Virgin Holidays - What to do?

nathanb1993

Hello there,

I am sure this has been asked many times, but I could not find our exact concern (so please feel free to link me to another thread). 

So like many others, holiday is planned with Virgin Holidays in the next few months (September, Disneyworld with flights, tickets, car, hotel etc), but we want to postpone to next year - have filled out the form to say we want to do this. But the current concern is the ever looming balance settlement date, ideally we don’t want to pay for the holiday at that point as we want to change the dates to next year and also the price may differ (money is set to one side if definitely needed) but due to the 72 hour prioritisation, we cannot contact Virgin to discuss the new plans just yet. Does anyone have any advice on what we should anticipate doing once our payment date arrives? (We’ve cleared £1600 of a £3600 balance so far). 

Ideal scenario is we can trust we will be contacted to replan, but I get a strong feeling a demanding email will arrive in my inbox the second the balance isn’t cleared, and I’m just trying to preempt what I should do upon receiving this. 

Thanks (and sorry if this has been asked many times!). 

Nathan

Mrsn

The form you have filled in, what did virgin say there next steps would be once they received it?

nathanb1993

Hey there @Mrsn, from their side it just stated that they will be in contact in due course and a ‘thank you’ for completing the form. Unfortunately no clarity on what to do in the meantime, but I should ‘rest assured’ they’ll be in touch. 

RikkiHolland

nathanb1993 said:

Hey there @Mrsn, from their side it just stated that they will be in contact in due course and a ‘thank you’ for completing the form. Unfortunately no clarity on what to do in the meantime, but I should ‘rest assured’ they’ll be in touch. 

We're in the same boat (holiday in mid-July).  We're concerned that Virgin will just accept the new date we've asked for and not even call us to discuss - has anyone completed the form and been called?

Iwanttobefree

Have you tried using whatsapp

gravy17

We were in a similar situation - Family holiday to New York booked for 21 July - I filled the form in sometime just after lockdown, this weekend I had a phone call offering me a free cancellation and the full amount of the holiday ( which had been paid in full) credited to my booking reference. The voucher is valid for 6 months and can be used on any holiday available at the time.  Tried for a refund, but as our holiday hadn't at that time officially been cancelled by Virgin ( although departures on the day before ours was), we could only get the voucher. I was told the voucher is also covered by the ABTA/ATOL guarantee, so we shouldn't lose anything if the whole thing goes belly up.

Life__Goes__On

gravy17 said:

 I was told the voucher is also covered by the ABTA/ATOL guarantee, so we shouldn't lose anything if the whole thing goes belly up.

You are told wrongly, they voucher hasn't been confirmed as protected.

Scattle18

I had a kind of similar scenario with Virgin Holidays. I had a New York Holiday booked for early October, and had only paid the deposit of £350 so far with the balance remaining due early July. We made a decision to cancel ourselves as New york seemed the epicentre of the virus outbreak in the US and we did not want to risk going there and potentially catching it.
I had read all the stuff from VH saying you cannot contact us if you are not due to fly within 72 hours, however if you message them on Whatsapp using 020 33223289 - this is Virgin Holidays number not Virgin Atlantic.
Write your message out (we stated we wished to cancel and understood we would lose our deposit) you will get a automatic reply back straight away, however if you copy and paste your original message again and send it in the same chat after their automatic reply, someone will get back to you. I sent them a message one morning last week at 08:30am, had a reply by 11am, a few messages back and foward and by 11:30am my Holiday was cancelled and I received a confirmation email and updated Cancellation invoice on "manage my booking"

MallyGirl

I also finally had success with WhatsApp and have got my holiday cancelled today so that I can join the refund queue. I just kept sending the same message until yesterday when I saw a message from Siobhan Fitzpatrick saying that all holidays were cancelled up to 20th July (when mine wasn't). I stated in a lot of capitals that they were telling lies and this finally triggered some action. It should not be necessary to resort to such statements but there you go - holiday was over £11k and just sat there with the countdown till I flew ticking away.