Virgin Atlantic - an expensive mistake
I've been a regular visitor to PPRUNE for some time, but never felt the need to post until today. We learned a very expensive lesson today about booking online with Virgin Atlantic and hope that our experience will avoid someone else making a simillar mistake.
At lunchtime today my wife booked an economy flight online to Orlando in June, but shortly after booking we realised that there was an error in the booking. She is to travel with me on a business trip but had not realised that my employer who booked my travel had booked me into Premium Economy for the return leg. Whilst I am a regular traveller, she is not and so was very distressed at the thought of a long haul flight sitting on her own in a different area of the plane. During her booking she had been offered the return leg for an additional £12 but had booked herself in economy for both outward and return flights by mistake.
I contacted Virgin's call centre this afternoon approx 3 hours after the booking was made. It was confirmed that the premium economy leg was available at an extra £12 and initially I was told that a £50 change fee would apply. Whilst this seemed to be quite expensive I accepted that it was our error and so a change fee would be reasonable on a restricted economy fare. During the remainder of the call the price to change my trip then started to escalate incrementally until by the end it was over £200 to make the change. The reasons given were various rules that apply to changes to restrictive fares and then because another factor had been forgotten that I was not clearly told about. I was also informed numerous times that if the original booking had been made via the call centre a cooling off period would apply, but not bookings from the website, and that I would always be better using the call centre in preference to the web site in future – this only served to rub salt into our wounds. I do not actually know the final cost of the change as the price was changing so frequently and seemingly calculated in the call centre lady’s head. I just wanted to ensure that my wife would not be on her own.
My wife is taking this trip with me because unfortunately I will be working abroad on her 40th birthday and so this was to be happy celebration. Whilst I usually fly British Airways we had decided to try Virgin this time and were feeling very confident about our decision. This significant extra charge (which we hadn’t budgeted for) has now left my wife very disillusioned and depressed about the trip which was to form part of her 40th celebrations, and has left both of us feeling very let down by Virgin Atlantic over a simple mistake which we accept was ours.
I can see that a reasonable change fee would be made in addition to charging the difference in the booked and intended fare in order to correct our error. However we are very unhappy that an error on our part notified within 3 hours of booking a flight in June 2007 where the same fare was still available after our amendment was confirmed has cost in excess of £200. I guess Virgin played it by the book, but would have hoped for some compassion from I company which I perceived to offer good customer service. I also learned that the distance selling cooling off period does not apply to travel bookings.
A lesson learned sadly.