Booked my holiday online with Virgin - now they want to charge me more!

fraz41

flutterbybutterfly wrote:

Thanks for your replies. As far as the hire car is concerned, the first week is free so I am only paying the second week with virgin. If I booked the car hire with another company I would be paying for two weeks so even if their rates are cheaper it wouldn't end up cheaper.

I can cancel, but then I have no holiday. We want to fly Virgin because I have always found their flights more comfortable especially with kids and parents-in-law who have never flown before. If we re-book the holiday with another package we won't get Virgin flights. If we book using something like Expedia we get a much cheaper holiday and can specify Virgin flights but we don't get the security of a package. If the accomodation goes pear shaped before or worse still after arrival we have no recourse through travel insurance as it wasn't booked as a package.

Thanks Amys for your tip about when to call to get the UK. I was especially annoyed when the call operator in India giggled at the whole episode!

as long as you book the flight + other items together and make a single payment you are booking a package (regardless of supplier) and will be coverred by UK package travel regulations.

i personally would fight to ensure they honour the price they misquoted. It was clearly not an unreasonably low fare they offered so there's no reason why they can't eat into some of their margin to compensate for their mistake.


Last year I booked a hire car through alamo.com pickup PHL, dropoff MIA. They should have quoted a $500 extra charge for the different pickup and dropoff but didn't and waived it when I complained and confirmed I had printed off the screens confirming the charge hadn't been mentioned.

I also know off people that have been misquoted fares on ba.com but have had the misprices honoured.

No reason why virginholidays should be able to get off if you've proof it's their mistake.

Good luck.

Froggitt

flutterbybutterfly wrote:

Do you get 10% with Virgin Flying Club from day 1???

Yes - all year round, not just 3 weeks a year.

flutterbybutterfly

Yippeee!

Virgin have finally agreed to honour the price!

Now I might just hve to go and buy a new Orlando wardrobe with the savings...

Thanks all for advice.

peterg1965

Well done for sticking to your guns.

peterg1965

BTW, I priced up a holiday with Virgin last week. family of 5 for 10 days in California. They quoted £7300 for flights, hotels and car hire, which included a 10% discount for military personnel. I thought that very expensive. I ended up booking a very similar holiday ; flights and hire car through BA (with a military discount) (£3365) and hotels direct with the hotel chain and they were better quality than the ones offered by Virgin - cost £1800. So I saved over £2000, just goes to show that Virginholidays have a big profit margin, that probably explains why they were happy not to insist on your £400 underpayment.

mickyd21

Well done. Virgin are really good like that. My gf went to San Francisco last year and on the return flight there tv and radio was not working. She got £75 in virgin gift vouchure and also if she traveled with them again, they would upgrade her for free to Upper Class