Help with flights - Please

Hello

This is my first post and hope someone can help me.

Earlier this afternoon I tried to book reward flights with Virgin for 2 people.

Going from Gatwick to Orlando on 28th Aug in Pemium and returning economy from New York on 11th Sept (2230 flight - can't be any earlier)

I checked and the 2 seats were available I was 13500 miles short so thought I'll just buy them. I did this costing 225.00 v( . I then tried to book the seats only to find that the flight from New York was not available (only 1 seat left) xx( .

I then telephoned virgin who refused to give me my payment back for the miles bought and said it was bad luck as someone was booking the New York flight at the same time as me and got there first !

I have now spoken to a manager who has now said they will refund the miles bought. y)

Does anyone know how long this will take? and does anyone know if reward seats become available nearer the date? (there is still one seat but if I book it and another one does not appear my life won't be worth living from my other half)

Thanks for any help on this one

[Neil]

Welcome to V-Flyer.

Sorry to hear about your problems, but it really was just a case of bad luck/timing it seems. I am not sure how long it will take to get your refund, I guess only Virgin can tell you that.

A couple of things that may help you in the future. You can call Virgin and put flights on hold. This will mean that Virgin will hold the reward seats (or any revenue seats also) for you for a period of 24hrs, which would have then enabled you purchase the miles and then call them back to confirm the booking, without the worry of someone else booking one of the rewards you wanted.

Also, have you looked at other flights out of New York, both JFK and EWR. There are numerous flights each day and just because reward seats aren't available on one of the flights doesn't mean they won't be on one of the other flights.

There is a chance that more reward seats might become available before the flight, usually it is a few days beforehand, but it is worth checking regularly as it can happen at any time, although it really is dependant on how busy the loads are.

Neil

It will take a few days at least as Virgin will want to make sure your payment clears into their account before they process the refund. This is normal business practice.

I guess if you need to be on the 22.30 flight back to LHR then that's because of your connections into NYC or other plans you have for that day so have you thought about seeing if there are any reward tickets for the 12th and staying overnight in NYC?