backdoc

I flew VS-8 yesterday on an "S" Premium Economy ticket. They were having trouble with their computers (took 20 minutes to get the terminals up, I know, I was standing there the whole time). I was the first customer and asked the ticket agent to check for me for a miles upgrade to UC. He looked and said, yes, we have 3 seats available. He asked his supervisor if he could do it and his supervisor said "Yes, but we have to call Flying Club in London for every upgrade now..." So, the ticket agent called London. London said that they weren't doing miles upgrades today. The ticket agent frowned then relayed the message.

I went to the Clubhouse and called Flying Club to find-out what the deal was. The Flying Club rep said that she didn't see any miles upgrade availability, she conferred with her people there in the office and called me back. Hmmm.....

I kept watching the new app and saw that two additional seats showed-up as open. I went to the lounge desk staff and asked kindly if they could check if any mileage upgrades had become available. The lounge agent said sure and would check for me, and added... "they haven't been able to get the new software to perform mileage upgrades yet, but let me check what I can do.

About 30 minutes later she found me in the lounge and got my credit card and returned in 10 minutes with my new boarding pass.

22,500 miles and $78


Be sweet, yet persistent, especially when they're rolling-out a new Flying Club program and new backend software.

Steve

BESTEDIFLYER

The 10% bonus was showing on the old web site but has disappeared on the new site though it was a rather narrow window for the bonus and may have ended by now. Still waiting for the bonus to appear in my wife's account.
Wish I had saved copies of the mileage accounts because I'm not to sure if the mileage showing is correct. Showing no miles for the auto transfer bonus.
Will keep an eye on things, also do prefer to have a total beside every transaction.

Femster82

This new website has fallen apart, I wonder if they tested it properly before releasing it to public.

I have not got my new membership number and my email won't allow me to sign in so I can't even log in. My wife & I were sharing the same email address and neither of us can log in. It won't allow us to reset password. Nothing works!

I cannot search for flights to Dallas using mile or miles/money.

Sealink

So here is my experience. I love flying Virgin, I think their staff are great and they are usually my number one choice. I'm flying BA and EK First soon just to see what they are like, but I have a soft spot for VS. With that in mind...

Back in October, VS were offering an amazing fare in Upper to Chicago. £1096 rtn in April 2017.
A variety of connecting flights were available, and I chose to travel via Atlanta, because it was not such a tight connection.

I booked my flights and all was well.

Three weeks later, I was notified of a schedule change.
Instead of arriving in Chicago at around 8pm, I would arrive at 11pm, which of course meant three more hours in Atlanta.
When checking both DL and VS websites, each of the original flights are still on sale.
So I had no idea why I had been moved.
I called VS and after much conversation, the moved me back to the original flight, and a new e-Ticket was issued. I note that the connecting flight is now on a DL flight number in P class, but its an eTicket, right? So it's ticketed and I don't need to worry.

Then the new website launches and I am more concerned about my imminent Grenada flight (Trip Report soon!) but all is well.

I decide that I want my friend to travel with me so pull up my booking in one browser window so that I can ensure we will be travelling together.

That's when I notice I am back on the very late connection. No notification ever received.
DL website still shows the earlier flight is operating.
Further, the VS website won't even let me book the flight I am on, although there are seats on both sectors.
I call Virgin (the call lasts 43 minutes, of which I would estimate 38 minutes was hold time ) I am informed that the original conneting flight is "now very busy" so DL moved me to the later service, as they can't get clearance to ticket me. I take this with a pinch of salt as I can't believe an airline would do this.

The VS rep offers to reroute me on another connection and can't do that. Finally he comes back to me and says he managed to persuade DL to accept me on the original flight and an e-ticket will be forthcoming in 48 hours.

I still can't get recreate the itinerary on VS, so the rep tells me to try DL.
Lo and behold, my original flight timings (VS-DL-DL-VS) are there to book on the Delta website, but not Virgins. So my pal is now travelling with me, via DL.

A bizarre and discomfiting evening and worrying that DL can seemingly bump people off a flight because they have realised they can earn more money from other pax.

backdoc

I'm pretty sure the email is the reason. Call them and wait on hold for 20 minutes, they will sort it out.

