CDC issues

A couple of weeks ago I had a rather unfortunate CDC experience at LAX. I’d booked the CDC (at the same time as booking my G UC fare) for the standard 17500 miles. Additionally I was informed of a $162 supplement that would be payable to the driver as the 100 mile drive from LAX to Palm Springs is over the normal threshold for CDC in California.

I’ve booked CDC’s in the past but only ever to be collected from home and taken to LHR. VS don’t provide any form of written confirmation which has always bothered me, ie. what if the CDC doesn’t turn up!? Given that this particular CDC was for a pick up at LAX and I had no ‘proof’ whatsoever that I was entitled to it I rang VS a few days before we left. The helpful agent confirmed that the booking was definitely there and also reiterated that VS don’t provide confirmations. I pressed him on this point as I felt very exposed to a potential issue on arrival at LAX without any form of written confirmation! He then offered to copy and paste the booking details from his ‘system’ on to an email to me. This is what I received on an email from VS Premier Team:

Booking ref
WATSON/JAMESMR MUNN/STEVENMR
VS 7G 30AUG FR LHRLAX HK2 1130. 1450. 18K*19K*
VS 44Z 14SEP SA LASLGW HK2 1640. 1030. 08K*09K*
EML*xxxxx
LIMO FR LAX Y CAR
LIMO X THE DESSERT RIVERIA X HOTEL X 610 EAST PALM
LIMO X CANYON DRIVE X PALM SPRINGS X CA 92264
LIMO CTC 00447711xxxxxx

So I was a happy bunny to have something ‘on paper’ so as to speak just in case of any problem on arrival.

We had a great flight to LAX on 30th Aug (will try to to a TR soon!) & landed early. Bags collected and out to arrivals. I’d been told that VS use Avalan for CDC’s at LAX and sure enough I could see the Avalon podium. From there onward it all went wrong n(

Avalon had no record of our booking! I produced the email confirming that, according to VS, it was all booked. The guy from Avalon did his best to help but he said the only way would be for VS to tell Avalon direct that this was a valid booking since right now it was not in their system. There was nobody from VS in the arrivals hall, only someone from VH and she, despite being polite, said ‘I am not VS’.

To cut a long story short I called VS in the UK and in the end (the call lasted 40 mins!) the extremely helpful agent in Swansea got in touch with VS at LAX to say it was a valid booking. Eventually, after a horrible hour & a half of standing on the arrivals concourse wondering if we would make it to PS that night, we climbed into a lovely limo and were driven through the busy Labor Day weekend traffic to Palm Springs.

The following morning I was copied in on this email from VS Crawley to VS LAX:

Good Afternoon ******,
Thanks for your emails and I am really sorry to hear Mr Watson and Mr Munn has a traumatic time on arrival in LAX. This is not what we want to hear!!
To be absolutely honest I only got involved in this booking as Mr Watson needed a confirmation email for the car. I did not book or redeem the miles on this booking. However I know that a team member did by mistake delete the cars from this booking. It was an accident, human error and it has been brought to the attention of our team supervisor.
The booking was made correctly by the agent in the Premier Team and the excess as per GTI is correct. Sadly this is a human error in a cancellation which should not have happened.
Attn: Customer Relations…Please put 8,000 flying club miles as compensation for this error and misunderstanding.
As you know we at Virgin take pride in our booking and car transfer service. These errors are not nice and the passenger and LAX airport was inconvenienced in many ways. I hope apologies were made to our valued passengers.
Hope this clears up any misunderstandings.

Has anyone else ever had difficulty with CDC bookings, or was I just unlucky perhaps? What's the concensus here on VS's policy of not providing proper written confirmations - surely when booking something as important as a CDC transfer they should be offering full written confirmation, including supplier reference number? I honestly feel that, had I not had that 'copy & paste' email pertaining to our entitelement, we may never have got the CDC and could well have been stranded at LAX given it was Labor Day Friday and transportation options were limited!

Thanks
James

James - I can't add anything, but I would be really disappointed with the service if I had the same experience as you. It sounds like you had a really stressful experience at LAX!

I would expect an email confirmation too (I also expect one from DTCI which I didn't get!).

Hope VS resolve this

Pretty shocking. Any booking should generate a confirmation.

I actually like the 'internal' email you received, there's no faffing about and a straight forward 'hands up we made a mistake' attitude. Doesn't negate what happened of course.

[preiffer]

I would expect the excess to be wiped out for that level of c*ck-up. Oh, and the phone bill...?

I would expect a full refund of:
- the FC miles and cash value for the CDC.
- the cost of the phone call back to the UK.

I would expect a full refund of:
- the FC miles and cash value for the CDC.
- the cost of the phone call back to the UK.

