Bits: Virgin East Coast sale, double Avios at Bicester, One Direction with SPG

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• Will says:

  27 Aug27 August 07:47

  IIRC the VIP lounge (and offer which is a 10% discount card) is also open to anyone with AA (not the airline but the car association) membership. When in the visitor centre in May getting avois put on my bAec there was a steady stream of ‘VIPs’ being asked for their AA membership card to prove they were VIPs!

• Kai says:

  27 Aug27 August 09:12

  Never knew there’s a lounge at Bicester. There’s an offer until the end of this month for free VIP bus tickets between London and Bicester, plus you get the 10% off VIP card.

• James Alexander says:

  27 Aug27 August 09:17

  Outbound cost £75 single.
  Inbound Cody £100 single.

  1st class. Pointless as value is poor. Quiet coach – pointless as it’s not quiet.

  As a Gold BAEC flyer with BA I thought I’d use the train for a one night trip to London, not to save money as cost was almost the same, but to have a quieter journey in quiet coach in first class.

  I now ask my self why I booked first class and indeed the so called quiet coach.

  Staff great. “Food” quality atrocious. No hot food. No alcohol.

  I guess the weekend upgrade thing Virgin now running is simply a revenue driver. It’s an insult to first class passengers who pay top whack and seek a 1st class experience. THIS was most certainly NOT first class

  1st Class Quiet coach packed with families with small chattering children. Adults ill equipped to entertain children – electronic games played without headphones. One Granny constantly and I mean constantly walking a small preschool chattering child up and down the aisle for 2 hours.

  Wifi BOTH directions non functional.
  I overheard staff telling another passenger “it’s dodgy”, “rarely works even in 1st a Class”.

  Catering on Sunday ? A small bottle of water, poor quality inedible cheap snack box of cheese with crackers, gooey vegetable paste and a chocolate biscuit with no fruit. ONE single cup of tea served in the two hours between Euston and Preston.

  Catering on Saturday – similar to Sunday but an added tiny cold egg roll.

  For these prices I would rather fly and get the journey over and done with.
  I’d rather take the risk of being seated beside disrespectful and selfish passengers for 55 minutes on a flight than be tortured for 275 minutes on an overpriced and poorly serviced Virgin train with such poor standard of catering.

  Last straw was learning that quiet coach in 1st Class is about to be phased out! You have been warned!!!

  Clearly Virgin planning to go with business model of lowest common denominator; Offering cheap upgrades to make extra revenue and dropping any semblance of real catering.

  Voting with my feet. I’ll take my hard earned money elsewhere. Back to flying BA between Scotland and London!

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    27 Aug27 August 10:58

    Well some people complain about me going off topic 😉

    You must not confuse Virgin Trains (the west coast operator) with Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC). VTEC is still pretty much the old East Coast with generally good service only let down now by their loyalty scheme. Despite having Virgin in their name VTEC doesn’t have much to do with them (10% share).

    Weekend First is still cut down on VTEC (but it’s the same since 2011) but is much better than the Virgin WC offering.

    So I expected to be flying more with BA when they decided to ditch rewards and go with Nectar, but in reality I’m actually flying BA less.

    As a silver cardholder I don’t like:
    – The fact if I’m travelling hand baggage only they won’t even let me select a seat at check in, never mind at time of booking.
    – The higher density seating.
    – The journey to/from LHR (my regular route is NCL so LCY/LGW is not an option)
    – The lounge catering, I’d rather have something off the VTEC evening meal menu.

    The top issue was the straw that broke the camels back. Changing their seating policy said more to me about BA’s attitude to their customers than VTEC’s scrapping the rewards scheme.

    • Fenny says:

      27 Aug27 August 21:38

      Weekend food offerings in first on Virgin West Coast aren’t anything to write home about. The manky snack box is all you get for your money to/from Rugby.

• Danksy says:

  27 Aug27 August 09:56

  One Direction aren’t my thing 😛 I’m in NY in a couple of weeks and was looked at the SPG moments for Madison Square Garden. At a whopping 55,000 points it puts into context how much of a bargain the O2 is!

  • Rob says:

    27 Aug27 August 10:54

    Will be interesting to see if 15,000 points is the new price level, down from the previous 20,000. There are not many UK residents with that many SPG points to drop.

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