Virgin and Little Red flight cancellation

littlereddevil

Why not just take the refund and book your own flights?

veryintrigued

littlereddevil wrote: »

Why not just take the refund and book your own flights?

Because we're not keen on paying almost £300 more for similar flights than we booked six months ago!!!

tomtontom

What were your original flights and what have they offered? What would you like?

jonesMUFCforever

veryintrigued wrote: »

Because we're not keen on paying almost £300 more for similar flights than we booked six months ago!!!

If you paid Virgin direct (ie not through an agent) with a credit card you can claim consequential losses.

Voyager2002

veryintrigued wrote: »

OH tried the phone call approach in the first instance and the options they've given are to fly with BA or Japan Airlines only (i.e. not the airlines we had spotted last night).

One of the four options given is a worse time and into/out of a different Tokyo airport (which makes things trickier for us for what we have organised).

The second option has no connecting Manc - LTH flight and they wont pay for public transport between them.

The third flight option is in and out of different Tokyo airports - again making things that we had planned trickier for us.

The fourth option is a full refund.

Think the next step is for me to call and force the issue a little more. Surely the fact they are worse flight times or into different airports (albeit the same city) or have no connection from Manchester means Virgin are breaking these rules?

Have you told them about the flights that you found, and that are your preferred option?

Most of their customers have probably only heard of BA and Japan Airlines and so whoever answers the 'phone is probably not looking any further. If you tell them precisely what flights you want then you could reasonably expect them to transfer you (unless only first class seats are left on your preferred option, or there is an equally compelling reason for saying no). However, this is likely to be on a goodwill/customer service basis: in terms of legal rights, they probably meet their obligations by offering flights at inconvenient times and/or using inconvenient airports serving the same cities. So you need to be assertive while remaining friendly and polite.

veryintrigued

tomtontom wrote: »

What were your original flights and what have they offered? What would you like?

See above - they've offered flights to the same city (but different airports), ones that the flights times are PM and with prolonged stopovers and one that doesnt include the UK leg!!

veryintrigued

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

If you paid Virgin direct (ie not through an agent) with a credit card you can claim consequential losses.

Checked last night - we paid on Debit Card I guess our thinking was to save some booking fees.

veryintrigued

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Have you told them about the flights that you found, and that are your preferred option?

Most of their customers have probably only heard of BA and Japan Airlines and so whoever answers the 'phone is probably not looking any further. If you tell them precisely what flights you want then you could reasonably expect them to transfer you (unless only first class seats are left on your preferred option, or there is an equally compelling reason for saying no). However, this is likely to be on a goodwill/customer service basis: in terms of legal rights, they probably meet their obligations by offering flights at inconvenient times and/or using inconvenient airports serving the same cities. So you need to be assertive while remaining friendly and polite.

Thanks for this.

OH is trying again today as booking (and payment) is under their name.

Fingers crossed.

tomtontom

veryintrigued wrote: »

See above - they've offered flights to the same city (but different airports), ones that the flights times are PM and with prolonged stopovers and one that doesnt include the UK leg!!

I was asking you to be more specific ...

callum9999

veryintrigued wrote: »

See above - they've offered flights to the same city (but different airports), ones that the flights times are PM and with prolonged stopovers and one that doesnt include the UK leg!!

How can anyone possibly make a judgement on whether the flights they offered you were reasonable when that's all the information you give? If you want specific advice then you have to give specific information! In this case, specific flight numbers and dates (of both the flights you booked and the flights they offered).