Virgin Atlantic ordering more aircraft – strong rumour

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• Nigel the pensioner says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:41

  OT BA were due to start refresher courses in Customer Service. Clearly this has been successfully completed at LGW as I’ve never come across a nicer, happier bunch of BA ground staff than those in all areas at LGW today!
  Strange fact ….. looking around fellow male guests in the First / Gold area of the LGW BA lounge, I notice that the vast majority of us have blue eyes!! Funny old world 🤔…

  • AJA says:

    4 Jun4 June 13:02

    Lucky you. I had a bad experience at check in at LGW only yesterday 3 June!. My pre-reserved seats were allocated to someone else and as flight was full BA couldn’t do anything about it, just saying that seat reservation was only a request despite my Silver Status. Turns out if you book IB ticket on BA code share you apparently can’t check in online nor actually reserve seats. Not happy at all and really surly response. Waited 15 mins to check in too and was asked why I didn’t do self service kiosk to get boarding card???. When I explained I’d tried to check in online day before but got message saying unable to as flight was operated by Iberia, and then tried to check in via Iberia.com only to get message that as flight was actually operated by BA I could only check in on BA, with a less than helpful link to BA website all I got was a shrug of the shoulders!. Also unable to confirm if my seats on return flight are still allocated to me as flight is more than 7 days away.

    • David says:

      4 Jun4 June 14:50

      I’m just as confused as it sounds like you were… was your flight operated by BA or IB?

      • AJA says:

        4 Jun4 June 15:48

        Hi David, it was actually operated by BA so Iberia website was correct but still don’t understand why I couldn’t check in online. I tried both BA and IB locator codes. Neither code worked.

        • John says:

          4 Jun4 June 16:58

          Sometimes it just doesn’t let you for “security” reasons (i.e. the system wants a human employee to see your passport)

    • Lady London says:

      4 Jun4 June 20:31

      that’s rough.

      • AJA says:

        4 Jun4 June 23:04

        It wasn’t a pleasant experience especially as it was a Club Europe booking paid with cash, not an Avios redemption. Also only noticed once on board that my FF no wasn’t printed on boarding pass so now not sure if I have to chase for tier points and avios too. I suspect i will as its not shown up on my BAEC account yet. 🙁

• Andrew says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:56

  Any content that I put on here that mentions NextJump or BRINC staff sites tends to disappear, not sure if it’s a spam filter or just not allowed.

  Anyway, if you’re on PAYE and have an employee scheme, you’ve probably got an 8% offer for Virgin Atlantic for the next few days (not sure if that’ll work for buying points).

  • the_real_a says:

    4 Jun4 June 14:06

    To be fair to Rob, a fair chunk of his income comes from his own affiliate links. I wouldn’t want my commission going to alternative sites via comments either 🙂

• John says:

  4 Jun4 June 10:04

  OT Curve, my wife was refunding a purchase yesterday, I told her that if the shop staff didn’t check the card, to use a debit card instead of the card paid with, so as to keep the Amex points. But she put in her Curve card instead of a regular debit card. Any idea what will happen? No notification on Curve yet

  • Mark2 says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:15

    It is always safer to tell wife exactly which card to use, or better still remove all other cards from purse!

    • Mark2 says:

      4 Jun4 June 10:16

      Applies to non-participating partners pf any type of course.

  • Andrew says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:17

    Depends on the retailer…

    They are supposed to refund only to the card that it was charged to – unless there is a reasonable reason given not to – lost, stolen, expired etc. Even then it should go back to the same *type* of card.

    As this will be an “orphan” credit at the retailer, it’ll be flagged with a fraud warning by the merchant services provider to the retailer in order that they can investigate the reasons. This is to help mitigate against staff faking returns back to their own personal accounts (eg printing a duplicate receipt at point of sale and ghost refunding a few days later).

    If you’re doing it as a one-off. It’ll probably go through. Some retailers (eg WDF) have a policy of not refunding to Amex on postal returns so you have to give them Visa or Mastercard details.

    Doing it regularly, and your account will be flagged for suspicious use.

    • John says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:34

      > Doing it regularly, and your account will be flagged for suspicious use.

      Which account? Most of the time they ask to see the original card so it has to go back there, but the occasional time they don’t then I use a different debit card each time, it’s only happened about 10 times so most of my accounts have only had an “orphan” credit once, and still have several more accounts which have never had it.

      Amex would be none the wiser that something I bought was refunded elsewhere.

      But my question was not about this practice specifically, but about using Curve, because Curve has received a credit for which there was no corresponding debit, so was wondering what they would do.

  • Anna says:

    4 Jun4 June 11:04

    It always ends badly when the OH tries to do this! I’ve had no issues so far with refunds from a certain retailer (this is not just any retailer lol) going to my current account debit card – all they say is “Put your card in”, they have never said it has to be the payment card. Done it 3 or 4 times in the past 6 months as I prefer to order online then try things on at home and not had any problems.

  • fivebobbill says:

    4 Jun4 June 13:51

    I processed a refund at Homebase with my Curve card back in February, and quite a few days later (maybe even a week) I got a text via the Curve app acknowledging the refund and asking me to supply them with the last 4 digits of which card I’d like the transaction refunded to!
    Did that and was credited immediately.

  • the_real_a says:

    4 Jun4 June 14:08

    In my experience a refund (to a de-listed card) wont be processed. You will need to chase up via a ticket… Do keep tracking this to make sure the refund posts.

    • John says:

      4 Jun4 June 17:17

      The item was bought with Amex, and refunded to Curve. Not sure what “de-listed” has to do with it, since the spend didn’t come from Curve in the first place.

