Virgin Australia Velocity - Suggestion about Insurance sales with tickets

Ok this may only impact dummies like me.

But more than 3 times in the least 3 months (across about 5-6 reservations) I have ended up accidentally buying travel insurance with the ticket and immediately cancelling it with the cooling off period.

For a dummy like me the problem is the the insurance option with a preselected radio button appearing on the payment page. Eyes are immediately drawn to CC details and you fill that out and as you are hitting submit you realise the insurance option is selected.

I now have a well practice process of waiting the the email and cancelling it. All done with no problem and ^ customer service.

But I assume it costs time and effort to issue the insurance and then cancel it and I assume the number of people keeping it after buying it accidentaly it fairly small.

With that in mind would it not be better the radio button is not selected or am I the only idiot who does this more than once?

For customers it would certainly better if the insurance weren't selected. For VA it's better the other way round. :-(

I guess a lot of folk don't realise there is a cooling off period (being an insurance product), and just take the product.

I've been stung twice myself and didn't know there was a cooling off period. :mad: I am obsessive about checking things like that now.

The cooling off period is mentioned in the PDS, giving 14 days to cancel.

Ok this may only impact dummies like me.

But more than 3 times in the least 3 months (across about 5-6 reservations) I have ended up accidentally buying travel insurance with the ticket and immediately cancelling it with the cooling off period.

For a dummy like me the problem is the the insurance option with a preselected radio button appearing on the payment page. Eyes are immediately drawn to CC details and you fill that out and as you are hitting submit you realise the insurance option is selected.

I now have a well practice process of waiting the the email and cancelling it. All done with no problem and ^ customer service.

But I assume it costs time and effort to issue the insurance and then cancel it and I assume the number of people keeping it after buying it accidentaly it fairly small.

With that in mind would it not be better the radio button is not selected or am I the only idiot who does this more than once?
I have just experienced the exact same problem and ended up purchasing travel insurance when I did not want it. I made another dummy booking as far as the payment page to see how I could have possibly made the mistake. When you arrive at the payment page the radio button is definitely pre-set to 'no insurance'. It's only when you scroll down and select your credit card type that the insurance radio button suddenly changes and selects insurance. The change can easily go un-noticed because at this point you have scrolled down and are concentrating on the credit card details. It almost seems like a deliberate attempt to extract more money from customers who may not notice they have purchased insurance or who do not realise there is a cooling off period. I am not impressed!

I have just experienced the exact same problem and ended up purchasing travel insurance when I did not want it. I made another dummy booking as far as the payment page to see how I could have possibly made the mistake. When you arrive at the payment page the radio button is definitely pre-set to 'no insurance'. It's only when you scroll down and select your credit card type that the insurance radio button suddenly changes and selects insurance. The change can easily go un-noticed because at this point you have scrolled down and are concentrating on the credit card details. It almost seems like a deliberate attempt to extract more money from customers who may not notice they have purchased insurance or who do not realise there is a cooling off period. I am not impressed!

My guess is that it's not deliberate it's just one of dozens if not hundreds of minor bugs in the new system. It may be intentional that it is preclicked but i am sure it is not intentional that it is invisible -- that would be illegal in a major way in Australia and i can't see the company deliberately choosing to go there.

I wrote to Virgin Australia about the problem. I have no issue with defaults being set, but I don't expect them to change when I change a field further down the web page. Their first response wasn't satisfactory as they didnt appear to have checked to see exactly what was happening. So I wrote again and received the following reply.

" I have investigated your case further and can see that the travel insurance option does change when selecting the form of payment. I do apologise for the confusion in my previous email. I can assure you that this is a fault in the website and not a deliberate attempt from Virgin Australia to trick guests into paying for our travel insurance and I have forwarded this information to the IT Management Team to ensure it is fixed as soon as possible."

RESULT!