Virgin Atlantic - Price change during booking?!!

Martin_o03

Hello all, 

I’ve spent the last 10 minutes on Virgins website booking a flight to New York. I had selected my flights, agreed terms and clicked pay. Confirmed price was £496

I then got the normal notification from my bank to allow payment on my phone, which I did. Then the virgin page should refresh and confirm booking.

but no.. Virgin have said - we’re sorry things change pretty quickly around here and the price is no longer available..the new price is £646!

Is this normal?? After agreeing terms and submitting payment.. no money has been taken but Can they legitimately change price after you have confirmed booking and selected to pay?

i’m trying to find the best way to contact them. Has anyone had any experience of this or know where I stand and what the best course of action would be?

borderline

Martin_o03 said:

Hello all, 

I’ve spent the last 10 minutes on Virgins website booking a flight to New York. I had selected my flights, agreed terms and clicked pay. Confirmed price was £496

I then got the normal notification from my bank to allow payment on my phone, which I did. Then the virgin page should refresh and confirm booking.

but no.. Virgin have said - we’re sorry things change pretty quickly around here and the price is no longer available..the new price is £646!

Is this normal?? After agreeing terms and submitting payment.. no money has been taken but Can they legitimately change price after you have confirmed booking and selected to pay?

i’m trying to find the best way to contact them. Has anyone had any experience of this or know where I stand and what the best course of action would be?

similar thing happened to me but with BA.. but in my case I think it was before the confirmed price if I remember correctly, I had the price on the screen , I booked it, the following step gave me another price , it was just about 20 quid more but still very annoying, I really hate how quickly they change the prices all airlines, very frustrating .
Defiantly contact them and complain, it's way out of order 

DullGreyGuy

With some airlines they will show "only 4 seats left at £496" when you are searching, so if you want to book all 4 and someone else books 1 when you are mid process there aren't enough seats left at that price.  It's not like buying theatre tickets where they hold your seat selection for 15 minutes to allow you to complete the sale because you've got direct sales competing with agents and other third party sales platforms. 

I've only ever had it happen to me once but normally we are booking just 1 or 2 seats so clearly less likely to happen in the above scenario given if that other booking went through first there are still 3 seats left at that price. 

Voyager2002

Martin_o03 said:

Hello all, 

I’ve spent the last 10 minutes on Virgins website booking a flight to New York. I had selected my flights, agreed terms and clicked pay. Confirmed price was £496

I then got the normal notification from my bank to allow payment on my phone, which I did. Then the virgin page should refresh and confirm booking.

but no.. Virgin have said - we’re sorry things change pretty quickly around here and the price is no longer available..the new price is £646!

Is this normal?? After agreeing terms and submitting payment.. no money has been taken but Can they legitimately change price after you have confirmed booking and selected to pay?

i’m trying to find the best way to contact them. Has anyone had any experience of this or know where I stand and what the best course of action would be?

There is no point in contacting them, nor in complaining, unless you have a screenshot confirming that you entered into a contract to buy at that price.

Maybe try to book again at another time; on a different device and from a different location. Or book on a different airline. Or choose another destination. 

Martin_o03

Voyager2002 said:

Martin_o03 said:

Hello all, 

I’ve spent the last 10 minutes on Virgins website booking a flight to New York. I had selected my flights, agreed terms and clicked pay. Confirmed price was £496

I then got the normal notification from my bank to allow payment on my phone, which I did. Then the virgin page should refresh and confirm booking.

but no.. Virgin have said - we’re sorry things change pretty quickly around here and the price is no longer available..the new price is £646!

Is this normal?? After agreeing terms and submitting payment.. no money has been taken but Can they legitimately change price after you have confirmed booking and selected to pay?

i’m trying to find the best way to contact them. Has anyone had any experience of this or know where I stand and what the best course of action would be?

There is no point in contacting them, nor in complaining, unless you have a screenshot confirming that you entered into a contract to buy at that price.

Maybe try to book again at another time; on a different device and from a different location. Or book on a different airline. Or choose another destination. 

Yeah I've got screenshots of me agreeing the terms, the page asking to approve payment with my bank and my banks approval on my phone. I've sent it over, I doubt it will come to anything but worth contacting them because that can't be right?

I continued for the next hour the search for the same flights on their website. Each time it brought up the same original price of £496 but after confirming and paying the screen would refresh again and advice of the new price of £646..

If the price was changing why was it not updating on their website..

Leavemealone

I can’t answer your last question but I to have had similar happen recently and continuing to happen over several days. In my case it was during a sale and I wanted 4 seats, sale price was £499 but available price on following pages was over £1000! 

In the end I thought their site must have had a bug so I telephoned. I calmly told my problem and they said the same was happening on their screen and they had no explanation. It took over an hour to sort it out but they were extremely patient and apologetic and I kept calm and we did sort it out to my satisfaction eventually. I cannot say this will happen every time but give it a try and you have nothing to lose. Good luck.