Mistake fixed or backtracking? Virgin Atlantic cuts £100 from Upper Class flight taxes

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• NigelC says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:46

  Asked for a £100 refund on a UC redemption flight I booked to Las Vegas last week (and I had read the article first). The response was if the taxes were to rise they don’t contact customers to ask for the extra money. Sounds like a cop-out.

  Could cancel and rebook, but they claim the flight is full and there is no guarantee I would definitely get the tickets again.

  • Mark S says:

    18 Apr18 April 11:23

    I phoned Customer Services and didn’t get anywhere on a refund of £100 – they said the charges change frequently(!) and it was just bad luck for me!! They advised sending an email to Customer Relations – which I have just done. I’ll update when I get a response. (I made my UC booking last Thursday)

  • Doug M says:

    18 Apr18 April 11:55

    Did they call them taxes or did you? Because a person saying that is one thing, Virgin passing them of as “the taxes” is quite different.

    • Lady London says:

      18 Apr18 April 12:17

      Really, really time soneone took these airlines to court over what they are calling “taxes”.
      (1) British Airways (2) Virgin (3) Lufthansa

      • TripRep says:

        18 Apr18 April 12:48

        +1

        I’d love HMRC to do an undercover investigation, ie a few mock telephone bookings to hear how ignorant CS staff claim that Carrier Imposed Surcharge costs are actually Government taxes.

        Imagine them suing VS, BA, etc.

      • meta says:

        18 Apr18 April 18:02

        I suspect this will be the next on the agenda for EU Commission. There has already been some lobbying.

      • callum says:

        19 Apr19 April 01:25

        Airlines don’t call them “taxes”. Rob does, they don’t. I’m also not sure HMRC would care that call centre agents occasionally use “taxes” as shorthand for the whole lot (I can’t remember them doing so with me – is it really the norm?). Surely the worst thing they’d do is tell them to stop?

  • Mikee says:

    18 Apr18 April 12:59

    I’ve found Virgin very poor when it comes to transparency and increasing surcharges on award tickets. About 18 months ago, they changed the charges using miles on Delta One (on the same routes as Virgin fly) from approx £100 to £350…to bring Delta “in alignment” with Virgin. No communication to customers and no mention on their website.

    Premium Economy charges have also increased lately, again with no warning to customers. Call Centre staff I spoke to said the “taxes” had increased and the extra money was going straight into Mr Trump’s pocket. Complete BS as checking the fares on ITA Matrix showed no change in taxes but an increase in the airline surcharge of $100 over the previous fare.

    Unfortunately, most customers are oblivious and just pay-up but more should be done to challenge when these increases are made as it effectively devalues the miles people have earned.

• Alex says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:56

  I’ve got 2 Virgin vouchers, one from the free card and one from the Virgin+. I don’t have status. Could I use them in conjunction, one of them as a 2-4-1 in Economy and the other to upgrade to Premium?

• Frenske says:

  18 Apr18 April 11:42

  Just shows that taxes are set to an arbitrary level and some of the taxes is actually part of the ticket despite paying x miles for it.

• WBenson says:

  18 Apr18 April 12:26

  Makes me so angry that airlines are allowed to call them taxes. They aren’t taxes unless they go to the Treasury, which we all know they don’t. It is a surcharge, pocketed by the airline.

  • Bonglim says:

    18 Apr18 April 12:33

    To be fair, most of the time they call them taxes and surcharges.
    Still ridiculous, but I think they are quite careful with their wording on the website. There might still be a case if Someone takes them on. Budget airlines and other suppliers got slammed for credit card surcharges which are not related to the cost of processing the card. These charges are not related to the cost of anything either.

    • Boobaholic says:

      18 Apr18 April 13:19

      Good point.
      How much are taxes in reality ?

      • Lady London says:

        18 Apr18 April 19:48

        Tiny. The UK government is the worst actually. They have APD which is an open honest and frank tax of the UK government on the wallet of anyone who dares to depart on a flight out of the UK. Other than that, there are some airport fees and some other government fees for things like immigration at airports in many places however mostly these are low. Heathrow Airport, now owned by the Spanish i believe, has exceptionally high passenger handling fees which airlines pass on to cost of tickets under the tax heading.

        I am not up on the figures but if British Airways says they want nearly £800 for a business class return ticket to the USA, in addition to miles, then uk government gets less than £200 of that in APD tax, there are a few other genuine taxes and charges on the ticket mostly at the UK end, but prob true tax, government charges and other airport charges would make things that are reasonable to call taxes and airport/government charges well under £300 per ticket. And yet British Airways is demanding nearly £800.

        Noting that doing it this way they have also taken something like £500 out of any commission they had to pay travel agents. As it’s not ticket price, it’s taxes innit. Of which British Airways has trousered nearly £500/

        Take a look at any fare breakdown in ita matrix and you will see the extent of the lying misleading and obfuscating. The above is only a theoretical example.

• TripRep says:

  18 Apr18 April 12:59

  Still no word on when single ticket redemptions with FlyBE connections will be possible?

  I wager o/w upper class to US could be possible for around £250+47.5k miles from Inverness via Manchester. That would rival BA & LHR.

• Boobaholic says:

  18 Apr18 April 13:15

  Horrendous.

• Boobaholic says:

  18 Apr18 April 13:18

  Iberia will be next 🙁

  85k Avios + £157 to JNB vs BA’s 150k Avios plus £600 !!!

  • Jonathan says:

    18 Apr18 April 13:41

    They won’t but only as they are cancelling the JNB route!

• BJ says:

  18 Apr18 April 18:31

  You’re all comparing apples to pears. Virgin and others can charge what they like, up to you whether you want to buy or not. Even if it were £1000 it’s hardly scandalous because you’re getting a flexible ticket. If you want nonflexible nonrefundable tickets to the States stop moaning and just buy one for £1100 in business since they’re not that hard to find, and collect and use your miles for something that makes more sense.

  • Mark2 says:

    18 Apr18 April 22:35

    +1

  • Will says:

    19 Apr19 April 00:11

    Flexible tickets for a very restricted set of dates, I do agree with what you’re getting at but there comes a point when you’re paying a lot of money to potentially travel on an inconvenient date.

    Perhaps if they made more seats available and throttled the cash element based on demand that could make sense.

    • Ricatti says:

      19 Apr19 April 22:02

      Well the whole country is squeezed into this Virgin and BA availability to the US.

      Virgin regarded as classy one.

      Once “allocated” reward space finished, it does not make sense for the airline to offer it to you for £200 extra (to original miles & surcharge) when they can sell the same seat for £3-4k.

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