Velocity to KF transfer delay

[pgsdiver]

Hello all,
Just thought you all might have some insight for me.
I've been planning a European jaunt for my family using my much loved KF points. Had enough for the entire family in J - will be a big surprise for them.
Needed to transfer my Velocity points to KF to make it happen.
I had booked the outbound flights and now need to book the returns.
I did the transfer from Velocity on January 30th.
Been checking daily (and watching my preferred flights disappear from the SQ site) and still tonight they are not in the KF account.
Called Velocity and they said they can escalate it but that it takes between 3-5 BUSINESS days to escalate and get any sort of a response.
I find this totally unacceptable and I am facing the very real prospect of buggering up our plans for the holiday.
Am I being unreasonable expecting them to transfer points within 12 days (when AMEX have managed it in less than 48 hours in the past)?
Any suggestions on what else to do (except quit whining about my first world problem)?
Regards,
Peter

 

[junbugging]

Hello all,
Just thought you all might have some insight for me.
I've been planning a European jaunt for my family using my much loved KF points. Had enough for the entire family in J - will be a big surprise for them.
Needed to transfer my Velocity points to KF to make it happen.
I had booked the outbound flights and now need to book the returns.
I did the transfer from Velocity on January 30th.
Been checking daily (and watching my preferred flights disappear from the SQ site) and still tonight they are not in the KF account.
Called Velocity and they said they can escalate it but that it takes between 3-5 BUSINESS days to escalate and get any sort of a response.
I find this totally unacceptable and I am facing the very real prospect of buggering up our plans for the holiday.
Am I being unreasonable expecting them to transfer points within 12 days (when AMEX have managed it in less than 48 hours in the past)?
Any suggestions on what else to do (except quit whining about my first world problem)?
Regards,
Peter

Are the points showing as having been deducted from Velocity?

I had the same problem in December 2016 and ended up missing out on a prime-time Christmas SQ booking because of it.

For my latest transfer last week they deducted the points twice from Velocity, leaving me with a negative balance and making my subsequent transfer from Flybuys inaccessible until that second transaction is reversed. Which will purportedly be five business days, but I'm not hopeful.

Pathetic.

 

[pgsdiver]

Hi junbugging
Yes they showed as deducted from velocity as soon as I did the transfer.

I quite enjoy flying Velocity. Their onboard product suits me, but you are right - their systems are simply pathetic. Their website is, and has always been, buggy and I reckon their systems are held together with chewing gum and fencing wire.
Hope your holiday got sorted out.
Regards,
Peter

 

[n7of9]

Velocity to KF transfers are instant/5mins. I once had a similar hiccup and called Velocity the next day. They confirmed there was an error so I requested that they cancel the transfer request. Luckily I had enough points for another instant transfer, and my first lot of points were credited back to me in due course.

It's poos that this happens but your best bet is to call them if your points aren't available within an hour

 

[pgsdiver]

Thanks n7,
Good advice for when I next do it. I'll keep hounding them over the weekend.
Regards,
Peter

 

[Mattg]

This is rather concerning. All of my previous VA -> SQ transfers have been instant.

 

[pgsdiver]

Yep agreed.
What was more concerning was explaining to my wife and 3 kids that Europe may be a no go for their holiday.
Tomorrow I am picking up the cudgels again and will try to get virgin to get it done tomorrow.
I'll let everyone know how I go.

 

[travelislife]

Has always been instant for me too. But since the changes to KF I have found it is better value booking SQ flights using my Velocity points direct rather than cop the 35% hit on the transfer. Could this have been an option?

 

[pgsdiver]

I already had points in kf that contributed to the total required but trees that could have been an option in hindsight.

 

[junbugging]

I have found it is better value booking SQ flights using my Velocity points direct rather than cop the 35% hit on the transfer.

This comes up every now and then, but 1 divided by 1.35 is around 0.74, so you lose 26% transferring, not 35%. Just as when you go from 1 to 1.15, you get a 15% bonus, not a 13% bonus.

 

[junbugging]

Tomorrow I am picking up the cudgels again and will try to get virgin to get it done tomorrow.

Hope you had better luck than I did just now. It's pretty clear they don't empower the people who actually deal with the phone complaints to do anything. And apparently a five-business-day response is the standard for someone such as myself with no status. Even when it comes to something as obvious as a negative point balance.

