virgin experence days - 50% discount by shopping direct

Al_Hurst

I received a Virgin Experience gift voucher as a birthday present. Unfortunately I was not interested in the experience offered and the locations offered were not convenient. The experience was an introductory flying lesson.
I requested a refund as was told this was not possible after 7 days. What I would really like to have done is pretend that it is gratefully received and enjoyed, whilst being able to redeem some value from the product. I asked if it would it not be possible to charge some sort of admin fee whilst allowing me to recover some of the value? and was told that a refund or part refund was not possible. It was also not possible to refund the voucher to the original purchaser.
There is a 7 days refund period offered by Virgin experience days. These products are marketed as gifts, however if one supposes a couple days each for the voucher to be purchased, posted, delivered and passed on to the eventual recipient there is essentially no opportunity to claim a refund. This is to me seems unethical and exploitative even if it is stated within the terms and conditions.
Furthermore, I note that Virgin experience days place a mark up of almost 50% per cent on this product as demonstrated below. Again this seems unethical on a product marketed as gift.
I note that there is an insistence on posting, advisably by secure post, the voucher at cost to the recipient. As these vouchers require activation via a serial number, pin number bar code it seems likely that in the event a customer wishes to cancel or exchange a voucher that this should be possible electronically without the need to post the piece of paper. Again this seems like a deliberate construct to prevent customers amending a purchase made by a third party on their behalf as implied by any gift.
Should you be considering purchasing a virgin experience gift I would highly recommend selecting from virgin but then investigating the cost of purchasing the gift direct from the suppliers. I have found this in the case of the flying lesson to offer a discount of approximately 50%

Comparative prices for an introductory flying lesson at airports near London. The cost of the virgin experience was £130


I cant post links but they are a Google search away

Essex Stapelford Tawney
£79

Surrey Redhill
£75

Surrey Camberley
£120



I also enquired as to if it would be possible to transfer the value of the gift to a charitable donation via virgin money giving and was told that it was not.

SHEILA54

Hi
If you want to give to charity why not auction or sell it on Ebay and then give the proceeds. You can also choose the charity and they will give you a discount on fees appropriate to the amount.