V-Flyer

I used Virgin Atlantic to Fly to Cuba from London in August 2010. I was struck in La Havana for nearly 3 days because of a mechanical problem with the plane. I will not go though the major inconveniences this has caused to me both personally and professionally. Virgin promised all passengers a complementary flight anywhere in the world (except on their Australia route) valid for 18 month.

It took me 5 months to receive a confirmation letter for this complementary flight. When I finally got it (after continually sending them emails and calling them), I called reservations in February 2011 to try and book a flight for June 2011 to be told "you called too late, no complementary seats are available, you should have called earlier". When I explained that I ONLY just received the confirmation letter, the lady didn't want to hear about it. She was the least helpful person that I have come across. For an airline advertising high standards of customer service and strong ethics, they have a pretty odd way to show it.

Basically, Virgin delivered false promises at the time of the incident in order to keep angry passengers quiet and avoid a considerable amount of complaints but they are now refusing to honor their offer, hiding behind lame excuses.

3 words. Small Claims Court. the day you serve papers they will suddenly capitulate.
i had the same hassle with BA. they refused to play ball and even said 'take us to court' .the day i did one of their legal team rang and apologised for 'the mistake'.

it will cost them a lot more to have a lawyer sitting round for a day than to settle your claim.

Nice polite letter first, court papers second

I'd be inclined to take this to the press too. Newspapers love a story like this. Especially if you've been through every department.

Sorry to hear about your problems.

Did they say there were no seats left on that particular flight, or was it the case that you were too late to book a seat on any flight?

thanks

David

Maryline Belle wrote:I used Virgin Atlantic to Fly to Cuba from London in August 2010. I was struck in La Havana for nearly 3 days because of a mechanical problem with the plane. I will not go though the major inconveniences this has caused to me both personally and professionally. Virgin promised all passengers a complementary flight anywhere in the world (except on their Australia route) valid for 18 month.
[/quote

It took me 5 months to receive a confirmation letter for this complementary flight. When I finally got it (after continually sending them emails and calling them), I called reservations in February 2011 to try and book a flight for June 2011 to be told "you called too late, no complementary seats are available, you should have called earlier". When I explained that I ONLY just received the confirmation letter, the lady didn't want to hear about it. She was the least helpful person that I have come across. For an airline advertising high standards of customer service and strong ethics, they have a pretty odd way to show it.

Basically, Virgin delivered false promises at the time of the incident in order to keep angry passengers quiet and avoid a considerable amount of complaints but they are now refusing to honor their offer, hiding behind lame excuses.

I would not necessarily go down the route that FLABound has suggested straight away. What strikes me is that you need to write a strongly worded letter back to Steve Ridgeway or SRB.

If the complimentary ticket was issued in January but was valid from August then this is clearly unfair as you have essentially been timed out by VS for their delay in delivering the ticket to you. I would get this sorted firstly.

I am not sure exactly how these complimentary tickets work having never been offered one myself. However if what the young lady at VS was saying was that the flight was full and so therefore you cannot use your complimentary ticket then I struggle to see what exactly VS are supposed to do. A complimentary ticket can only be honoured if there are available seats. A complimentary ticket does not mean that a seat will be guaranteed on any flight you select, it will, of course, be subject to availability. So you really need to work out the exact reason why the agent couldn't deal with your complimentary ticket before you take it any further.

I certainly would not follow FLABounds route unless I was 100% certain I was correct. After all, the brief details you have provided would by no means satisfy any District Judge or Deputy District Judge in a Fast Track claim (small claims court does not exist, your case would be heard at a County Court under the Fast Track claim).

firstly, sorry to hear about your issues, both initially and since your return.

Will is correct. You need to write to SRB to make sure you get the date extended on your voucher.

Will is also correct about the lack of seats issue. The voucher will of course have terms attached to it, like any airline voucher would in these circumstances. There will only be so many seats on each a/c that these vouchers can be used in,I believe they are booked in to the O class fare code,so you need to find a flight with availability in that class.

Worst case you can exchange the voucher for miles, which you could then use at your leisure.

I don't think you have any claim or story for a newspaper, apart from the length of time it took to receive the voucher, which I am sure you will get sorted if you contact the exec office.

Neil.

Sorry that you are having such problems.

I would support the thought of a letter but do send it registered/recodred.

I hope you have a successful outcome.

R-P

Could I ask why you didn't ask to speak to a supervisor or a manager?

I see four problems here, aside from the first, unfortunate problem:

- the OP wanted a flight at peak season with less than six months notice
- the full terms and conditions of the compensatory flight were not understood (i.e. it can only be booked in an available fare class, not any fare class) - however we must assume the small print was provided but neither read or understood
- the 'voucher' arrived five months after the event, but we don't know the expiry date on it (not sure why we're concerned about the expiry date without detail, 18 months from August 2010 is February 2012 - and that's presumably to use it, you could fly up to 11 months after that?)
- the call centre was unhelpful

I would guess that VS looked after all customers during the unfortunate delay and, yes, problems do happen and they do inconvenience you (I am sure it wasn't targeted!). So, in terms of 1 to 4 above:

#1 is related to #2 - without knowing whether VS informed you of the full terms and conditions it is difficult to say whether this is really poor treatment, but usually the small print says so and you will have had that (I assume)
#3 I'd definitely seek to get this amended so you can use it to suit the timing of your plans, and writing to SRB or Steve Ridgeway is the way to go
#4 is awful and unsympathetic without knowing any more about the interaction, and VS needs to work on its CS if this is the case.

