Any ideas what next ?

I have flights booked MCO-LHR was on Aug. 1 at 55 after midnight in the Retreat Suite. I got an email saying flight time CHANGED to July 31s t at 2255 so just moved forward 2 hours. No biggie, BUT they gave away my RS seats. So, I have been involved in an email war with Customer services, first they tried telling me an earlier flight was cancelled (not true) and seats were amalgamated, there was no cancellation and definitely not another neo. next up they said seats can't be re-allocated, yet they did it to me and couldn't say why (there was no neo flight on July 31 previously.)

I went back and said OK transfer me to the TPA -LHR flight, which is a neo, they said the RS wasn't available and there were no UC seats to allocate. 5 minutes online established this was a blatant lie, they were available, so back again, the latest excuse is CS doesn't deal with pre flight issue, they can't change an existing booking and they cant deal with a differential miles payment.

right now I am trying to find someone who CAN sort this but no idea where to turn, so any help with a pre flight issue email would be much appreciated. I'm ticked off with constantly not being told the truth just to fob me off

and the reason Im sticking to get the RS is its a treat for Mrs FF as its her birthday, our wedding anniversary AND her first Virgin flight (not a great experience so far)

VS do aircraft swops all the time so especially on the leisure rotes like MCO TPA MIA etc. I’m travelling from Orlando in August myself to Manchester. The only advice I can give you is if you have a proof of purchase a screenshot of the seat map or a screenshot of your credit card statement. As in Upper the only seats you have to pay for is the RT Suite. I myself had my seat moved at the gate many years ago and put my foot down because they had not told me and slid the new breading pass in my passport when I wasn’t looking. I will say VS customer service are normally very good so if you have any evidence, I would submit it as part of your appeal.

In this computer-run era we live in, a day is 24 hours long ending at midnight.

Your flight was early on one day but has been cancelled and swapped to another day, namely quite late one day earlier.

This is quite ridiculous. but that is probably where it has gone wrong.

to respond to both replies (thank you)

yes i have proof of purchase for the 2 retreat Suites , i booked in February and had the seats showing correctly until the 11th of this month. They dont dispute I booked them
Then I got an email saying my flight had CHANGED not been cancelled and advanced by 2 hours (ok yes different day) but I know there was no flight on the new day of travel because I would have booked that one.

so Virgin would have me believe that in the 4 hours between sending the email and me checking someone else had gone on and booked (supposedly) vacant RS seats. my contention is my RS booking should have stayed with the changed time, not re-allocated (something they say cannot be done in a subsequent email)

i have even offered to let them change me to another flight (TPA-LHR) same day which does have RS available , having first lied and said they werent available they now admit they are but say they cant change my flight

the battle continues

No ideas I'm afraid.

I'm assuming they're refunding you for the Retreat Suite? That's where it ends.

How did you book this flight? They should be able to change you to the TPA routing - I'm unsure why they're saying they can't. Of course, expect change fees etc. But note, there's nothing to guarantee those flights won't change.

Mike, yes I have been offered a refund plus 20k miles each. Its not what I want and I'm not giving up yet.

They say "customer care cannot transfer flights, they deal with problems after travel" so I said Ok, pass it to someone who can. we shall see how that pans out. what's most annoying is they keep lying to try and fob me off.

I have flown on the TPA flight a few times and it's a good flight the only down side is from time to time they put the A330-300 on it. So you have to look out for that it's normally during the off-peak season.

[mitchja]

I have flown on the TPA flight a few times and it's a good flight the only down side is from time to time they put the A330-300 on it. So you have to look out for that it's normally during the off-peak season.

VS have also been sending the A350's to TPA over the last few weeks as well so as with all VS routes, any aircraft type is possible!

I also think it's a silly idea to sell the Retreat suite more than 2 weeks in advance now for this very reason and this brings up back to the age old problem VS have in not having a consistent hard product across their fleet.

Mind you DL are one of the worst for that as with their new A350 Delta One seat announced last week, that now means DL will have 8 different Delta One products in their fleet which actually doesn't make VS look that bad with just 3 different Upper Class and 4 Premium seat seat types!!

well, the end result is I didn't get anywhere; they still couldn't explain how my seats got sold elsewhere in 5 hours and I got kicked out. Got a refund on the RS seats (rightly so) and 20,000 miles each as compensation. so that's 2 failed attempts out of 2 to bag the RS. 3rd time lucky I hope