To expect the Chief Executive of Virgin Atlantic to answer my correspondence and not FOB ME OFF with supposed Customer Services

[wendover1965]

This is a copy of a letter that I have sent to Virgin Atlantic. The story is all there. I have been fobbed off with useless people calling me who haven't got a clue what my query is really about and been told that the Chief Executive and his staff are "TOO BUSY" apparently to keep there customers happy. I was a frequent flyer member in the 1990's but after this shambles Virgin Atlantic will never get any more business from me. My OPINION IS AVOID THE AIRLINE AT ALL COSTS. There are plenty of other Airlines to choose from. Make Virgin Atlantic your last choice of airline not your first

Dear Mr **

(He is apparently the person who looks after customers) Certainly not in my experience

I am writing to you to deal with a complaint which your refunds/customer service team have been unable to find a solution to, in the hope that you can take a view and help with a reasonable outcome.

I booked 2 tickets to Memphis from Manchester on 4th September, 1 for me and one for my 17 year old son. This was in January.

My son decided he did not want to go and wanted to cancel his ticket so I went online to cancel his ticket. Your system would not give me the option of cancelling 1 ticket and said I had to cancel the booking. On the refund form it asked me for a phone number so that someone could contact me regarding the refund. I thought great when they phone I can explain that I only want 1 ticket cancelled. NOBODY called and then I find myself with an email today saying that out of £800 odd tickets I am going to get £152.00 each back. I have asked your customer services team to justify that, they have not explained themselves, I asked for it to be sent in writing to me why I am being charged for taxes when the ticket is not sold. Surely if you resell a ticket the next person pays taxes on it, how can you justify taking taxes from me as. That is twice and it seems conning the consumer springs to mind.

had someone from refunds done their job and called, I would still have a ticket and I would not be £1300 out of pocket, and it has left me in a situation where I cannot now buy another ticket because I can't afford it twice. I was going to visit an old friend who I haven't seen for 20 years and this is now ruined because no-one from your refund team could be bothered to pick up the phone. MY TICKET SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CANCELLED and your processes online should allow for people to be able to remove some and not all of the party off.

The original person I spoke to at customer services said my ticket HAD NOT yet been refunded, so I saw a glimmer of hope that I could stop the refund of my ticket. I was subsequently told by a chap called J C* (who has no customer service skills at all, he just quotes rules and regulations) that my ticket was cancelled. Which is it you cannot deal with people who give conflicting information.

I am writing in the hope that you can take a view on this because quite frankly had someone from the refund team called. Firstly my ticket wouldn't of been cancelled and secondly my son would of probably kept his if he knew the amount of losses that were involved. He is a 17 year old on minimum wage and cant afford these losses either. Your refund team should have called and didn't and they have created all this. IN FACT I HAVE CONTACTED THEM TWICE TODAY AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T CALLED

I would like a response as soon as possible but all in all so far a very poor show from Virgin Atlantic

Why would you cancel both and then wait for customer service to call?
Normal person would pick up the phone, call Virgin Atlantic and told them what's happening.

Also. CEOs don't really have in a job description to answer complaints like this.
You cancelled your booking.

Ellisandra you seem like a good wee soul and have it nailed.

OP yabu as others have said, but if you do want to try to get a resolution that suits you I'd contact them, apologise for being shitty with the advisors before and explain you've mad an honest mistake, can they rebook your ticket. If you want help wording that in a strong, polite way feel free to PM me

**I have written to Tim Berners-Lee about the ridiculousness of this thread. The bugger better reply, after all, he invented the bloody internet. have written to Tim Berners-Lee about the ridiculousness of this thread. The bugger better reply, after all, he invented the bloody internet.

I’m thinking he’ll just pass it on to Ada Lovelace

Virgin Atlantic make it very clear their tickets are none refundable - right there on the main page.

A phone number is also really easy to find on their site.

Can't quite see how they're at fault here to be honest.

As attached.

YABVU

I appreciate that you are upset about this and when you're upset and especially when you stand to loose money, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. The advice from the previous posters is correct. If you genuinely want to try and resolve this then the advice you have been given could help you. If you continue to be so stuck in your mindset then it will be much harder or even impossible to resolve this.

