justcallmeryan
Member
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2010
- Posts
- 154
I thought I would share a great experience I had today with VA. I recently purchased a return Y+ to LAX in March on Expedia. I used Expedia as due to the changeover to sabre the new VA site doesn't appear to be displaying premium saver fares, at least not that I could see.
So today I decided to brave the call centre to request my upgrade using points as the new T & C's don't require you to wait until 7 day prior. First when the person answered I realised I was not speaking to the call centre in BNE but the o/seas version. She proceeded to pull up my booking and add my Velocity number as Expedia had not sent it across. Then when I requested the upgrade she said the dreaded 'I can't help you with that, and will need to transfer you along. Now sometimes the calls drop out (?????) so let me have your mobile number and if it does drop out someone will call you back' (yeah right!!!!).
Anyway, call gets transferred through and no more than 3 minutes later a rep that was clearly from the BNE office picks up and had been told what I'm after. He says he just needs to clear it with his manager and will pop me on hold for a minute (uh oh.....) and not more than 2 minutes later comes back and says that it shouldn't be a problem! He then proceeds to explain that the process takes a while with the new system, and that he'll call me back if any problems, but otherwise I should receive my new itinerary within an hour or so.
I spent the next hour sweating like crazy thinking there's no way this could be so easy, but as it turns out almost an hour to the time I hung up, my new J class itinerary arrived in my inbox both from VA and Expedia.
I hope this is a sign of things to come from Virgin as I for one feel this was an awesome experience!
So today I decided to brave the call centre to request my upgrade using points as the new T & C's don't require you to wait until 7 day prior. First when the person answered I realised I was not speaking to the call centre in BNE but the o/seas version. She proceeded to pull up my booking and add my Velocity number as Expedia had not sent it across. Then when I requested the upgrade she said the dreaded 'I can't help you with that, and will need to transfer you along. Now sometimes the calls drop out (?????) so let me have your mobile number and if it does drop out someone will call you back' (yeah right!!!!).
Anyway, call gets transferred through and no more than 3 minutes later a rep that was clearly from the BNE office picks up and had been told what I'm after. He says he just needs to clear it with his manager and will pop me on hold for a minute (uh oh.....) and not more than 2 minutes later comes back and says that it shouldn't be a problem! He then proceeds to explain that the process takes a while with the new system, and that he'll call me back if any problems, but otherwise I should receive my new itinerary within an hour or so.
I spent the next hour sweating like crazy thinking there's no way this could be so easy, but as it turns out almost an hour to the time I hung up, my new J class itinerary arrived in my inbox both from VA and Expedia.
I hope this is a sign of things to come from Virgin as I for one feel this was an awesome experience!