Upgrading using Virgin Points – does point of sale matter?

[avios_guru]

Hi all,

I’ve been trying to upgrade my LHR-DEL-LHR itinerary with Virgin Points. The outbound has no availability in Premium or Upper Class but the inbound has availability in Premium. I saw this on their new reward seat checker as well as doing a one-way search using points on the Virgin Atlantic app. I called up the contact centre and they said because I booked my ticket from UK point of sale, they can’t see the one-way availability from India point of sale (my one-way search).

Surely this is nonsense? If there is a reward seat then how can it matter? I was essentially told I need to wait for availability to show on the outbound from London and upgrade both vs just upgrading the inbound (at which point the inbound will probably be snapped up).

TIA.

[AL]

They can see it, in the same way you can. But they can’t alter the ticket unless the change is available from the same POS, which it sounds like it isn’t in this case.

You’ll have to wait, as they’ve said, or cancel, pay the £35ish fee, and rebook from India POS.

POS is relevant to reward because the POS is effectively the market. They may wish to market more reward seat to the Indian market than the UK one where they already have a more captive market.

[avios_guru]

Thanks – let’s just say I’m glad BA don’t do this. I managed to upgrade my outbound as availability came up yesterday – today there is availability on my inbound (doing a one way reward search) but I’ve just called up and they can’t do it – they claim there aren’t any seats left. The agent I spoke to said that upgrade availability is different to reward availability – that’s clearly not true based on every article on this and other sites.

[davefl]

avios_guru wrote:

The agent I spoke to said that upgrade availability is different to reward availability – that’s clearly not true based on every article on this and other sites.

When they’re clearly clueless it’s time to HUACA

[avios_guru]

davefl wrote:

avios_guru wrote:

The agent I spoke to said that upgrade availability is different to reward availability – that’s clearly not true based on every article on this and other sites.

When they’re clearly clueless it’s time to HUACA

Tried another agent just now – was told there are no cash or reward seats on my inbound (DEL-LHR on 6 Nov) yet I can book a Premium reward seat (showing 2 left) on the app. This is such a trash programme compared to BAEC.

[AL]

I don’t know why you’ve been told that upgrade and reward availability are not the same thing – they book in to the same fare buckets (P for Premium and G for Upper). This sounds like the agent you spoke to wasn’t trained properly, which is rare but probably does happen from time to time.

The reward seat finder gives you a reasonable indication: https://travelplus.virginatlantic.com/reward-flight-finder/results/month?origin=DEL&destination=LHR&airline=VS&month=11&year=2023. Click See Return at the top of the page to flip to seeing the inbound results. There are a 0 G, 5 P, 9 Y for your inbound date. Sometimes, it can take a few hours to update, but in the event that there’s at least 3 in the cabin you’re looking for, this is rarely an issue (since people will snap up 1 or 2 more than they will higher amounts, ordinarily).

Did you ask them why they see 0 when you see at least 1?

I, and many others, have plenty of examples of BAEC being absolutely horrendous (and I say that as an OWE, so I should be getting reasonable service). Whilst each to their own, my own experience of VS is that the programme is much better (and, as this is what matters, so is the service).

[BahrainLad]

So just to get this clear: there are circumstances whereby I might, for example, book LHR-JFK-LHR in Premium and then see UC reward availability for the return sector, but be unable to upgrade it? This would be *very bad indeed* as it’s something I used to do all the time with BA (I’m a relative newbie to the VS scheme).

[AL]

BahrainLad wrote:

So just to get this clear: there are circumstances whereby I might, for example, book LHR-JFK-LHR in Premium and then see UC reward availability for the return sector, but be unable to upgrade it? This would be *very bad indeed* as it’s something I used to do all the time with BA (I’m a relative newbie to the VS scheme).

There is, as I understand it, one circumstance: where the POS for the original ticket is different to the one that you’re looking at that has award inventory. This is also a circumstance that exists in BAEC and other schemes, too. It is unlikely that you will ever hit this circumstance, especially booking ex-LHR, since the POS will be GBR.

In reality, it rarely – if ever – happens. I believe it can be fixed by reticketing, in certain scenarios. On the whole, the VS scheme is much more flexible than BAEC (e.g. no single-class-only upgrades).