For only a 1hr30min delay that seems a bit much. If they refunded the call plus the compensation that seems fair.
Afterall a flight delay of 1hr30min would barely register.

A couple of points here --- Similar to Sealink I like the internal e-mail, this would be the kind of response I would like to receive, truthful, informative and offering the right amount of compensation - issue over and forgotten, a complete mess but eventually sorted and life is too short etc.

However fully agree a full written and detailed confirmation should be provided, you did all you could managing to get a brief confirmation prior to departure and you did well to know the Avalon/VS connection [I would have been lost]

Its crazy not to have details including contact numbers, booking references etc --- I cannot think of any other service where this is not both provided and necessary - imagine everybody turning up for their flights without having some form of confirmation documentation at some point, I know you can board just showing your passport, but without back-up e-mails, e-tickets etc how would you keep track of flight times, dates etc ?|

Have a great time at Dessert Riviera. Have stayed there ourselves - wonderful hospitality and a lovely relaxing atmosphere. Highly recommended, have you been there before? How long are you staying, we are thinking of returning this time next year.

EDIT: Sorry for posting off topic v(

Ugh I am so sorry that what usually works like a dream for us, didn't for you. It doesn't help now but you could have popped upstairs to departures to find a duty manager, who would no doubt have been able to sort it out very quickly.

We use this arrangement to get to PS all the time and have never had a problem. There was one time when I got stuck in immigration for four hours, by which time of course the CDC person had long gone, but we found the duty manager and she quickly organized a car from Avalon, which was very gratefully received.

I do agree, an email confirmation can't be that hard to do and include a contact number, while there are no doubt a lot, it isn't that difficult to make them system generated.

In the scheme of things it was a short delay, although totally not desirable after a long flight. I do think VS should have offered to wipe the slate on this one.

[honey lamb]

Ugh I am so sorry that what usually works like a dream for us, didn't for you. It doesn't help now but you could have popped upstairs to departures to find a duty manager, who would no doubt have been able to sort it out very quickly.

We use this arrangement to get to PS all the time and have never had a problem. There was one time when I got stuck in immigration for four hours, by which time of course the CDC person had long gone, but we found the duty manager and she quickly organized a car from Avalon, which was very gratefully received.

I do agree, an email confirmation can't be that hard to do and include a contact number, while there are no doubt a lot, it isn't that difficult to make them system generated.

In the scheme of things it was a short delay, although totally not desirable after a long flight. I do think VS should have offered to wipe the slate on this one.

The problem with this, slinky, is that the booking was deleted and if James had not had the confirmation email, he really would have been up sh*t creek. Fortunately, he had that and also the knowledge that Avalon was the car service.

It would have been helpful if the VH person had referred him to the duty manager but how many of us would have thought of that? I wouldn't, even though my first flight ever on VS resulted in a major cock-up which required the services of the duty manager in JNB and took the bones of a week to resolve :0 (VS did compensate me more than adequately on that occasion to my way of thinking then)

While I applaud the sentiments of the email from Crawley (but think, like others, they should have waived the excess charge) I do think that not sending an email confirmation is a bit much. Yesterday I changed my flight on EI to a later time and also booked an additional bag. Within minutes I received emails confirming both and today another email generated by the change in my circumstances, reminding me of my flight. Which reminds me, I didn't get the email I used to get from VS a week before my flight. The only recognition I have received is an invitation to use the DTCI - which I won't.

[buns]

Sorry to learn of the problem encountered with the CDC when you arrived at LAX n(

As the E Mail you received subsequently shows, the foul up was traced back to someone at Crawley / Swansea deleting the booking and for this you should receive abject apologies (and more than 8,000 miles to my mind).

What your tale exposes is how vulnerable we all are when opting for CDC redemption at the arrival point as often this will be at a time when the call centre staff in the UK are on the night shift and not fully resourced.

Glad to say that i have never encountered this problem before, but will now check if a book a CDC redemption in the future.

buns

There was a great thread on here recently where a number of V-Flyers (myself included) were relieved to find out that we were not the only OCD passengers who carry the equivalent of a small filing cabinet of confirmation documents for crisis management reasons! I think this proves our point beautifully as I am sure the fact James could so easily produce the email confirming the booking meant Avalon accepted there had been a mistake from the outset and were more ready to help. This same email should also ensure VS investigate fully and hopefully an increased compensation offer will be forthcoming.

Have a great time at Dessert Riviera. Have stayed there ourselves - wonderful hospitality and a lovely relaxing atmosphere. Highly recommended, have you been there before? How long are you staying, we are thinking of returning this time next year.

EDIT: Sorry for posting off topic v(

Yes had a great time at the Desert Riviera thanks It was our fourth visit and we will be returning for sure! We stayed a week this time, as always just perfect.