My email was shared with my father's account and he has since passed and they have closed his account, so no two accounts with the same email. I can logon to my account, after answering the "security questions" every time.

slinky09

According to VS all the new FC #s have been emailed out - clearly this isn't the case and I haven't had mine either (and no it's not in spam). I went to their Twitter to get the new number, still can't log in. Now will have to call and expect to be put on hold for 45 mins even on the Au line.

Sheesh, what a feck up!

backdoc

I was able logon, after multiple attempts, right after the new site went live and got my new membership number and confirmation numbers for the trip that I'm on currently and the one to Johannesburg in December.

The poor VS employees are having similar trouble on the backend of the software as we are accessing the website. I'm watching carefully how long it takes to see if/when the miles/tier points post from my flight on 15 Nov LAX-LHR, especially since I did a miles upgrade.

I'm not excited about having to be that diligent about my investment.

Steve

GrayAnderson

I'm still waiting on points (and TPs) posting from Monday's flights on DL (MCO-LGA-RIC). This isn't in "I'm worried" territory yet, but I've been used to things posting within 24-48 hours pretty reliably.

Honestly, I hate almost everything about the new website. Granted, this is me saying this, and I could often make Admiral Adama look like a technophile...but my favorite bit was being unable to get to the main website (which seems set up fine to work with mobile, really) on my phone so I could check things (even when I hit the "go to main website" link, it just kept me on the mobile site). The listing of miles/TPs doesn't break out by flight anymore [1], something which gives me a headache. When the CC lists it doesn't actually list the TPs being added as being, well, added (even if I can extrapolate them).

So...go ahead and insert a curmudgeonly rant about "shiny new crap which doesn't work like it should" here and why they couldn't have just ditched the separate Gold/Silver numbers and called it a day. I'll give them a week or two to hash things out (I'm not flying again until December, so it's not like I'll be piling up a lot of these issues, but at the same time there's going to be all sorts of wacky cross-crediting in a three-week span for me then so I'm hoping they'll have their "stuff" together by then).

[1] So, as an example, my Gold Run in April* shows up a single-line entry with 825 TPs (11 legs of F) and 5301 miles. That totally ignores the status bonuses, for example, that I earned and there's no longer a "clean" breakout. This is even more gnawing because those were on four separate reservation numbers. Another example is a set of flights PHF-ATL-SEA/DEN-ATL-ORF got bundled under the same line, again missing bonuses (the mileage indicated is raw base mileage, absent the 100% status bonus and IIRC a mix of 50% and 100% class-of-service bonus. Again, two separate reservations...and this time it's not even two connected reservations since the two trips were separated by just under a week.

*BWI-ATL-DTW-YUL-LGA-MCO-ATL-CLT-ATL-MCO-ATL-PHL

Ldnn1

+1. Award search is infinitely worse than on the old site. Grrr.

blitzen

I got my email yesterday

backdoc

My email came today but my miles from 15 Nov LAX-LHR haven't yet posted.

GrayAnderson

Well, my first post-overhaul flights have posted (call it six days to post, not bad). Still, though I think the points posted properly I don't have the usual accounting of them from before (e.g. the miles flown posted but not the number of points actually earned).

UncleDude

Now it appears to be influenced by Delta, any possibility that VS might follow Deltas no Expiry Policy?

MelP

The site is pretty buggy - tried to reserve an Extra Legroom Seat today for a LHR-JFK flight I have next week - got all the way through the process, but then pressing that final button to submit payment and finish it did nothing, had to call customer support to get it done.

Silver Fox

It's awful. It has not been tested by grown-ups. If someone was hired by me and came out with this POS they would be fired.

So far in my booking the lead passenger has changed from me to my mate, my middle name and DOB disappeared (can't put middle name back in it seems), cannot enter API until OLCI now, Flying Club (who are inundated with calls and wait times are through the roof) cannot view the passport details for passengers now, I cannot enter the hotel details we are staying at and make them stick, cannot tick the box that says something like "Same hotel details as other passenger", could not enter my Known Traveller Number unless I also added an "optional" Redress number of 00, and our seats have swapped with each other. This was not tested by anyone with half a brain before rollout.