Well,
Today is a new day with Virgin Australia. After all the phone calls in relation to the previous blog. We have that our Velocity Account has not been award to relevant points for our from Phuket to Melbourne on the return journey.
I am writing this blog from Sydney - where we live - and get this our velocity account says WE NEVER BOARDED THE PLANE. (Must of been a long walk).
We rang the UNHELPFUL V Australia customer service and the rude man on the other end of the phone said. You will have to scan and send in by email your boarding pass as proof of boarding the flight.
Keep watch this is going to get worse...
Thursday 10 March 2011
Monday 7 March 2011
V-Australia's bad customer service
We are at the end of the most wonderful holiday in Thailand with some money left over, so we decided to splurge on an upgrade to Premium Economy on V-Australia. Not quite business class but who cares about being able to lay down overnight on an aircraft (me..!!!!!!! just not rich enough).
This is where things just began to go wrong. I can also supply the proof of what follows in documentation (both hard copy and digital). We are Velocity Members to start with and regularly use Virgin within Australia for business and this blog is in no way including Virgin as the service with them has been 100%+ ALWAYS.
Firstly we rang the customer service line (from Phuket, Thailand) to check availability. There was availability and the upgrade would cost us $471.00 per person. I work in the technology field and only use Debit Credit Cards for security reasons, so we duly transferred the money across, rang the lass back, she took our (debit) credit card number and debited the account - $942.00 for the 2 upgrades. CASH I might add. We checked our bank account 1 hour after upgrading and $942.00 had been transfered from our account to V Australia. We were assured if there was any concerns about anything they would ring us via our mobile phone which they had on file and reconfirmed with us.
Upon arrival at the Phuket airport, we went the desk for Business Class and Premium Economy, handed over our passports and documentation and placed our luggage down. We checked in and were handed over boarding passes - for ECONOMY rows 42a and 42b. We then explained that we had upgraded via mobile phone.
The V Australia lady behind the counter then informed us there was a problem and we needed to ring V-Australia in Brisbane and sort it out. Using our mobile phone to ring Brisbane from Thailand. The lady behind the V Australia counter then curtly asked to move away from the desk to sort out OUR problems away from the desk - how rude.
Upon calling V Australia in Brisbane we were advised that there was a problem with our credit card and that the first transaction of $471.00 was fine but there was a problem with the 2nd transaction. We kindly informed the lady in Brisbane that this was a DEBIT credit card and they had already taken $942.00 out of our account - IT WASN'T CREDIT IT WAS CASH.
Get this, V-Australia customer service then asked us to download our bank statement, scan it and email it to her for proof. We informed her nicely, through gritted teeth that we were we were standing in Phuket airport in the check-in area, how are we going do that we said? V Australia customer service replied that there was nothing they could do, as far as they were concerned we hadn't paid. There was no consideration or investigation by them whatsoever that their system was giving the wrong information, no understanding that they had actually taken our cash and could not give a hoot about what was happening to us or the cost of our international mobile phone calls to them.
My husband then rang V Australia in Brisbane back and said "I will pay you AGAIN $471.00 for the upgrade, but if V Australia is wrong would they upgrade us to business class or give us a free flight or something else in return for their mistake", the answer was NO..!
We duly paid CASH on our debit credit again and decided we would take this up with them when we got home as boarding time was 50mins away. Yippee, all sorted, or so we thought. We again went up to the Premium Economy desk to check-in, finally although $471.00 less, tired and frustrated it was now all over, we could upgrade, rest, board and go home. BUT THAT WAS NOT THE END, the V Australia lady at the counter said, "sorry our system still has you sitting in economy rows 42a and 42b. WHAT, NO, THIS CAN"T BE HAPPENING, but it was....just unbelievable, by this time I was crying, this had been going on for over an hour, the V Australia staff in both Phuket and Brisbane were just rude.
We were told to ring V Australia AGAIN in Brisbane on our mobile phone from Thailand AGAIN. Yes, you have paid for the 2nd upgrade and yes you are sitting in rows 12A and 12B - premium economy. "But the lady at Phuket says we aren't sitting in those seats and will not issue the boarding passes for those seats because her system says we are in economy" we said, "let me speak to her" says V Australia Brisbane (ON OUR MOBILE BLOODY PHONE). They proceeded to have a conversation on OUR mobile phone for over 20mins (remembering this phone call is from Thailand to Australia at our expense for a mistake that was theirs, not ours) about the differences in the computer information they have.
Whilst Thailand and Brisbane V Australia staff were using our mobile phone to sort their system problems out the male Crew Manager on Flight VA20, 14th February 2011 at 17:50pm local asked what the problem was (I have put those details in as I was too upset to remember his name), he assured us that he would speak to us during the flight and make a report and file it with V Australia. We never saw him again either during the flight or disembarking once in Melbourne.
We then spent a number of hours once at home (of our own business time as we work for ourselves), collating all our information, printing bank statements, copying boarding passes, writing emails, making phone calls to try to get back the excess money that that was paid by us for their computer system mistake/failure and an apology. All information sent, now we wondered how long it would take to return our money with an apology.
Well, only a few days later they not only returned the excess $471.00 that was paid to them due to their mistake, but they also refunded the $942.00 for the complete upgrade. WOW, what an airline we thought, we always thought Richard Branson fought for the little guy. They are the best, not only did they refund the excess, but we got the upgrade for free. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG AND BLOODY WRONG. Next morning they took $942.00 back, no explanation, just debited our account.
