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Virgin Trains won't accept responsibility for travel problems.
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HelpwithVirginTrains
Posts: 6 Forumite
Warning: Very long and boring story and dispute to follow; however I’ll be insanely grateful for any help or advice.
I am attempting to get a refund from Virgin trains for one hell of a rail & sail journey that my wife and I took last month. In which I got a lot of help from you guys previously, so thank you all again.
I booked the rail and sail tickets online at Virgin trains and it was meant to take us from Belfast to London on public transport.
Virgin trains are not budging on a refund and so to break up this wall of text I’ll break down my complaint and their response as best I can.
There was no time timetabled to get from the rail station to the port and we forced to use an uber which caused added expense.
Our complaint:
When we arrived into Dublin you had only timetabled half an hour to get from the train station to the port. Even if public transport was available, which it wasn’t on Sunday the 10th when we travelled, it would be logistically impossible to catch the ferry without resorting to taxi. On buying the rail and sail ticket in essence the contract is to get us from our departure to destination without having to rely on other transport options like taxi. I think it’s fair to ask that you reimburse us for the taxi fare as otherwise our journey would have been impossible.
Their reply:
With regards to the transfer between Dublin Connolly and Dublin Port, I respectfully advise that as per your booking reference, the advised transfer time given was one hour and 15 minutes, arriving into Dublin Connolly at 13:15 and arriving at Dublin Port at 14:30. I apologise if you feel this was not made clear enough and I will make sure this feedback is passed on to help improve the service in the future.
Why I disagree:
The train was timetabled to arrive at 13:30 but actually arrived at 13:45, and also need to be at the port a half an hour before boarding which was 14:00 otherwise they won’t let you board. So we’d a quarter of an hour to get to the port where we found that
The ferry was cancelled and neither company will take responsibility.
Our complaint:
Next on discovering that the ferry had been cancelled it was nearly impossible to contact virgin trains eventually we got through but the woman said nobody could actually help us until the Monday and explained that she believed Virgin Trains wouldn’t help us and what’s more we’d have to buy new tickets when we got to Britain as our previous ones would have expired by the time we got to Britain and that they wouldn’t refund our journey because we already used the tickets to get to Dublin! Exasperated we were then told we’d need to purchase new tickets from Holyhead to London for £320!
Unsure if we could even continue the journey at Holyhead but needing to get to London where we were due to fly out on Monday morning we decided to continue the journey. The next ferry wasn’t until 9 p.m., and we arrived in Holyhead at 1 a.m. which was 9 hours later than we should have.
It was only because my partner posted on your facebook page that we were able to get assistance and were instructed to go to the Irish ferries desk they provided a bus for us to Victoria station. If my partner hadn’t thought to contact you on Facebook we’d have been waiting even longer. When we arrived at Victoria we had to purchase food and drinks as we’d been unable to for the entire journey.
We couldn’t even use our rail and sail tickets to get us to our final destination as the underground would only let us travel from Euston not Victoria where the bus had let us off.
Finally we arrived at our destination over 12 hours late.
We’d missed our hotel check-in and had the brutal realisation that we'd again be of travelling through the night as we’d also now missed our morning flight from London and at huge expense had to reschedule it to the evening. Which also meant it’d cost us a day in our eventual destination.
Furthermore on trying to claim a refund I’ve been told that I need to claim from Irish ferries which is blatantly untrue. The contract is with yourselves and therefore it is completely wrong when you told us first on the phone that Irish ferries was responsible to get us to our final destination and ow that we have to get a refund from them.
Their reply:
I was also sorry to hear about the difficulties caused by the cancellation of your ferry between Dublin Port and Holyhead. I must however reiterate the advice you were previously given that Virgin Trains is only the retailer for this journey, as we are obliged to sell tickets on behalf of Irish Ferries. As thus, the contract to provide the journey falls under the liability of Irish Ferries, and in view of this I have forwarded this aspect of your complaint on to them to respond.
In view of the above, as you completed you journey with a delay following the cancelled ferry you have been correctly advised to contact the travel operator responsible for the delay for compensation as we have only acted as the retailer for the ferry element of the journey.
Why I disagree:
Surely this is dishonest as I bought the rail and sail tickets directly from Virgin trains so the contract should be with them.
And finally they’ve ignored the extra expenses we incurred like having to get from Great Victoria to Paddington, food and drink expenses.
I feel like I’ve invested so much time and effort now that I can’t just let this go. I’ve tried pressuring them on social media but they continue to delete my posts so what’s left to me? Is there any ombudsman I can take this to? Would my credit card allow me to issue a chargeback?
Thank you so much if you managed to read all of this.
I am attempting to get a refund from Virgin trains for one hell of a rail & sail journey that my wife and I took last month. In which I got a lot of help from you guys previously, so thank you all again.
I booked the rail and sail tickets online at Virgin trains and it was meant to take us from Belfast to London on public transport.
Virgin trains are not budging on a refund and so to break up this wall of text I’ll break down my complaint and their response as best I can.
There was no time timetabled to get from the rail station to the port and we forced to use an uber which caused added expense.
Our complaint:
When we arrived into Dublin you had only timetabled half an hour to get from the train station to the port. Even if public transport was available, which it wasn’t on Sunday the 10th when we travelled, it would be logistically impossible to catch the ferry without resorting to taxi. On buying the rail and sail ticket in essence the contract is to get us from our departure to destination without having to rely on other transport options like taxi. I think it’s fair to ask that you reimburse us for the taxi fare as otherwise our journey would have been impossible.
Their reply:
With regards to the transfer between Dublin Connolly and Dublin Port, I respectfully advise that as per your booking reference, the advised transfer time given was one hour and 15 minutes, arriving into Dublin Connolly at 13:15 and arriving at Dublin Port at 14:30. I apologise if you feel this was not made clear enough and I will make sure this feedback is passed on to help improve the service in the future.
