Upgrading from economy to premium economy on a companion voucher

[Sam777]

Hi

I hope everyone’s well.

I’ve just spent 55 minutes on the phone with Flying Club to get nowhere and wanted to check if what I’ve been told is correct, please as it goes against what I’ve previously been told by VA, but they cited ‘changes’ from late last year.

I booked MAN to MCO in economy on 29 October using a companion voucher as part of the booking. We only used 0.5 of the companion voucher at that stage as the return flights weren’t released, but later added these onto the same booking and coming back in premium economy.

Due to our friend dynamic pricing, I spotted what I thought was a fair mile price in premium economy for the MAN-MCO so rang to upgrade 2 adults, 1 child (companion voucher) and 1 lap infant for our outbound flight this morning.

VA told me that the companion voucher can’t be upgraded as it was split in half to make the booking and I’d need to pay the full mile difference for my Son. They also wanted to charge me the full mile adult price for the lap infant, despite the website suggesting this should have only been a couple of thousand points.

Firstly the colleague said it was the system not understanding and then when I said I’m happy to pay the miles if I can get manually get them refunded later, it was then a T&C change that was the issue.

Has anyone got any experience or thoughts?

We fly in 2.5 weeks so not a lot of time to sort and of course the required miles could jump up again at any point.

Thanks

[Sam777]

Found this in the FC T&C from the day after I booked, so I guess this is the issue.

5.2.4 Upgrade reward
· Can be used for a one or two-cabin upgrade eg. Economy to Premium or Economy to Upper Class.
· The upgrade reward can be added to any booking (excluding Economy Light or bookings that already contain a voucher).

[NorthernLass]

One of the changes is that you can no longer use half a voucher; if you don’t use the full value in one go, you lose the rest of it. Also it’s now worth 150k points if you’re Virgin gold or silver, and 75k if you’re red – which doesn’t go very far given a lot of the points prices we’re seeing now!

The changes have also caused a lot of confusion among VS agents – I suppose you could call back and try and plead that you used the first half of your voucher before the changes were implemented, and therefore the old system should apply to the other “half”. It might just be too complicated to work out how many points the other half is now worth, however!