-
Hi all,
My mother in law has to cancel a Virgin ticket to Israel during the pandemic when Israel was only letting in its own citizens. She received a travel voucher, such is valid until the end of the year.
I wanted to use it to book flights with points for myself (and my husband and child). I called Virgin and they said she would have to ring and tell them I can use it, when she rang they said that I need to make the booking by phone then they would ring her and ask did permission.
I started the process with two agents in the phone and both times the call was somehow disconnected after about 6 minutes and they didn’t ring back. The third person claimed that because the original flight was not a reward flight, the voucher could not be applied to a points booking. This despite term number 15 under the voucher email clearly stating that “You can use your Travel Voucher to purchase a new ticket combined with Flying Club points. If you don’t use the whole value of your Travel Voucher when making a new booking, we will give you a cash refund of the residual value. If the new ticket price is higher than the amount of Flying Club points and your Travel Voucher value, the difference must be paid.”.However the agent claimed this referred to the previous term, number 14, which states “If your original booking was a Flying Club full reward booking, the value of your Travel Voucher will be the equivalent to the value of Flying Club points and taxes of your original booking.”
When I check the voucher terms on their website, Virgin have merged those terms into one. However, in the original email they were bey separate, and I forwarded that to them. However even after speaking to a manager twice they will not let me use the voucher towards a points booking. Does anyone think they are in the wrong, and is there anything I can do? I quoted the voucher reference to several other agents and none of them said I would have an issue using it for a points booking.
Terms 14 and 15 don’t relate to each other, from what I can infer. Do you have a link to the full terms as they are today? In my view, the terms at the point of issuance should still be valid – otherwise, the goalposts have been moved.
14 refers to receiving a voucher of equivalent value to the total cost of the Points plus taxes, which is how they’ll have ended up at the cost of your voucher. 15 relates to underspend and overspend, and seems entirely reasonable (spend less and you’ll get the difference back; spend more and you’ll need to pay it before ticketing).
Given this sounds a little like a HUCA issue (although you’re already going around in circles), in order of next steps I’d take:
1. HUCA until you get to the folks in Cardiff. A Welsh accent gives it away! They’re usually the most on the ball and flexible.
2. Email customer.care@fly.virgin.com, clearly explaining the issue and outlining what you consider to be a conclusion.
3. Raise a complaint at https://help.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/contact-forms.html?webform=feedback–compliment.
4. Write to Virgin Atlantic, The VHQ, Fleming Way, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 9DF.I would exhaust each step in turn. I would hope you won’t get to Step 3 or 4.
Hey, thanks so much!
What ended up working was just calling again, explaining the situation, and thankfully getting a nice agent. I did have to make a separate booking for myself with points and voucher and for my husband and child with points, but they linked the bookings so should be okay.
But yeah persistence paid off!
They really should have initially refunded my mother in law since she couldn’t take that flight because Israel wasn’t letting foreigners in, but at least the voucher got used.Glad to hear it – you’d be surprised how often HUCA works, although you don’t usually have to with VS. Glad it got resolved, though!
I only just learned what HUCA means after Googling it! 😀 Thank you.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