Why I disagree:
The train was timetabled to arrive at 13:30 but actually arrived at 13:45, and also need to be at the port a half an hour before boarding which was 14:00 otherwise they won’t let you board. So we’d a quarter of an hour to get to the port where we found that
The ferry was cancelled and neither company will take responsibility.
Our complaint:
Next on discovering that the ferry had been cancelled it was nearly impossible to contact virgin trains eventually we got through but the woman said nobody could actually help us until the Monday and explained that she believed Virgin Trains wouldn’t help us and what’s more we’d have to buy new tickets when we got to Britain as our previous ones would have expired by the time we got to Britain and that they wouldn’t refund our journey because we already used the tickets to get to Dublin! Exasperated we were then told we’d need to purchase new tickets from Holyhead to London for £320!
Unsure if we could even continue the journey at Holyhead but needing to get to London where we were due to fly out on Monday morning we decided to continue the journey. The next ferry wasn’t until 9 p.m., and we arrived in Holyhead at 1 a.m. which was 9 hours later than we should have.
It was only because my partner posted on your facebook page that we were able to get assistance and were instructed to go to the Irish ferries desk they provided a bus for us to Victoria station. If my partner hadn’t thought to contact you on Facebook we’d have been waiting even longer. When we arrived at Victoria we had to purchase food and drinks as we’d been unable to for the entire journey.
We couldn’t even use our rail and sail tickets to get us to our final destination as the underground would only let us travel from Euston not Victoria where the bus had let us off.
Finally we arrived at our destination over 12 hours late.
We’d missed our hotel check-in and had the brutal realisation that we'd again be of travelling through the night as we’d also now missed our morning flight from London and at huge expense had to reschedule it to the evening. Which also meant it’d cost us a day in our eventual destination.
Furthermore on trying to claim a refund I’ve been told that I need to claim from Irish ferries which is blatantly untrue. The contract is with yourselves and therefore it is completely wrong when you told us first on the phone that Irish ferries was responsible to get us to our final destination and ow that we have to get a refund from them.
Their reply:
I was also sorry to hear about the difficulties caused by the cancellation of your ferry between Dublin Port and Holyhead. I must however reiterate the advice you were previously given that Virgin Trains is only the retailer for this journey, as we are obliged to sell tickets on behalf of Irish Ferries. As thus, the contract to provide the journey falls under the liability of Irish Ferries, and in view of this I have forwarded this aspect of your complaint on to them to respond.
In view of the above, as you completed you journey with a delay following the cancelled ferry you have been correctly advised to contact the travel operator responsible for the delay for compensation as we have only acted as the retailer for the ferry element of the journey.
Why I disagree:
Surely this is dishonest as I bought the rail and sail tickets directly from Virgin trains so the contract should be with them.
And finally they’ve ignored the extra expenses we incurred like having to get from Great Victoria to Paddington, food and drink expenses.
I feel like I’ve invested so much time and effort now that I can’t just let this go. I’ve tried pressuring them on social media but they continue to delete my posts so what’s left to me? Is there any ombudsman I can take this to? Would my credit card allow me to issue a chargeback?
Thank you so much if you managed to read all of this.
0
Comments
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So this is your earlier thread:
Why isn't this thread on the Public Transport board too?
To address your last paragraph, The Office of Rail and Road have published a guide:
In there you will see that they suggest contacting Transport Focus.0 -
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Would try section 75 on your credit card first or Transport Focus?0
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Duplicate posts here invariably get the same advice (often from the same posters). It's a futile exercise which only succeeds in irritating regular users who then simply focus on the duplication rather than the problem,HelpwithVirginTrains wrote: »
Put yourself in my shoes at the time: I was exhausted, worried and really needed advice.
A bit like this post
0 -
Moneyineptitude wrote: »Duplicate posts here invariably get the same advice (often from the same posters). It's a futile exercise which only succeeds in irritating regular users who then simply focus on the duplication rather than the problem,
A bit like this post
Yeah it is a shame that people aren't able to move on from a duplicate post made in great urgency and need a month ago,0 -
HelpwithVirginTrains wrote: »Yeah it is a shame that people aren't able to move on from a duplicate post made in great urgency and need a month ago,
Why didn't you just continue posting in the previous thread?. There was no need to make a new one and no need to make a new username either!.0 -
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"Urgency and need"?HelpwithVirginTrains wrote: »it is a shame that people aren't able to move on from a duplicate post made in great urgency and need a month ago,
You say yourself that you have been attempting to "pressurise" on Social Media but failing because your posts are deleted.
All I would advise is that using the proper complaint channels in the appropriate manner will invariably yield the most satisfying (and less exhausting) results.
As for "urgency", your complaint won't be concluded any time soon and you can't do anything to hurry the process.0 -
I'll stay off the where's it posted/username issues
You've booked a (hopefully) low cost but complex way of getting from Belfast to London with a number of operators and took a risk which has backfired.
Given the complexity/risk behind this, especially when travelling on a Sunday on public transport, presumably you had travel insurance which should be your first port of call (no pun intended)
The short connection in Dublin was visible to you when you booked - it's highlighted with an exclamation mark which would flag to me that I needed to look more closely at this and see if I felt comfortable with it before committing rather than immediately accepting it and challenging when it went wrong. It's the same principle as many BA flights using LHR or LGW where your 'transfer' is not included and they allow what they consider to be a realistic time
What is it you actually want from Virgin ?0 -
HelpwithVirginTrains wrote: »
Put yourself in my shoes at the time: I was exhausted, worried and really needed advice.
Again, why isn't this thread on the Public Transport board too?0
This discussion has been closed.
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