My next peice of advice is if you want to talk to anyone at any call centre some time next week leave it till Thursday evening between 5 & 7. I think you'll get through in no time at all [8D]

Miopyk

There was an error with my son's date of birth, after 2 emails and no response in 2 months, I happened to noticed the amend details option. Great I thought, I very easily and quickly changed it to the correct date and guess what happened next?, yes it completely repriced the holiday adding an extra £1500 to the outstanding balance. I crashed out of the system as quickly as I could and sent an email to FVC, there was no way that I would trust any booking change to that useless lot in India (bad previous experiences). Anyway the wonderful ladies at FVC made the change immediately keeping my balance at it's correct amount.

I don't know how any reptuable software house could put out a software mod without validation tests. Virgin should really look at their software supplier as this is not some hard to find bug in the code.

There is without doubt some sort of glitch in the system - Im not sure whether we get any VH people on the site - but if they are reading this then there is a definite issue with the functionality of the "manage your booking " software - and once again the lovley people at the FVC have sorted things out.

I asked VH last week to add on 2 lounge passes to my booking. They did so no problem.
On checking the web 5 mins later, my discount that I had for using Tesco clubcard deals had been removed. I called them back straight away only to get through to the same person as before. She told me that if you add or take away or ammend any part of the booking then the system resets itself and they have to re-enter your original booking, she was in the process of doing this as I called back.
Sure enough 5 mins later my booking was back to normal with the extra passes added on.