Virgin - Awful service/ over booked flight - best way to complain?

lady1964

Hi,
Travelling to Sharm about 3 years ago with my mum & my sister, at check in at Gatwick we were offered a couple of hundred quid each, and a flight the next day from Manchester, with overnight accomodation & meals etc. We declined the offer as we were only going away for a week and it would have shortened our holiday. This was a package with Thomas Cook I think or Thomsons, can't remember which, it doesn't matter but it goes to show that tour operators will also make these offers.

Regards
Lady1964

beefster

Reading this makes you loose faith nin the booking system.
If I booked flights with seat numbers 9 months in advance why should i be penalised for not checking in online.

Simply say if your not checked in 2 hours in advance we reserve the right to re allocate seats. Simple. Gives them an hour to divvy up seats to those who booked late and thus got the "excess" sales, ie overbooked seats.

In effect the airlines are selling more seats than they have available - so are making a profit on what they havent got? I see the point that this enables them to sell seats cheaper but still seems wrong to me.

bagand96

They do not favour people who check in online specifically, its just the way the system works. It is industry standard overbooking. The people who are denied boarding are usually the last people to check in. So if the plane has 320 seats but 340 people are booked, generally the first 320 people who check in will be on, the remaining 20 will be held for standby (as you were) and then offloaded if need be.

Obviously checking in online does give you an advantage as you will be checked in upto a day before. However, if you then dont make it, you will be off and someone else will be put on the flight (again as happened in this case.)

Unfortunately OP, I dont think you'll get much from Virgin. The overbooking is irrlevant as you made the flight. The poor onboard service is par for the course unfortunately... as someone above suggsted you may get some miles offered but thats it. Had a crap flight with BA this summer, and although the "Customer service" emails insisted they were "sorry BA coudn't live up to the high standards they strive for etc" the general impression was "sod off, you're not getting anything". I didn't even get a proper apology or reference to my specific questions/complaints.