Mistake or madness? Virgin Flying Club adds £200+ to USA Upper Class flight surcharges

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• Nick_C says:

  13 Apr13 April 11:01

  I hadn’t realised that DL redemptions were so much cheaper than VS, and for a far better product

  • Mark Roscoe says:

    13 Apr13 April 11:22

    Are you using Delta miles or Virgin for the redemption?

  • Rob says:

    13 Apr13 April 11:24

    There are NO taxes if you redeem Virgin miles on Delta flights from the US to Europe (not UK).

    Look at New York to Paris, one way, Delta business class. Vigin wants £5 in taxes.

    The problem is that the Virgin website only has a small number of European countries in it. If you find a seat New York to Zurich on Delta, for example, you can’t book it online because the Virgin website doesn’t recognise Switzerland. You need to call.

    • YQ-Rip-Off says:

      13 Apr13 April 13:21

      Ripped off for flying in/out of the UK

• Doug M says:

  13 Apr13 April 11:12

  Gaining all those miles without some investigation of the value of them wasn’t your best move. If you want hotel rooms direct your spend towards the SPG card, 3 points £ is very good. If you have flexibility in when you travel then cash is king as I see it. It’s unfair to compare an inflexible sale ticket with a flexible Avios ticket. There are endless articles on here and other sites about lowering taxes by using Iberia and Aer Lingus, although this does mean the risk associated with positioning to Madrid or Dublin. I find RFS redemptions excellent value, and almost all my Avios go via these. I fly to SFO shortly and will earn around 30K Avios from it as a gold, given that’s on a £1200 fare starting in Inverness what sort of value is an Avios likely to have? People talk about getting 2p or 4p or whatever, but I bet anyone with a good stash will sell for 1p if they could.

  In terms of earning from shopping why not look at a cash back site instead of an airline miles one?

  • Qwerty Bertie says:

    13 Apr13 April 12:19

    There are numerous places on the internet that approximate the value of an avios point at about 1p. The biggest mistake I made was buying in to that BS in good faith.

    I did look in to Marriott vs Hilton early on, and decided that Hilton was the better way to go if aligning myself to one chain for top status. It won on the breakfasts, which really stack up in value as we now do twenty to thirty nights on pleasure, as a family of three, plus I’m now doing another thirty myself on business based on current activity. It was a shame to go with the one that doesn’t currently have a CC available in the UK, but then in August when Marriott shafted platinum card holders by putting them a rung down on status, and people were messed around with the SPG card, it seemed another indication I’d made the right choice.

    I think we spend by card more than the average couple, but certainly nowhere near enough for the better point earning rate of the SPG card/Marriott vs MR/Hilton to beat a hundred or more free breakfasts per year! I also find Hilton easier to make contact & deal with than Marriott for customer service related stuff.

    • Alan says:

      13 Apr13 April 12:27

      Totally agree – took months (even when escalated to CEO level) to finally sort out my Marriott travel package. By comparison I find Hilton CS far easier to deal with & get a decent resolution.

    • KBuffett says:

      13 Apr13 April 12:42

      I had a shocking experience with Marriott last night. I cancelled a redemption booking on their website, a confirmation window came up confirming that 200,000 points would be added back to my account. I then receive an email confirming my advance purchase booking has been cancelled. I called them to revolve, the first customer service lady put me on hold for 45 mins and hung up on me. I called again and this lady said they can’t do anything about it and when I asked to raise a complaint she also hung up. Approx 2 hours in the phone. Awful customer service

• ADS says:

  13 Apr13 April 11:39

  Did you ask Virgin before publishing this story ?

  Have they since responded ?

  • Russ says:

    13 Apr13 April 11:50

    Why would someone ask a service provider for information which they can easily find themselves? Reading is your friend……

  • Rob says:

    13 Apr13 April 14:50

    No, wrote it at 10pm last night as I’m on holiday.

• Russ says:

  13 Apr13 April 11:40

  Qwerty, it seems like your point collecting strategy was pretty narrow. We all do this at the start. It’s called learning the ropes. All been there and survived 🙂

• THX says:

  13 Apr13 April 13:04

  The party is over lads.

