virgin holiday customer care/barbados special offer con

Company/Brand: Virgin Holidays
13-04-2008

We have booked to go to Barbados for our honeymoon in June of this year.  We chose a hotel out of their Carribbean brochure because there were several attractive special bonuses for booking early including a guaranteed free room upgrade to two above standard if we paid extra to one above standard.  The bonuses were date restricted and we qualified as the time of our honeymoon coincided with their qualifying offer dates.    We've really stretched ourselves to do a special honeymoon and this is the most money we have ever spent on a holiday.  By sheer fluke I contacted the hotel directly to enquire about the cost of putting a bottle of champagne in our room on arrival and mentioned the level of room we were in.  The hotel (whom I can't fault as they have been really helpful) replied telling me that it was not in this years contract with virgin to upgrade customers.  Virgin customer service have told me all sorts of fibs and lies including that they will return my call, that you have to be a member of their frequent flyers club, that we will automatically get the room on arrival (how can that possibly be given the hotel is small and they haven't told the hotel about our upgrade), that this offer isn't printed inthe brochure??!!!!) and that we can't complain before we have been on our holiday!!!!   They have twice admitted on the telephone to both myself and the travel agent that we should be upgraded and have promised to contact the hotel to confirm and write to us to confirm - neither of which they have done.  How are you supposed to sort out problems before you go?  The e-mail address is an automated reply saying they prefer to talk to their customers yet their staff are rude unhelpful and certainly not understanding.  One virgin holiday customer service representative actually admitted that he hadn't seen a virgin holiday brochure and didn't have access to their website (which is still advertising the special offer). I've written to their complaint department and a month later am still to receive an acknowledgement let alone a response.  I've noted the problems that others are having with Virgin and those make my problem seem insignificant and my sympathies go out to them.  Virgin holidays....what is going on with your post sales/pre holiday customer service?  Why wait until after a holiday to sort out a problem?  Why not try to sort out problems before peoples holidays (and in my case honeymoon) are potentially ruined.

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Comments

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On April 15 2008 at 02:04AM Tiger230 said:

I feel for you! If you are promised an upgrade, thats what you should be entitled to.
Virgin Holidays are leading their customers down the garden path!

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On April 24 2008 at 05:04AM Linksmanmissy said:

A quick update - have received a formal apology from virgin and a new invoice confirming the upgraded room. Would still think twice before booking with virgin!

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On May 01 2008 at 09:05AM Linksmanmissy said:

Another quick update - although we received a formal apology and a confirmation that the upgrade had been applied I've been in touch with the hotel in Barbados directly and surprise surprise they tell me that they have not had any contact from Virgin and that we have not been upgraded - they have reiterated that any upgrade offer from Virgin will only be applied in resort if there is room availability. Again, this is not what Virgin have been advertising - thats a pretty wierd definition of Guaranteed even in my limited vocabulary! I've spent the last 90 minutes on to Virgin and have been going round in circles. I've tried everything to give them the opportunity to rectify this before we go on our honeymoon (and have the same discussions in resort with their local rep) and stop this escalating into a compensation claim (should they not fulfil their end of the contract!). A representative from Virgin has promised to ring me back tomorrow so I will update this site then.

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