But sorry, I don't see where VS delivered false promises?

slinky09 wrote:
#3 I'd definitely seek to get this amended so you can use it to suit the timing of your plans, and writing to SRB or Steve Ridgeway is the way to go

Slinky - a lot of people on this board mention the above, in terms of writing to SRB or Steve Ridgeway. Do you use a specific address for this? Is it not just handed to the Customer Relations team and responded to within 28 days+ as standard?

Luke

Neil wrote:I don't think you have any claim or story for a newspaper

Exactly. On the facts no claim whatsoever.

enyce085 wrote:
Slinky - a lot of people on this board mention the above, in terms of writing to SRB or Steve Ridgeway. Do you use a specific address for this? Is it not just handed to the Customer Relations team and responded to within 28 days+ as standard?

For Steve Ridgeway just address to S Ridgeway Esq., VS, The Office, Manor Royal, Crawley, WEst Sussex, RH10 .... You will then get a response from the Executive Office of VS. No it isnt just passed to the CR team- it is normally dealt with by a member of the Executive Office. Whilst they may offer the same compensation it is the fact that you have a 'real' person dealing with it for you and someone who can actually be bothered to sign the letter they send (although the drafting skills of VS are incredibly poor).

Note though with Virgin Holidays a letter to the MD just results in it being passed to CR...well thats my experience.

I think it was unfortunate for the Lady,VA would NOT have known that a problem would occur with the plane knowingly.Also I would like to know if she was offered or provided with a hotel by VA and or was compensation offered for the delay, She could make a claim on her insurance policy.I certainly don!t think that she has a claim.Can we please see the full facts before making a judgement on VA
Richard

Neil wrote:
I don't think you have any claim or story for a newspaper


Exactly. On the facts no claim whatsoever.

You'd be surprised what local rags will take on. They do love a good disgruntled anything story, complete with photo of person looking glum with a letter from the company.

slinky09 wrote:#1 is related to #2 - without knowing whether VS informed you of the full terms and conditions it is difficult to say whether this is really poor treatment, but usually the small print says so and you will have had that (I assume)

Having had a flight vouchers as compensation for our being bounced (voluntarily) I think it's fair to say that the headline message "free return economy flight anywhere in the world (except Australia)" isn't tempered at the time of offering with a clear explanation of the related t&c; I only got a full understanding of these when they were explained to me by a very patient agent when trying to redeem the vouchers.

Sounds like the OP has been issued a red select voucher. Unless things have changed, there will be no taxes/fees associated with redemption, which can make them not bad value. And you can always switch them to 50K miles later instead, which could be good for upgrading rather than an outright reward.

The usual ploy if you get an unhelpful agent/customer services person is keep cool and end the call. Phone back a bit later. This unfortunately is the same for many call centres, not just VA.

On the availability, frequent flyers would probably know restrictions were likely, but a "free ticket anywhere" doesn't exactly convey that message but is the language generally used when the vouchers are being handed out. And yes, they do have small print but some people wouldn't even think to check.

Again, if the OP has phoned up with fixed dates and a fixed route in mind it is quite likely that there is no availability. But if the OP wants to come back with details of where they were trying to get to and dates we might be able to suggest alternatives, and then armed with that could try another phone call before any letter writing.

Regards
R3dV

PS edited to add there needs to be O class availability, confirmed by IGuyHD in another thread about red select vouchers.

Miss G wrote:You'd be surprised what local rags will take on. They do love a good disgruntled anything story, complete with photo of person looking glum with a letter from the company.

Yes and how silly does the person look in those articles (no matter how valid their claim is?

Remember those pics of family & the cat that has been sent a polling card? 'Yes lets get in the paper and say how stupid the council is' they say but forget that they are the ones who put the cat down on the form.

Or the long term housing problem when they have never actually told the landlord/council yet seam able to find the phone numnber of the paper?

(Both of those happened to my dad when he was a councillor)

I'm not saying VS are necessarily in the right but we only have the OPs side of the story.

And as to going to court what use would that be? Again from what we know the OP had had her voucher (the compensation as promised) but has problems using it when they want to use it.

All I can see a judge doing is say to VS 'the validity period starts from when the voucher was actually received not when you say you sent it'. I honestly don't think any judge would make VS fly the pax on any flight of her choosing or give her any additional compensation.

All 'complimentary' and 'free' flights are booked into non revenue fare classes, ie - G's, U's and the various classes in Y. Your complimentary flight voucher is just the same as a FC miles booking in that it's redemption is strictly subject to availability, if there are no G's (etc) then you can't use it on that flight.

