Virgin Flying Club Charges

TootBooks

Hi
Just wanted to check if I was the only person that has been caught out with Virgin Reward Points charges? Tried to book a flight to India for me and my husband - two different flying club accounts with different amounts in but the total all good! Wouldn't allow me to book the flight so 'Transferred' my husband's point to my account - £15 admin fee - OK - then get charged £232!!!! I thought this was the value of the points not what they were going to charge me for pressing a couple of buttons!! Didn't realise until my statement came through and of course after the 7 day cooling off period! Absolutely no redress - outrageous charges!!!

PeacefulWaters

What were the charges? You've not made it clear.

blindman

TootBooks wrote: »

Hi
Just wanted to check if I was the only person that has been caught out with Virgin Reward Points charges? Tried to book a flight to India for me and my husband - two different flying club accounts with different amounts in but the total all good! Wouldn't allow me to book the flight so 'Transferred' my husband's point to my account - £15 admin fee - OK - then get charged £232!!!! I thought this was the value of the points not what they were going to charge me for pressing a couple of buttons!! Didn't realise until my statement came through and of course after the 7 day cooling off period! Absolutely no redress - outrageous charges!!!

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

What were the charges? You've not made it clear.

Sounds like the £232 charge was for the reward ticket "taxes"


User obviously doesn't know how the FF scheme works.

theonlywayisup

TootBooks wrote: »

Hi
Just wanted to check if I was the only person that has been caught out with Virgin Reward Points charges? Tried to book a flight to India for me and my husband - two different flying club accounts with different amounts in but the total all good! Wouldn't allow me to book the flight so 'Transferred' my husband's point to my account - £15 admin fee - OK - then get charged £232!!!! I thought this was the value of the points not what they were going to charge me for pressing a couple of buttons!! Didn't realise until my statement came through and of course after the 7 day cooling off period! Absolutely no redress - outrageous charges!!!

As has been said, reward flights still incur taxes/fees and carrier charges. An return economy ticket from London to Dehli would be in the region of £250 for those charges (that is on top of the miles you need to redeem).

You do not need to transfer miles from one account to another if you have a full segment in each account. For instance, (quoting economy rewards) that same flight is 21,500 miles per segment. If two of you are travelling and one of you has 75,000 miles and the other only has 22,000 miles, you can use the miles without incurring any charges (other than the taxes & fees outlined above). As long as the account holder authorises the use of the miles they can be used by another person. The account with 75,000 miles in uses 64.500 towards 3 segments of the 4 needed (assuming two adults on a return ticket) and the account with 22,000 miles in uses it for 1 segment of 21,500.

Obviously if you didn't have enough to cover a full segment in one, then topping up is probably the cheapest and quickest option.

Caz3121

I am not sure if this is new but charges to transfer miles between 2 different accounts is not uncommon and most programs operate this
Certainly from this article there was reference to the charge for transferring 20,000 miles being £165
http://www.headforpoints.com/2014/01/15/25-bonus-when-you-buy-transfer-or-gift-virgin-flying-club-miles-as-low-as-0-75p/
The best approach would have been to book 1 flight from each account and only transferring the miles that were short for 1 account if required to keep the transfer cost to a minimum rather than making transfer than was not necessary

As you have a club account you will be able to log in here and see the details of the charges
http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer/buymiles/index.jsp

Not reading and understanding the rules of a program and paying charges because you did not understand what you agreed to does not make it wrong or entitle you to a refund...

Virgin charge you to transfer miles. You requested a transfer, you were charged the correct amount for the transfer...no complaint re Virgin

Lesson learnt hopefully to avoid other charges in the future

TootBooks

The charge was £232 just for transferring the miles into one account as there was not enough for a whole flight. It wasn't the taxes as I didn't even get to buy/book the flight!


It just seems a really high fee for transferring miles from one account to another.

TootBooks

Hi all - thanks for replying - you're right I've never tried to redeem my points before and had no idea it was so complicated, just thought I could use the points.


I didn't even realise I could do it in segments, that definitely wasn't clear when I tried to book the flights in the first instance.


A very expensive lesson learnt! Thank-you again.

steve1500

When you want to transfer miles from one account to another it tells you in advance what the price is & I agree the charges are absolutely ridiculous


Not having a household a/c is the one major draw backs that Virgin has compared to Avios.


The way we get round it, is to amalgamate our clubcard a/c's, addresses must be the same, then transfer to Virgin, then unlink the CC a/c's.


Bit of a pain but only takes 5 minutes