1. your email is garbled. You need to take emotion out and state facts in chronological order. This is the way to resolve things.

2. you ticket is likely non refundable which means only taxes refunded. Check your ticket - can you confirm what it says? Depending on what it says depends on how you deal with this.

3. if you could see that it only gave you the option to cancel the whole thing then proceeding was not sensible. Assuming that someone would read a comment is not sensible. I appreciate that it should be but many automated systems do not work like that. They're not efficient or robust. If a system says it will cancel the whole booking that going ahead with that is not sensible. Instead you phone before doing anything and speak to someone and get them to do it.

Did you book a non refundable ticket? If so, it’s not refundable, it’s pretty much the main condition of reasonably priced tickets. For 800 I would be pretty sure this isn’t a refundable ticket. So if you cancel, all you get back is taxes. If you use online cancellation then it’s often the whole booking that’s cancelled as indeed you were warned. Obviously the whole point of doing it online is to avoid a phone call, why on earth would they call you? If you only wanted to cancel one ticket, you should have called them.

It’s a shame if you don’t understand all of this, I can understand how you might feel aggrieved. Sadly, your complaint couldn’t be any less valid. There is no way the CEO would respond to this, that’s insane.

Why didn’t you just call them? They would have explained your tickets aren’t refundable.

Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to reinstate your ticket. Airline booking systems don’t work like that. You really need to understand the terms and conditions of tickets you book. In any event, you state you clearly submitted a form to cancel the whole booking not one ticket so I have limited sympathy.

Yeah, you are being pretty unreasonable, and a smidge deluded, to expect the CEO to stop what he's doing, nip down several floors to the customer service dept and ask someone to budge over so he can help them do their job.

You did something silly and it's cost you a lot of money. It's shit and I hope Virgin can do something lovely for you, but the fault is yours, not theirs.

There seems to be almost an expectation now that if a company doesn't immediately bow to the customer's demand then the customer should involve the CEO and that will result in them getting their own way. The customer is not always right. Sometimes, the customer is an idiot.

This thread is nuts.

OP, you fucked up. Why you would cancel these tickets without checking with an actual human being if you would get your money back/ could just change your booking is beyond me, but that's your own fault. Ranting and raving isn't going to help.

YOU contact customer services (not the other way round!) and explain very politely and apologetically what's happened, and you might get somewhere. Sending rambling letters to the CEO and sitting fuming by your phone waiting for some poor sod in a call centre to contact you is not going to get you anywhere.

If you google it, Virgin Atlantic has 9,823 staff. That means that the CEO is responsible for that many people continuing to have a job tomorrow so that they can pay their mortgages and feed their kids.

If he had personally responded to your email, I would expect his employees to get very upset that he was wasting his time on something so insignificant. The buck stops with the CEO, he has huge decisions to make on a daily basis, he should not be involved in how long it took you to get a call back on your own mistake.

YABU, the CEO employs people, who employ people to answer complaint letters. Those people are often in a far better position to deal with your complaint anyway.

I love the naivety of those who expect a CEO to reply! I work for a large organisation that often handles complaints.

I have been asked on many occasions by Joe Public who the CEO is and I tell them and give their details. I do say CEO won't be dealing himself, he has many minions who deal with all that!

Even letters in CEO's name are drafted by minions and then tinkered with to give it his style! I am one such minion.

Rant over.

One CEO I know doesn't have the email address people think he has. Standard company format for emails were changed for his account only so he never sees any emails from the public etc

I had problems cancelling half an easyJet flight a few years ago. Online it was all or nothing so I had to speak to customer service to do it and they still cancelled the lot, the idiots. Thankfully when they played back the recording they did reinstate/rebook it OP has my sympathy that it wasn’t easy to sort out.

Writing to the CEO is not a bad strategy (albeit that they’ll never personally reply), but you should be coherent and have exhausted your options with customer service. I don’t expect any result here because it looks like OP was at fault.

Have you followed the correct complaints procedure? If so and a resolution hasn't been reached they would give you the next steps on how to escalate this further.