You actually don't need to write to SRB or the Executive Office to ask for an extension on the voucher - you can just send it back to CR with a covering letter and it will be extended. Only once though.

Send it recorded delivery though.... these valuable things have an enduring habit of going astray....

StillRedHot wrote:You actually don't need to write to SRB or the Executive Office to ask for an extension on the voucher - you can just send it back to CR with a covering letter and it will be extended. Only once though.

I think the point of writing to SRB/The exec office, is to show displeasure at the length of time it took to receive the voucher.

To be fair to the OP the time scale was too long and unacceptable, and if it has been received earlier there *might* have been availability on the flight she was hoping for.

Neil

Neil wrote:

StillRedHot wrote:You actually don't need to write to SRB or the Executive Office to ask for an extension on the voucher - you can just send it back to CR with a covering letter and it will be extended. Only once though.

I think the point of writing to SRB/The exec office, is to show displeasure at the length of time it took to receive the voucher.

To be fair to the OP the time scale was too long and unacceptable, and if it has been received earlier there *might* have been availability on the flight she was hoping for.

Neil

Actually, I put the blame on this on the executives running VS (and other companies that do the same thing)

Through no fault of her own the passenger received the compensation she was promised 5 months later. At this point the employee should be empowered to make a change in the award date, extend it by 5 months.

While the vast majority of employee's will try to stick to the letter of the rules, the really smart ones will get a supervisor involved and note that. If it is deserving the company really should empower the employee to be able to do the right thing in situations. If they don't then they deserve a trip to small claims IMHO.

From an executive point of view, the one thing that is going to send me through the roof is when I get a letter or phone call from a guest who through no fault of their own has been caused a "headache", for the most part it is something like this, an award that is no longer valid because of something out of control by the guest.

By simply looking at the date and doing simple math an employee should be able to see if the passenger has been given the 18 month window they were promised, there should be a note somewhere in the system showing when the award was sent.

Scrooge wrote:Actually, I put the blame on this on the executives running VS (and other companies that do the same thing)

Through no fault of her own the passenger received the compensation she was promised 5 months later. At this point the employee should be empowered to make a change in the award date, extend it by 5 months.

While the vast majority of employee's will try to stick to the letter of the rules, the really smart ones will get a supervisor involved and note that. If it is deserving the company really should empower the employee to be able to do the right thing in situations. If they don't then they deserve a trip to small claims IMHO.

From an executive point of view, the one thing that is going to send me through the roof is when I get a letter or phone call from a guest who through no fault of their own has been caused a "headache", for the most part it is something like this, an award that is no longer valid because of something out of control by the guest.

By simply looking at the date and doing simple math an employee should be able to see if the passenger has been given the 18 month window they were promised, there should be a note somewhere in the system showing when the award was sent.

I don't know if you are trying to suggest my thoughts differ from yours, but I completely agree.

The problem is, unfortunately there are too many VS call centre staff who aren't capable of doing what you state. That is why rather than just a standard letter to CS like SRH suggested, I said the OP should write to the exec office to highlight the issue and get a satisfactory resolution (and it seems going through exec office is the only way to get such a thing nowadays).

If you are on Facebook I suggest you publish your complaint on Virgin Atlantic's Facebook wall. Public "embarrassment" tends to be a good motivator. y)

However whatever support you get, if there are no available seats for a complimentary on your required flight then you still will not get one.

But you still have quite a life until the complimentary elapses so plan another flight and book very early. y)

Actually, I really don't think they care about the facebook page, if you look through the discussions the vast majority of them are people complaining about not hearing anything from VS about a problem they had, more often than not these posts are ignored.

Every company has a culture, VS's (and many others) is to bury their head in the sand and hope that the problem will go away, that's great short term, but long term it will mess a company up.

While a letter to SRB may work, I would be more inclined to go in front of a court and ask for relief in this situation, the OP was promised a free flight and VS has failed to deliver, yes they are covered in the T&C's, however, at some point a court is going to rule that the T&C's place an unfair burden on the passenger, then VS (and all the other companies that include wording along these lines) are in trouble.

It wouldn't take much to convince a court that yes while VS did offer a free flight, they also made the redemption of the flight impossible, hence compensation is due.

From the little I know about court claims, this wouldn't have a chance and it's not worth even suggesting it. Not that the OP has a complaint to make however and VS should respond.

We're all hoping that the Cardiff call centre will improve things for the majority who don't get a preferential line to call and the service that follows - but the response to the OP is sadly typical, witness how long it takes VS to refund a (refundable) cancelled ticket ... months (and that's plain criminal and worth of legal action) ... witness how ineffectual (as reported here many times and most recently by enyce) are the VS agents who misinform people.

There is a customer service problem at VS that needs to be addressed - Facebook window dressing does not fix it, and sadly normal routes of enquiry don't work well so that's why we say write to SRB or SR directly to get a response.

It really is a shame that the standards of service in the air are not matched in the back office ...