Trying to upgrade

I would Like to tell you my experience in trying to upgrade my forthcoming holiday. We took advantage of a 2 for 1 offer for Sandals holiday in Nov, orignally booking PE both ways.

We then decided to find a little extra money to upgrade to UC, i phoned up my travel agent who then phoned Virgin Holidays who said all thier allocation had been used so the answer is no availabilty[:(!]. I tried many dummy bookings and found 7 seats still available so after many calls myself like every 2 days 2 UC seats became available for the return journey which we duly booked.

So my main aim was to still get UC outbound, my frustrations in the many phonecalls to virgin stemmed from the differing excuses i was getting from differnet operators. From one operator saying 'in the brocure it says' and my answer was that the deal i got was not in the brocure to my wife ringing up and being told no way will we get a upgrade except maybe at the airport.

I still persisted in phoning Virgin Holidays the next day especially when i saw the published UC fares drop by 600, and suddendly i had an operator who understood what i wanted and to my amazement or sheer persistance i was able to secure 2 UC seats outbound.Mind you i was on a 3 way call to get it booked because my travel agent couldnt get through to Virgin[:D].

My moral of this is to hassle,persist and keep checking the websites even if your told by one operator you have no chance.

Good luck and beleive me persitance does pay off.

Jurgen

I attempted exactly the same fairly recently with no success. IMHO the fact that I was talking to a call centre in India had a bearing on the outcome. The people employed in India are with out doubt highly qualified, in fact I believe some are educated to degree level. The problem may be that they are simply reading from a script and have little knowledge of ways around the complicated booking processes. Any thoughts?

Regards
Bryan

[HighFlyer]

Were the dummy bookings you performed on the VH's site or VS's?, as they do hold separate allocations with VH often getting only a small slice of UC seats. It could be that when the fares dropped VH received more seats, or that you were very unfortunate and happened to get some bad agents. Either way, good news on securing the upgrades!

Thanks,
Sarah

[mitchja]

This is one of the reasons why I book direct with VH.

You used to be able to change your flights online but the 'Change flight' section of the VH website seems to have been taken off-line now.

You could even change flight dates as well as cabin but alas no more.

You can still change you hotel or room preference (if there's a choice) online yourself. You can also add on airport transport and other organised trips too upto 8 weeks before departure, after this time, you have to call to make changes to your booking.

If you do want to change your flights with a VH booking and there's no availability left for VH, VH can put a request into VS but it's not guaranteed, although I beleive VH do get priority over other agents for seat requests.

Regards

I was doing the dummy bookings on the VS site but i agree with Bryan the call centre in India did have a direct bearing with my complicated call and i do beleive they do work to a script as proven when one told me it was in the brocure so i asked them to email me the brocure she was talking about. I do understand limited availability what i do not understand is why i cannot upgrade my seat if their is one available, i was willing to pay the extra.

Unfortunatly Sarah my 2-1 deal was too good to miss in the Daily mail so i had to go through Sandals who in turn booked through VH.

Bryan keep the hassle going i was fortunate to get someone who understood what i was asking and was able to give me the proper answers rather than the script provided hence all the different excuses i received.

Good Luck

Jurgen

[HighFlyer]

Hi Jurgen,

VH and VS have seperate allocations of Upper Class seats, so while VS may have lots of seats available in Upper, VH may well be sold out, so you cant use the BS site to see if there are seats available for VH bookings. Still, you got there in the end, and I do understand how frustrating it must have been to have needed to call several times to just speak to someone who understood what you wanted.

Thanks,
Sarah

Originally posted by jfenney
. I do understand limited availability what i do not understand is why i cannot upgrade my seat if their is one available, i was willing to pay the extra.
Good Luck

Jurgen

Because Virgin don't want to sell all the seats at a discount, which a Virgin Holiday undoubtedly is. The fact that you eventually got seats is more to do with the availability changing (for example, a cancellation) than any persistance. The reason the operator on the three-way call was able to get you the seats is because Virgin has decided for whatever reason to offer more reduced price Upper Class seats. (Which co-incided with them reducing the price on the airline site by £600)

I think my main topic really is that personally it comes down to supply and demand yes i booked with Sandals who in turn booked through VH who in turn booked VS. The point i was raising is that i could speak to one operator she would hand me the first excuse i would then phone again and it would be a different excuse and third and fourth excuse.

If they all used the same excuse i would have been totally satisfied and would have tried to upgrade at the airport. I eventually had an operator who went out of his way to fathom a solution by phoning VS to release seats so it is my opinion persistance worked rather than i was lucky someone cancelled. I did ask how many seats VH are allocated of course they could not provide that information i did say out of 14 the maximum must have been 2 especially if they also give allocation to other airlines as i was also told on a number of calls and with 7 seats still available at the time.

Jurgen

[HighFlyer]

Generally, Virgin Holidays recieve around 2-4 seats in Upper per flight. Once they have sold their allocation they may recieve more if the seats are not selling at the higher prices through VS, which it sounds like happened for you.

Thanks,
Sarah

Originally posted by jfenney
I think my main topic really is that personally it comes down to supply and demand yes i booked with Sandals who in turn booked through VH who in turn booked VS. The point i was raising is that i could speak to one operator she would hand me the first excuse i would then phone again and it would be a different excuse and third and fourth excuse.

If they all used the same excuse i would have been totally satisfied and would have tried to upgrade at the airport. I eventually had an operator who went out of his way to fathom a solution by phoning VS to release seats so it is my opinion persistance worked rather than i was lucky someone cancelled. I did ask how many seats VH are allocated of course they could not provide that information i did say out of 14 the maximum must have been 2 especially if they also give allocation to other airlines as i was also told on a number of calls and with 7 seats still available at the time.

Jurgen

I appreciate how annoying getting conflicting answers is. And it's great that your persistance paid off. But a pity that it took so long...