 

[pgsdiver]

Hi all,
Update as of today.
Junbugging even as a current Gold and sometimes Platinum member, I'm getting the same response as you.
Was told today that the escalations team is looking into it. They have asked Krisflyer for information to confirm the points never reached KrisFlyer. I offered to send them proof in a screenshot from my KrisFlyer account but they are not interested in receiving that. Possibly their email system is as unreliable as their other IT systems. They said they will call me when they have more information.
I'm ringing them again tomorrow and will do so every day until this is resolved.
I've told them if this impacts my holiday I'll take our entire business' travel budget over to Qantas - not huge but it'd be in excess of 40 flights a year.
Let you know how I go - good luck with your issue.
Regards,
Peter

 

[pgsdiver]

Aaaahhhhh brilliant.
Called Virgin again this morning after no feedback from them yesterday. I was told, to my surprise, that points had just been credited back to my Velocity account.
OK , I can wear the lack of a call back if they've put the points back. I got the agent to stay on the line while I again attempted to transfer the points to KF.
OMG, same thing happened - this time with even more points because I just defaulted to sending them all..
Again Velocity will have their "escalations" team have a look at it.
As an aside, in my frustration I have taken to twitter - which seems to be the only way to get action these days.
I got a chuckle, as VA support replied to my tweet suggesting I ring 13 18 75 to get this resolved. Correction, I got a big belly laugh.
I can't wait to move our corporate travel to QF.
The fun and games continues - and thankfully my wife has a massive cold, so hasn't thought to ask me what's happening with our flights for the last 24 hours.

 

[N860CR]

I’ve just done a VA - SQ transfer.

Received a message saying “connectivity error” while doing it, but then the points came out and activity said “transfer to krisflyer xx_x” as expected.

Haven’t come through yet. Only been about half an hour, but previous experiences have been instant. Could be a real concern. We’re fighting with VA at the moment regarding a failed Hilton status activation and the customer service is absolutely awful. Wouldn’t want to do another one

 

[pgsdiver]

My suggestion is get on the phone NOW. I've been fighting this battle for nearly a week now and my original transfer was on the 30th of January. Let's see if strength in numbers gets us anywhere (Yes I know I'm being naive).
Regards
Peter.

 

[N860CR]

Yep I’ll give it a try now.

They still haven’t appeared so I’m guessing they they won’t.

 

[N860CR]

Surprising success with the less than competent Filipino call centre.

A few white lies aside “should have worked”, “looks fine at our end”, I eventually got out of them that it’s a known issue. She did the transfer herself finally (only after I did it another time on the internet where it failed again) and it worked. I think I was supposed to be glad that she “waived” the phone service fee.

The other two lots will be “redeposited” after escalation.

At least I got it working. If you have the points on hand, I’d suggest you get them to do the transfer at their end.

 

[pgsdiver]

Glad you got a great result.
Unfortunately, because I am somewhat less full of foresight than you, I transferred everything I had (which is what I need).
Really glad you got yours sorted though.

VA - if you are listening on this thread/forum: Get your stuff fixed! This is how you lose customers (and in my case it will be 18-20 of them plus my family) - not only do you have a problem but your call centre staff are not being truthful with me that it is a known problem - had they told me that I would have had the points transferred manually and this saga would be over.
Just so dumb.
Regards,
Peter

 

[N860CR]

I’m not as bright as the success would suggest... I had to transfer points in from my partner (and they went missing) and then my father. It’s still been a bit of a stuff around. It took a lot of pushing to get them to do it manually and they weren’t forthcoming with ideas. Pretty typical of these call centers.

The issue seems to be Velocity’s cheap Manila call centre. The staff have no desire to help (and given they’re on slave labour wages working for a contractor, who can blame them) and don’t seem to have any authority. Velocity seems to prescribe to the policy of “lie as much as possible” which can’t help these people psychologically. When asking where they were located (and why I wasn’t talking to the Brisbane premium team) I was told “I’m not exactly in Brisbane”, and the “manager” who was handling my other issue was signing emails “Jules Howard”, which is one of the most unique Filipino names I’ve ever heard.

When you tell people on day one “you need to be ashamed of your name and where your from and lie about it as much as possible”, the likelihood of them offering decent and honest service is slim.

 

[pgsdiver]

Couldn't agree more.

Now, as an update:
My issue has now been circumvented (note I did not use the words resolved or fixed)
I checked my points balance very late last night and they had redeposited the points back into my account.
I received a call from the lady at the call centre ( said her name was Myals). She instantly offered to manually transfer my points and waited while I checked KF to see that they had arrived.
I told her that I knew this was a known problem so when were they going to fix it. She told me that they had not had anyone else with this issue and that the technical people had told her there was no problem to fix (I run an IT company - therefore I saw red!).
I told her that I knew she wasn't telling me the truth because I "knew" the other person who'd experienced this. I told her I wanted a call from them when the underlying issue had been resolved.
She promised to send my comments to the escalation team - I'm not holding my breath for a call..
I got an email from gold@ the velocity FF email account today, signed Selena Harper, and they apologised for the saga - with no hint of explanation. I'll be following up with Selena each time I have a few spare minutes and want some entertainment.
I feel that we deserve to know when the issue is fixed, so we can have confidence transferring points next time.
Really appreciate the moral support N860CR and the others here.
Regards,
Peter
PS> Managed to get the SQ flights I wanted except a day later than we'd planned. Not all bad I guess.