Thanks everyone else for your replies on my CDC saga, I have written to VS Exec office (at the suggestion of the Premier Team member who sent that email to LAX) in the hope of fairer compensation.

James

Sorry to hear of these troubles James, problems with the CDC from my experience have been rare. One occasion jumps to mind though where Tristar (the VS CDC company in the UK) managed to royally mess things up and forced the pax that were supposed to be picked up to find an alternate route to the airport n( n(

The olympics last year lead to road closures for the cycle race through London and the Home Counties - when the flights were booked and CDC allocated I made sure to let VS and Tristar know that there were going to be road closures on the day of travel and that one of the pickups was along the effected route.. I even called Tristar the day before to ensure they had worked out a way around and was assured that all would be fine and that the pickup would not be affected. Ha ha..

Pickup time of 0800.. first call came through to me at 0750.. "slight delay in pickup due to road closures but will be at your folks' house in 10mins" - by this point I was in my own CDC speeding to the airport (they got that one right ).. second call came through around 0815.. the driver cannot reach the pickup point due to driving into a one way street with no exit ?| ... yeh he had driven onto the race route and had been coned off - ordinarily I would laugh however, how will my parents reach the airport now??? Tristar couldn't help and neither could VS ! So, with both companies blaming each other (and me for not informing them ) ) I told them to jog on and my folks managed to get an area cab company to drop off at DTCI - VS staff at the DTCI were amazing, making sure to log everything and also told me to reclaim the cab costs from VS as it was a failure on their end.

These things do happen James, although I am pleased to say that all was resolved to satisfaction. Funny thing is that I received an invoice from Tristar for the aborted journey detailing no charge..... I have a feeling they meant to send that to VS or, after reading your experiences, perhaps just keeping me in the loop with an internal email to show the mistake was theirs.

Printed confirmations are usually useful although nothing beats having a member of staff on the ground - a bit disappointed that the VH rep did not find a member of VS staff for you to speak with or at the very least offer to let you use their landline to call the CS desk - I had no idea the two companies wished to remain that distinct from each other

Fingers crossed for fairer compensation and hope you had a good holiday 8D

Just a follow up to this. Received the following response from VS Executive Office yesterday:-

Dear Mr Watson

Many thanks for your email, please accept our sincerest apologies for the unintentional delay in replying to you.

I am sorry to hear of the difficulties that you experienced when you travelled with us to Los Angeles recently.

We are aware the chauffeur car service is an important part of the Upper Class service that we offer and the need for a reliable and on time pick up is essential and is key to that.

I can understand how you must have felt when you discovered that there wasn’t a chauffeur car booked for you on arrival at Los Angeles. I can appreciate how upsetting and inconvenient this must have been, and this really isn’t the experience we would want you to have, especially after such a long flight.

I am pleased that a car was eventually arranged, however, I’m only sorry that this meant that you had to wait around for so long at Los Angeles.

Having looked into this, it does appear this was due to an error made by our agent. Please do be assured this breakdown in service has been addressed with the staff member concerned to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

I can see that xxx in our Upper Class team has already contacted you and by way of apology offered you 8,000 Flying club miles. I am sorry to hear that you are disappointed with this offer. As an additional gesture, I would be happy to increase this to a Total of 12,000 miles which is over and above what we would normally offer for this service breakdown.

I am sorry to hear you incurred mobile/data charges and I have raised a cheque to cover this and this will be sent to you as soon as it is to hand.

Once again our apologies. We hope that you will decide to give us another try soon and we feel sure that next time you travel everything will be much smoother for you.

Kind regards

nnn nnn
Executive Office

I'm satisfied to have received a reply and it will be interesting to see if the cheque materialises to cover my call/data costs while sorting things out at LAX.

It's just a shame that a key recommendation I made to VS (to provide 'proper' written CDC confirmations to their customers) was not mentioned. For me this is a fundamental basic of customer service, especially when it comes to parting with 17.5k miles and in many cases cash sums to cover additional mileage. VS seem to take a stance that these CDC's are thrown in with a J/D fare and therefore no acknowledgement or confirmation is needed. They need to remember that many of us pay for CDC's with miles, and 17.5K miles (and in my case $162) is not an insignificant payment.

Thanks
James

I think that is a good outcome. Miles plus cost of calls and data covered too.
Although as you say they didnt acknowledge what you mentioned about sending a confirmation of the booking.
I think all in all VS have responded will after the event but hope they will in future provide confirmation of bookings. Everything else you order, ie. flights, hotels etc you receive a confirmation of booking so why should CDC be any different.

I'm glad to see that you got a reply.

I'm a stickler for taking copious amounts of paperwork with me as I like to have every box ticked etc ...

I absolutely agree with you that a email confirmation is important if you are 100% relying on an important journey transfer to take place.