Difficult agents
 

I just wasted 30 minutes on the phone with an agent (Virgin customer care) for trying to do two simple things:
- Change a flight (flex fare) from 14 March to 19 April
- Add velocity number to another booking

Here is how to went
- First 10 minutes: Can't find your booking. Are you sure you've booked with Virgin? You didn't put your velocity on your booking (but I did!). Kept getting my booking ref wrong despite spelling it the phonetic way.

- Second 10 minutes: Found it but what do you want me to do with it exactly? Change it? did you know you will have to pay 35 dollars to do it for you when you can do it online yourself? (If I was able to do it online I wouldn't have called, it's giving me an error on the last page).

- Third 10 minutes: ah, you've already checked in online for the outbound flight so you can't change you booking. (I'm like yeah, that's why we get the flex fare or business fare just so we have to change flights in the last minute and beyond!)

- Resolution: Yes I made the changes from 14 March to 19 March, something is clearly wrong with your browser/Internet connection to get that error, I did it for YOU but next time do it yourself online :mad: (I said the new date, flight number and time 5 times during the call and she still got it wrong).

I just thanked her and hung up. Couldn't take it. What a start for a day.


How did this person get hired? based on what? I got blamed for everything that happens. This has to be the worst call ever made with Virgin. :td::td:

Just to add to the above. My check in for the outbound flight got cancelled and so I had to check in all over again. I noticed that through the website first 4 rows are blocked but on the mobile app I could select all the way up to the front.

And prior to changing the inbound, I noticed that even though the return flight is 60 hours away I could have checked in for that through the mobile app. good stuff!

I had to spend 20 mins on phone this week trying to apply Plat upgrades certs to paid Flexi fares to Perth.

Agent had never heard of them and needed to go ask someone else. Absurd.
.

Did VA change its strategy from 'building client base through exceptional service' which translates in staff training and retention of the best to 'focus on the bottom line and everything should fall into place' by lowering their hiring standards to: just need someone to answer the phone.

I reckon the main problem is that since the transition to SABRE, VA have had to put on more staff to do some of the everyday things that used to be able to done online.

Note that when calling to arrange upgrades, I use the options for Velocity, not general bookings.

Just had the opposite experience. Rang this morning, Sunday, to use a couple of complimentary business upgrades. That was dealt with in about a minute. Then I wanted to get some seat allocations confirmed. For whatever reason my next four reservations all broke at the seat reservation stage, these were all fixed up with seat 3D in less than a couple of minutes.

Difficult agents
 

14 March to 19th of March or April?

I can't say I've had any issues changing flights or applying upgrades, even since the change to Sabre but I've generally been getting agents from I think the NZ call centre, assuming they have one.

I did have one drama with an agent when I wanted to change an Etihad award booking from Y to F; he wanted to charge me a cancellation fee etc but after some arguing I pointed out that their fare rules didn't explicitly state a fee for change of class, only routing or date of which I was doing neither.

So whilst he did have to cancel the reservation, refund me and then reserve me the new seat in F I managed to scoot around the change fees, which in my opinion was completely fair.

I wanted 19 April, repeated that few times, she changed it to 19 March.