Virgin T shirt protest

[Fruitcake]

Mistakes happen all the time more so when you do things online and you place all the responsibility on the person making the booking.

If the passenger didn't want the responsibility of typing his own name, he could have made a telephone reservation.

 

[burmans]

If the passenger didn't want the responsibility of typing his own name, he could have made a telephone reservation.

Good name, suits you well.

 

[Fruitcake]

Good name, suits you well.

Incidentally, it's also easy to type.

 

[flying_double]

A few posters seem to be vying for the nickname "Nobody", because after all nobody's perfect!

This sounds like a simple error that could have been fixed with a bit of common sense customer service on the part of VA. Yes there are rules, but they should be applied sensibly.

 

[JohnK]

If the passenger didn't want the responsibility of typing his own name, he could have made a telephone reservation.

And pay an assisted booking fee?

Changing a name on the booking costs Virgin diddly squat. The conversation would not take more than a minute and the change would take seconds to perform. I know why the terms and conditions are put there on this sort of thing. It is fairly simple to work out if a person is genuine or not.

It is called customer service but I think the airlines have forgotten who pays the bills.

 

[Spongbob]

I agree with all the customer service sentiments in this thread, and I guess we all hope it would be applied to us if we make such booking name error.

But, can we expect it when we take 8 weeks to check our booking?

Also, the phone assistance fee is much less then the cost of a new ticket.

 

[Intra]

I agree with all the customer service sentiments in this thread, and I guess we all hope it would be applied to us if we make such booking name error.

But, can we expect it when we take 8 weeks to check our booking?

Also, the phone assistance fee is much less then the cost of a new ticket.

I think that is the key thing for me: Eight Weeks, and then he noticed.... Eight minutes and no change without paying a fee, then I would kicking up a stuff....

 

[Jack_OC]

I agree with all the customer service sentiments in this thread, and I guess we all hope it would be applied to us if we make such booking name error.

But, can we expect it when we take 8 weeks to check our booking?

Do you know if it took him 8 weeks to check the booking? That wasn't clear from anything I read. Also, people (in general) are very bad at spotting duplicated words - something to do with our brains reading what we think something should say, rather than what it actually does say. You see inadvertent duplicated words all of the time - even on this forum, despite the fact that so many of its members are apparently incapable of making such errors! IMHO, it's quite possible that he did check his ticket at the time, but just failed to spot this error.

In any case, I don't see why it matters. The real question is, why does VA have a no name change policy on most (all?) fares? AFAIK, the answer is, as noted above, to stop people buying up cheap fares and then on-selling them to others. So as long as the airline is satisfied that isn't happening, I don't see why they should refuse to make minor corrections to the names. I think they are within their rights to charge a reasonable fee for doing so - but that brings me to my next point:

Also, the phone assistance fee is much less then the cost of a new ticket.

This highlights the absurdity of VA's position perfectly. The amount of time it would take a VA agent to help someone make a new booking by phone would be far greater than the time it would take for them to make a minor correction to the name on an existing booking. So why doesn't VA simply agree to make the correction (in legitimate circumstances such as this) in return for the standard phone assistance fee?

 

[Spongbob]

Jack3193, you can see the TV interview with Mr Paxman at: https://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/23253879/virgin-passengers-unique-protest/

There he admits the 8 week gap from the booking to noticing his error.

 

[Moody]

I agree with all the customer service sentiments in this thread, and I guess we all hope it would be applied to us if we make such booking name error.

But, can we expect it when we take 8 weeks to check our booking?
.

I made a name error with Emirates a couple of years back when making a last-minute booking for a funeral in the UK. As soon as the confirmation was emailed I picked up the spelling error I had made, and immediately rang up customer service to rectify the mistake. "Sure I can fix that for you ... for $150!"

After a bit of research I decided not to pay the exorbitant fee, based on the IATA convention that up to 3 spelling mistakes are acceptable. It also seems that they forgive firstname/surname swaps or other situations where names have been coughised but are still reconisable.

But none of these would cover this particular case, so it falls back on the airline to correct the booking. I assume the 48-hour notice was the reason given for not being able to alter the booking, but I wonder if that is forced upon Virgin or is their own rule.

 

[Jack_OC]

Jack3193, you can see the TV interview with Mr Paxman at: https://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/23253879/virgin-passengers-unique-protest/

There he admits the 8 week gap from the booking to noticing his error.

The point I'm making is there is a difference between not checking the ticket and not noticing the error. As I said, people often fail to pick up errors such as this, even when they proof-read documents.

Anyway, as I said I don't think it matters even if he didn't check his ticket until then. There is no valid reason IMHO for them not making a minor correction on the booking, in exchange for a reasonable fee.

 

[JohnK]

I think that is the key thing for me: Eight Weeks, and then he noticed.... Eight minutes and no change without paying a fee, then I would kicking up a stuff....

There are times when I only check bookings close to flight time. And I only check for things I want to see, such as flight times.

Airlines make mistakes from time to time? And everything is supposed to have been proof read? But their mistakes are covered in their terms and conditions to their advantage?

We are not perfect. We all make mistakes. $20-$30 to fix a mistake sounds reasonable where as $450 is totally unreasonable.