• YQ-Rip-Off says:

  13 Apr13 April 13:13

  When I first used my MBNA virgin Atlantic credit card upgrade voucher, on LHR – NYC the taxes & fees were £345. Just checked what is now in premium and they have increased from £447 which I paid last October, to £514.

  Looks like this was a change that virgin meant to make.

  I’ve now stopped focusing on airmiles and mainly concentrate on hotel scheme points where you get real value and don’t normally need to pay anything extra like you do with the rip off taxes and surcharges when flying from the UK

  • Doug M says:

    13 Apr13 April 18:22

    Resort fees, destination fees?

    • YQ-Rip-Off says:

      13 Apr13 April 18:31

      Yes but not in all locations/hotels and nowhere near as much as what we are being charged for air mile redemptions.

    • Rob says:

      13 Apr13 April 18:39

      Hilton waived fees on redemptions.

• Alex W says:

  13 Apr13 April 13:28

  Upgrading premium economy tickets to business class using miles is the way forwards, if you don’t need flexible tickets of course. Especially when there is a sale on or e.g
  Amex travel £200 off.

  • YQ-Rip-Off says:

    13 Apr13 April 13:30

    What have you paid doing it via this route?

    • Alex W says:

      13 Apr13 April 14:37

      Never done it unfortunately as we have a nipper now. There were some excellent PE fares on BA recently for around £700 return to various destinations, down to £500 with the Amex travel offer. If there’s Avios availability to upgrade it’s an absolute no-brainer. Cheaper price, one third the Avios required AND you earn Avios & TP on the PE ticket.

  • Prins Polo says:

    13 Apr13 April 13:38

    Are all VS (revenue) premium economy ticket classes eligible for upgrade with miles – same as BA?

    • Rob says:

      13 Apr13 April 14:48

      BA does NOT let you upgrade non-refundable Eco tickets and only lets you upgrade one level, to PE.

      Virgin lets you go Eco to Upper if your ticket qualifies.

  • pointsarb says:

    13 Apr13 April 14:07

    Unless I’m missing something you would still need to pay the difference in taxes though when you upgrade from PE to UC on VS and so defeating the purpose of this work around?!

    • Alex W says:

      13 Apr13 April 14:33

      I have only upgraded from PE to UC once at the airport and we were charged £50 each one-way.

      • Alex W says:

        13 Apr13 April 14:38

        Plus the miles, obviously. YQ in upper class is not much more than what you’ve already paid for premium.

    • Rob says:

      13 Apr13 April 14:46

      Depends what taxes are baked into the PE cash fare.

    • Lady London says:

      13 Apr13 April 16:41

      There is actually no tax différence between PE, J and F. Government tax is same cost for all three of those classes of travel.

      Used to be pretty much the same so far as i could tell for the airline charges that are added, in that there was a slight variation in airline ‘taxes’moving between the classes but not really much.

      However from comments on here over several months now, it appears that British Airways has increased the ‘taxes’ it charges for upgrading from PE to J or J to F, by higher amounts than they should. Since we know the government charges the same tax on a ticket for all these 3 classes. Carrier Greed indeed.

• Lawrence says:

  13 Apr13 April 13:37

  I’m bamboozled by this whole tax/surcharge thing! I’m assuming the tax is actually imposed by the government and if so why are there differences between airlines? Do airlines get to set the rates themselves? Has anyone ever challenged an airline over the amount of tax charged?

  • Alan says:

    13 Apr13 April 14:03

    The taxes are the same and got vary, the surcharges are set by the airline and they can vary them as they wish. If you look a flight up on ITA Matrix you can see a nice clear breakdown.

  • JAXBA says:

    13 Apr13 April 14:12

    Taxes are levied by governments, fees by airports, charges/surcharges by airlines. They all get collected together, and are often incorrectly labelled as only “taxes” when that’s just one part of it.

    The surcharges are set by the airline, in the same way they set their other prices, and they appear on a ticket in the same place as the actual taxes and fees… but surcharges are not taxes.

  • jc says:

    13 Apr13 April 14:18

    Taxes are fixed, by the government. Surcharges are set by the airline and lumped in alongside taxes to make it look like the government is charging it when it’s actually just airline money.

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