In fairness to Virgin I have found them to be one of the more reasonable train companies when you make a genuine mistake. I travel a lot for work on the trains and mistakes happen. A few years back I made a howler of mistake and didn't realise until the ticket check at Euston that my advance ticket home was for the wrong day. My advance ticket wasn't cheap and the guard just wrote some secret code on it to indicate to any ticket inspector that all was well. I've also missed my advanced train by 5 minutes due to traffic and usually they have only charged a very modest fee or waived the fee altogether. I've even lost a return ticket and a few minutes later theyve issued me a free replacement. I suspect the pinch might come if you were trying to travel on a really expensive service with a cheap ticket "due to a mistake" they might play hard ball.