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I’ve seen some other mentions of this on here.
I cancelled a reward booking with Virgin, the web form appears to have been ignored, I got it raised on the telephone after a long call to the Philippines call centre.
Points were credited back promptly
I was told to wait 3 weeks for the refund, when it came it was 1/4 of the amount it should have been (they refunded 1 out of 4 passengers minus the cancellation fee, despite the whole booking being cancelled and the points refund corresponding to cancellation of all passengers)I’m now being told to wait another 3 weeks for the refund.
Virgin are emailing this to customers:
“Processing Time:
Please allow up to 21 working days for your payment provider to make the funds available to you. While our part of the refund process takes approximately 7 working days, the time for your funds to reflect in your account is dependent on your card provider or chosen payment method.”This makes no sense to me at all, firstly 7 working days for Virgin to claim to act on it is excessive. Secondly I have never encountered any bank of card provider which would take an additional 14 working days to return a refund that a merchant has authorised to their card account.
Anyone else have any experience of this with them? Any luck connecting to anything other than Philippines which appear only to have email communication back to the refunds centre?
I think this is really poor, I’d even argue unreasonable for them. There’s no justification to take 21 working days to process a refund for a cancelled booking.
“ There’s no justification to take 21 working days to process a refund for a cancelled booking.”
Unless as a company you’re earning a return on it whilst leaving the customer waiting…
Consumer Rights act stipulates in multiple places for cancellations/returns:
“A refund must be given without undue delay, and in any event within 14 days beginning with the day on which the trader agrees that the consumer is entitled to a refund.”Not directly applicable as it’s not a case of rejecting the goods per se, or returning goods but it’s quite consistent in many places that 14 calendar days (not working days) is the reference for a reasonable time.
On very soft sand with that policy in my opinion, I think they certainly need to have a better explanation as to why their card processor is taking 21 working days to act on a refund initiated by the merchant.
I got a refund on 24th Dec for a cancellation made on 27th Nov
Had to chase them 3 times and escalated up to a manger to sortYup -these stories are nothing – I cancelled a few (3 x return) speculative points bookings on the phone with Virgin mid-November 2023, at the same time as making two new points bookings for me and Mrs GT.
I got the last part of the refunds back this week!
In the interim I have sent about a dozen emails. I have received points compensation payments of 5,000 and 10,000 points while escalating the issue. I have also now been promised the administration fees will be reimbursed also (6 x £30) and frankly after waiting 5 months it’s the least they can do! They clearly have major resourcing or training (or both) issues in that department…
PS I also got another 5k points in January from someone else’s LAS-LHR flight on the same day that I was flying a redemption (so non-point earning) flight BGI-LHR. They clearly also have major IT issues!
This has been going on for so long with Virgin now.
4 years of refunds taking an age to be processed (no way the delay is down to your bank/card/etc… they just hold the cash and don’t process it!).When they were on the rocks in covid and worried about cashflow, they kicked consumer refunds in to the long grass.
Are they really still struggling with cash flow?! Maybe they are?
cancelled a virgin redemption on a partner airlines (Saudia) in Feb and it took around a month for refund to come through, they didn’t charge the fee either! I’m not sure if the refund time is affected by if it’s a Virgin or non Virgin flight…I think partner airline bookings can take longer
I had to go through the exec office to get my refund. Refunds are having to be manually approved, and Tel Aviv is the reason for the backlog, from what I was told.
Still not good enough, though
Exec office were brill, however.
One of my jobs for today was going to be to chase up a refund for a flight I cancelled last month – but funnily enough I have just received an email saying my refund has been processed and should be with me “in the coming days” (they say up to 14). So that’s pretty much exactly the originally-promised 21 days, plus another 14 for good measure 😉
No sign of points or cash yet – not all that surprised, although I’d have thought the points could get credited back before / at the same time as they send out the email… I’ll keep an eye on it.
FWIW the confirmation statement they sent with the email was fairly confusing at first, but having studied it and (I think) worked it out, it looks like they’re refunding the correct cash amount (no mention of points though), and no deduction for admin fee (possibly because I cancelled due to a schedule change – so top marks to them at least for not making me have to argue that one 😉
One of my jobs for today was going to be to chase up a refund for a flight I cancelled last month – but funnily enough I have just received an email saying my refund has been processed and should be with me “in the coming days” (they say up to 14). So that’s pretty much exactly the originally-promised 21 days, plus another 14 for good measure 😉
They’re very good at sending out promising emails, less good at actually refunding you the cash. Sadly I’ve resorted to chargebacks with Virgin.
Everybody loves a data point.
Three cancellations made on 20th March. It was really only one but it was a complicated voucher booking so was split up.
One refunded 9 April with corresponding advice the same day.
One refunded 12 April with corresponding advice the same day.
One refunded 12 April with no corresponding advice.
All processed correctly.
Maybe me is lucky?
Maybe me is lucky?
Maybe too many chargebacks and VS no likey? 🙂
No chargebacks, merely refunds. And there were similar charges then processed so if they wanna get their knickers in a twist over that then I guess I stop flirting with the Virgin and go back to the not so chaste BA.
I meant maybe they’ve fixed their systems because a) it’s the right thing to do or b) they were not enjoying people doing chargebacks to get their money back.
Totally gotcha @PeteM.
Much like one of my kids, I assumed the whole world revolves around me there!
Me dumb.
My last 3 bookings have all taken 4 weeks + for the refund to come through.
just received an email saying my refund has been processed and should be with me “in the coming days” (they say up to 14).
Just to update – cash refunded to my credit card just now. No sign of the points yet though.
Experienced issues with this late last year when the refund policy stated 10 days. I was waiting 10 weeks and saw someone recommend contacting the exec office or Shai Weiss himself. Just be super polite about it. I got the money and points back after 10 days of speaking to someone on the back of the emails and 10k points.
Experienced issues with this late last year when the refund policy stated 10 days. I was waiting 10 weeks and saw someone recommend contacting the exec office or Shai Weiss himself. Just be super polite about it. I got the money and points back after 10 days of speaking to someone on the back of the emails and 10k points.
I agree there’s never a need to be anything other than polite, and on the same flip of the coin it’s not polite of Virgin to take this long to refund or to make it so hard to chase these refunds down.
It’s them claiming the card processor is responsible for a 14 working day delay from them initiating the refund to the card processor actually refunding.
That’s just a complete lie.
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