      Once, my wife bought something with a debit card and refunded it to Amex, losing 50 MR – just to be clear, no MR were earned when buying the item as it wasn’t paid by Amex – when the refund was processed Amex took 50 MR away

      Hopefully the same thing happens as in fivebobbill’s comment above. Best case would be to allocate the refund to one of the linked debit cards, otherwise it may go onto Tandem. In that case I wonder if Tandem would take away 0.5% (which wasn’t earned in the first place)….

      • the_real_a says:

        5 Jun5 June 12:24

        I misunderstood the OP – but if there is no corresponding purchase card (either by removing it or not having a purchase in the first place) the refund will likely go into the “ether” and you wont get it unless you raise a ticket for it to be found. The point is to keep an eye on it and not to assume it will automatically post.

• BJ says:

  4 Jun4 June 10:29

  The a330 is a great result for VS economy passengers as the seating configuration will presumably be the optimum 2-4-. Personally, If I were flying economy that seating configuration would be second only to schedule and duration in my choice of carrier.

  • David says:

    4 Jun4 June 11:33

    What’s so good about 2-4-2? I flew that on an Air China A330 a couple of weeks ago, and it felt fairly tight…

  • marcw says:

    4 Jun4 June 11:40

    A330, A340 and upper deck 380 have the best economy seating if travelling as a couple.

    • BJ says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:47

      Agreed, that was my reasoning. Probably less cause for inconvenience of solo travellers flying economy too.

    • Lady London says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:51

      Does the A330 neo tend to have the very light, shallow and somewhat uncomfortable seats that the shorthaul neo’s have been equipped with? I can just about manage them shorthaul, but I quail at the thought of landing those seats longhaul! Otherwise the jet does sound very attractive to fly on.

      • Michael says:

        4 Jun4 June 11:57

        In the short answer, no.

• Bob Brown says:

  4 Jun4 June 10:40

  OT. I have some AA miles expiring 27th June, any idea how I can keep them alive without buying miles? Thanks

  • Michael says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:45

    Transfer some Hilton or Marriot?

    • JC says:

      4 Jun4 June 12:35

      not sure that is possible anymore

      • Roger says:

        5 Jun5 June 06:25

        Award wallets comment might still work

  • Charlie says:

    4 Jun4 June 12:30

    Try purchasing something via their US shopping portal. I got a $1 + tax subscription to the wall street journal. Miles posted in less than a week.

    • Chabuddy geezy says:

      4 Jun4 June 12:45

      Post a comment on the award wallet blog for 5 miles

      • will says:

        4 Jun4 June 14:43

        Really useful info. I’m sat on a pretty big pile of AA miles from MBNA days waiting for the right trip to redeem on and have been fretting over the expiration date!
        Many thanks

      • Bob Brown says:

        5 Jun5 June 10:56

        Thanks, how long does it take for the miles to credit to account?

• Keith says:

  4 Jun4 June 11:50

  OT:

  Anyone know of a work around to use Amex at furniture store ‘Bo Concept’?

  • Lady London says:

    4 Jun4 June 11:55

    Curve? Billhop? Gift cards, if such exist for Bo Concept (probably not!) ?

    • Keith says:

      4 Jun4 June 12:03

      Thanks I’ll give billhop a go. Never used it before. Just trying to meet an Amex spend target.

      • Lady London says:

        4 Jun4 June 12:10

        As you’ve probably found, Rob has done a couple of articles on Billhop on here.

      • Simon says:

        4 Jun4 June 12:38

        I think when buying any furniturewith long lead times I’d want some directly on a credit card to benefit from section 75 cover. A furniture shop seems to go bust at least every other month!

        • Lady London says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:16

          Good point @Simon. this would exclude Paypal or Billhop if that’s all that are used to pay for each purchase.

          I gather than if even £1 of a purchase is put on a card with this coverage, then the whole purchase is covered by card even when the rest is paid by a method that would not be covered.

  • Anthony says:

    4 Jun4 June 15:58

    We bought our sofa from BoConcept back in December but we ended up buying it from the Harrods concession. It meant that we could use Amex and ended up getting a few pounds back in Harrods rewards points as well. And they also gave us a bigger discount in the Harrods concession than they’d give us at the Tottenham Court Road store.

• SimonW says:

  4 Jun4 June 11:54

  OT – Wife’s BAPP was cancelled last month after some moody charges and new card arrived. Is it right that her old card number is still working when she bought something online – it was a site she has used many times in the past…. Do amex have some kind of “trusted site” policy that overrides the card cancellation?

  • Lady London says:

    4 Jun4 June 11:56

    Not sure about Amex but have experienced MC/VS numbers being accepted for payments for a short while after cancellation… I think it’s a courtesy extended by the card companies to customers who may have regular payments still coming through.

    • SimonW says:

      4 Jun4 June 12:03

      Thanks. That makes sense. Her Zara habit is as good as a regular payment I guess. And delivery address matches.

  • bsuije says:

    4 Jun4 June 13:45

    I’ve had that with iTunes. I would get an e-mail that Amex couldn’t process a regular payment to iTunes because the card had expired or no longer existed. Still found the item come through on one of my other Amex cards, though, so never bothered changing the payment card in iTunes….

• Michael says:

  4 Jun4 June 12:46

  Any ideas how long we’ll have to wait for a BA holidays sale?

  • David says:

    4 Jun4 June 13:01

    Holidays were included in the sale that just finished on 21st May, weren’t they? So I assume it’ll be at least July – this isn’t DFS you know…

    • Michael says:

      4 Jun4 June 13:34

      I’ve seen people refer to BA as the DFS of the airline world before now 😀

      • Nick_C says:

        4 Jun4 June 15:41

        Cause the seats fall apart after six months?

        • Michael says:

          4 Jun4 June 16:45

          hahahahahahahah

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