gumshoe wrote:But as you acknowledged yourself upthread you had, through no fault of your own, a poor credit rating.
Maybe not poor enough to trigger an instant ‘computer says no’, but presumably not good enough to give an instant yes. And VM would be guilty of serious negligence - and probably find themselves being investigated by the FCA - if they instantly approved every customer who applied.
So there will always be cases where human intervention is required to make a judgement call and - like most companies that rely on a high degree of automation - I imagine there’s a backlog of cases and not enough people to deal with them.
Sure, the process could and should be quicker, but wouldn’t you rather a real person looked at your case and made a reasoned judgement call (even if it’s a no) than rely on a computer algorithm that doesn’t know or care about your unique circumstances?
I agree that it’s better for a human to look at the application and make the decision, but it’s the constant shifting timescale that I find annoying. The website wording says “instant decision” and doesn’t have any qualification on that statement as far as I can see. Then the email I received said 5 working days, which I was also told in a phone call. On the next phone call it became 10 working days. When that had passed I was told someone would look at it that day. It’s now 20 working days. If they have a backlog that long, then they really need to address staffing issues.
Incidentally, their eligibility checker (which I had Google for as the link on their site seems to have disappeared) still says no despite the issue with my credit rating being sorted, so maybe they just don’t want me anyway.
. Bearing in mind I have had a black card for years and last years spend was over 200K ! Moved over to Amex and can now choose where I now spend my miles now. Opened up a BA account and Delta that gets US internal flights for lower spend than using Virgin Miles 
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