Now for the Mobile phone bill claim. $111.00 it cost us. $111.00 bloody dollars. We sent the claim in with a copy of the attached account and waited. A few days later we received an email refusing to pay for phone calls on our phone for what was their mistake.
AND WE HAVE STILL NOT EVEN RECEIVED AN APOLOGY OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE EMBARRASSMENT, THE TIME OR THE COST TO US FOR WHAT WAS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY V AUSTRALIA'S FAULT.
This is where things just began to go wrong. I can also supply the proof of what follows in documentation (both hard copy and digital). We are Velocity Members to start with and regularly use Virgin within Australia for business and this blog is in no way including Virgin as the service with them has been 100%+ ALWAYS.
Firstly we rang the customer service line (from Phuket, Thailand) to check availability. There was availability and the upgrade would cost us $471.00 per person. I work in the technology field and only use Debit Credit Cards for security reasons, so we duly transferred the money across, rang the lass back, she took our (debit) credit card number and debited the account - $942.00 for the 2 upgrades. CASH I might add. We checked our bank account 1 hour after upgrading and $942.00 had been transfered from our account to V Australia. We were assured if there was any concerns about anything they would ring us via our mobile phone which they had on file and reconfirmed with us.
Upon arrival at the Phuket airport, we went the desk for Business Class and Premium Economy, handed over our passports and documentation and placed our luggage down. We checked in and were handed over boarding passes - for ECONOMY rows 42a and 42b. We then explained that we had upgraded via mobile phone.
The V Australia lady behind the counter then informed us there was a problem and we needed to ring V-Australia in Brisbane and sort it out. Using our mobile phone to ring Brisbane from Thailand. The lady behind the V Australia counter then curtly asked to move away from the desk to sort out OUR problems away from the desk - how rude.
Upon calling V Australia in Brisbane we were advised that there was a problem with our credit card and that the first transaction of $471.00 was fine but there was a problem with the 2nd transaction. We kindly informed the lady in Brisbane that this was a DEBIT credit card and they had already taken $942.00 out of our account - IT WASN'T CREDIT IT WAS CASH.
Get this, V-Australia customer service then asked us to download our bank statement, scan it and email it to her for proof. We informed her nicely, through gritted teeth that we were we were standing in Phuket airport in the check-in area, how are we going do that we said? V Australia customer service replied that there was nothing they could do, as far as they were concerned we hadn't paid. There was no consideration or investigation by them whatsoever that their system was giving the wrong information, no understanding that they had actually taken our cash and could not give a hoot about what was happening to us or the cost of our international mobile phone calls to them.
My husband then rang V Australia in Brisbane back and said "I will pay you AGAIN $471.00 for the upgrade, but if V Australia is wrong would they upgrade us to business class or give us a free flight or something else in return for their mistake", the answer was NO..!
We duly paid CASH on our debit credit again and decided we would take this up with them when we got home as boarding time was 50mins away. Yippee, all sorted, or so we thought. We again went up to the Premium Economy desk to check-in, finally although $471.00 less, tired and frustrated it was now all over, we could upgrade, rest, board and go home. BUT THAT WAS NOT THE END, the V Australia lady at the counter said, "sorry our system still has you sitting in economy rows 42a and 42b. WHAT, NO, THIS CAN"T BE HAPPENING, but it was....just unbelievable, by this time I was crying, this had been going on for over an hour, the V Australia staff in both Phuket and Brisbane were just rude.
We were told to ring V Australia AGAIN in Brisbane on our mobile phone from Thailand AGAIN. Yes, you have paid for the 2nd upgrade and yes you are sitting in rows 12A and 12B - premium economy. "But the lady at Phuket says we aren't sitting in those seats and will not issue the boarding passes for those seats because her system says we are in economy" we said, "let me speak to her" says V Australia Brisbane (ON OUR MOBILE BLOODY PHONE). They proceeded to have a conversation on OUR mobile phone for over 20mins (remembering this phone call is from Thailand to Australia at our expense for a mistake that was theirs, not ours) about the differences in the computer information they have.
Whilst Thailand and Brisbane V Australia staff were using our mobile phone to sort their system problems out the male Crew Manager on Flight VA20, 14th February 2011 at 17:50pm local asked what the problem was (I have put those details in as I was too upset to remember his name), he assured us that he would speak to us during the flight and make a report and file it with V Australia. We never saw him again either during the flight or disembarking once in Melbourne.
We then spent a number of hours once at home (of our own business time as we work for ourselves), collating all our information, printing bank statements, copying boarding passes, writing emails, making phone calls to try to get back the excess money that that was paid by us for their computer system mistake/failure and an apology. All information sent, now we wondered how long it would take to return our money with an apology.
Well, only a few days later they not only returned the excess $471.00 that was paid to them due to their mistake, but they also refunded the $942.00 for the complete upgrade. WOW, what an airline we thought, we always thought Richard Branson fought for the little guy. They are the best, not only did they refund the excess, but we got the upgrade for free. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG AND BLOODY WRONG. Next morning they took $942.00 back, no explanation, just debited our account.
Now for the Mobile phone bill claim. $111.00 it cost us. $111.00 bloody dollars. We sent the claim in with a copy of the attached account and waited. A few days later we received an email refusing to pay for phone calls on our phone for what was their mistake.
AND WE HAVE STILL NOT EVEN RECEIVED AN APOLOGY OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE EMBARRASSMENT, THE TIME OR THE COST TO US FOR WHAT WAS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY V AUSTRALIA'S FAULT.
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