Virgin holiday advice - balance due soon

chloe_maccyd

Hi all,

I wonder if you could advise me. So we have a  group booking with virgin holidays to Las Vegas at the end of August. I am the only person out of the 5 of us that has not paid the remainder balance. This is due on the 28th May. I am a little sceptical about paying even if it means losing my deposit. However my concern is, because this is a group booking, by me not paying will I jeopardise my friends consumer rights as they have all paid their cuts? I’m just a little nervous with all the speculations going around about Virgin going in to administration. 

bradders1983

Yes if you dont pay the balance then you !!!!!! everyone else up. If they go under you get your money back so that is not even an issue.

chloe_maccyd

Thank you for your reply. I thought this would be the case. Do you think it would be advisable to pay the remainder on a credit card? 

bradders1983

You can, but if they went bust its a package holiday anyway so the ATOL fund would sort you out.

Gorchard_2

Hi,
I had booked a package holiday to Disneyland, Universal and 7 days in another resort. I had paid the deposit and the balance became due on 11th May. On 7th May I received an email from Virgin saying they were not flying from Gatwick anymore and would have to try to move our flights to Heathrow - they asked to Not Contact them for 2 weeks. It has been longer than that now, but I have still not heard.

In the meantime the deadline for payment of the balance has passed.

If I now cancel It will mean a 30% cancellation fee on the total rather than just the loss of deposit.The terms say to cancel in writing - but there are no contact details (email/address) on their booking web site. The customer support number says they will only accept calls if you are flying within the next 72hrs. (I am not -  flights are not until 3rd Aug)

Q1: Does anyone have a contact email/address for Virgin Holidays? (Thx)

Q2: If I pay the full balance now - late I know - and then the holiday is cancelled am I likely to get a full refund via ATOL?

(I think the T&C's say that if the balance is not received in full, then THEY can treat the holiday as cancelled.)

The problem is, if I leave it another 10-11 days before cancelling and taking the 30% hit, it goes into the next cancellation "band" and I am due to pay a 50% cancellation fee - which is going to be a lot more.

Thx for any advice/comments/thoughts.

Dunas

We are in a similar position but received a couple of emails (one this week) inviting everyone who wants to move their booking to fill in a form (it's also on their website) and they'll get back in due course. There was also a paragraph saying something along the lines of don't worry if you can't pay the balance they'll sort it out as soon as they can contact you. We were due to pay another £13k balance but didn't do so, I guess we're in danger of losing our deposit but the way the email (and their website) reads I'm expecting them to accept this deposit as part payment for a future holiday for which the balance will be eventually due in the normal way. I've also assumed that we couldn't cancel and get our deposit back and that if they eventually cancel our holiday we wouldn't qualify for a refund as we didn't pay the balance and so for us this is a chance to use the deposit money at a later date rather than lose it as we had decided we wouldn't travel this summer.