In regards to Twitter, I work on a social media department for a well known company and people assume that the team have more power than regular customer service, we don't. We have the same as they do and also have to follow the correct procedure that's laid out by the company.

Yes, we may be able to add higher credits than others, but customers are now coming to Twitter or Facebook for general queries because they believe we have this magic wand that will solve all their problems and it won't.

Also, the CEO or whoever you're wanting to contact, won't contact you. If the email does reach him, it will be trickled down to the complaints team who will contact you.

Your email isn't structured very effectively. You've made the cardinal error of not telling them what you actually want them to do to sort this out.

You've said 'I am writing in the hope that you can take a view on this' - what does that mean? Whoever reads it could 'take a view on it' then throw it in the bin!

' I think you should rewrite it as follows:

1. Summarise your complaint very briefly - 'I was given conflicting information by your staff when I was trying to cancel a ticket.'
2. Tell them exactly what you want them to do to put it right: 'I would like one/both of my tickets reinstating'.

Then attach your detailed timeline of who did what when as a separate document 'I've attached a detailed description of the service I received for your reference'. Then ask them to respond within a set timescale, e.g. 5 days.

Not RTFT but in future, get someone to proof read letters you send. This does just come across as an incoherent rant and isn't the way to get what you want / taken seriously. I understand you are very frustrated but honestly, and I mean this to help, your letter is one big rant and rave. Also the CEO never responds in person - there is usually am executive complaints team who will respond to CEO complaints.

Sorry OP but you haven't got a leg to stand on here. You cancelled your tickets without reading the terms and conditions. The flights were non-refundable.

Sunkist12 customers are now coming to Twitter or Facebook for general queries because they believe we have this magic wand that will solve all their problems and it won't.

Isn't it more that you can see your issue and there's a "paper trail" for it, unlike when you send an email/web form or letter - which just vanishes into a black hole.

(There's also the public accountability too, of course. Nonsense whiners get laughed at, but serious, genuine issues get the public's back up en masse.)

Additionally, you don't really have a leg to stand on with your complaint. You were at fault, not the company.

I worked in the complaints department for a large company and the amount of emails/ letters we would get demanding that the CEO resolve the complaint personally is ludicrous. As though a CEO would ever have the time/ or knowledge to be able to deal with an issue. It’s customer services that you need to speak to.
Your best option is to phone them be VERY apologetic that YOU made a mistake and cancelled the entire booking instead of just one passenger. At this point you are relying on them helping you to fix your (costly) mistake. The advisors you are speaking too are quoting the terms and conditions to you as this is what you agreed to BEFORE purchase. If you are speaking to them like they have put you in this position and like it’s their mistake they will 100% not help you, and you can’t blame them for that.
Next time maybe you would be best to get a responsible adult to help you before booking (or cancelling) anything

Absolutely! But genuine issues are brought into private message and not handled with pubically. so, even if you are wanting a paper trail, you can get this over phone. Also as we'd leave notes about previous communications on your accounts so that they can be picked up by the next agent. If you'd like it in writing, you can request a SAR- subject access request. Most of the time we get customers thinking we can solve their issues in a click of a finger and that's just not the case, you'd 9/10 get the same response from generic customer service as thats what we are.

In short, I love my job, but too many people assume social media is the answer to everything and public bashing is now the norm. I don't agree and can't say I've ever taken to Twitter to discuss an issue with my personal accounts. If a customer service agent is doing their job correctly, this will be handled the same over the phone as it would online.

This is why places have call centres. So you can call them with complexities. The phone number request will be so they can gather data on why people cancel not provide you with individual customer service!

We had to remove a family member from a booking last year when they became unable to travel due to another commitment, just phoned up, were refunded the tax on that ticket onto the card it was booked with, and the rest of us travelled as planned. I don't understand why you didn't just phone when it became apparent you couldn't sort it online? I phoned just after 7pm because that's when I get in from work, so it's not as though it's office hours only.

If anything, your complaint is about the limits to the functionality of the website, or a lack of clarity in the guidance on how to cancel a single seat from a group booking, so you could perhaps reformat your letter to reflect that.