Filed under: Travel | Tags: customer service, out of pocket expenses, poor service, refund, virgin Australia
Back on October 30th when I returned to Australia from my Canada holiday I flew in just as Qantas CEO Alan Joyce decided to ground his entire fleet worldwide. I wasn’t flying Qantas this one time, I usually do, but this time was on competitor VAustalia and Virgin Australia. VAustralia had returned me to Brisbane so late that I wasn’t able to make my Virgin Australia connecting flight to Perth and the nightmare ensued, Qantas passengers had taken all the seats for the next several days and it was be four days before I’d fly out, I was given a ticket and sent away. Little did I know at the time, because I had been pulled out of the service queue by a not so friendly staff member to be assisted, I should have been given accommodation. So I booked and paid for accommodation and taxis there and back, about $600 out of pocket, which I later wrote to Virgin Australia seeking compensation for.
In December I finally got a reply from Virgin Australia’s customer support team apologising for the problems and agreeing to refund my expenses, just email us with the bank details and quote the reference number and attention to this person’s name. I did this immediately on December 8th, and got an auto reply from them to say they were busy and there may be a delay, fine, but I did expect they’d look at it. So, I have been checking my bank periodically for a deposit by them, a month later and still nothing in the account. Annoyed, I wrote again to the same person yesterday forwarding the original email and enquiring when I might receive my refund. It is just so annoying that I am still out of pocket several months after this all happened, and all because this airline had a turn around on its flight times that didn’t allow for anything going wrong, as did happen on this occasion (delays leaving LAX of 40+ minutes).
I have no intentions of ever flying this airline ever again. Rude staff, poor service, poor customer service, not worth the hassles. Wish I’d never gone with them in the first place and had stuck with Cathay Pacific despite their 2am departure time from Vancouver.
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