Flying V Australia? Think twice.
I can’t necessarily vouch for what their flight service is like, but if it’s anything like their customer service, I’d think twice before booking. Here’s why:
V Australia was scheduled to start flying daily from Sydney to Los Angeles in January 2009. Due to Boeing strikes and other shortcomings, this had to be pushed back to late February. No worries, we were travelling back to the States in early March. So, with that said, we booked a return airfare from Sydney to Los Angeles on V Australia, hoping that everything we’ve heard about Virgin, V Australia’s parent company, was in fact true. Even with fares that were a bit more expensive than Qantas and United (I will never fly United again, after flying Air New Zealand and other competitors), we felt good about our decision, and looked forward to the smooth flight across the Pacific on their new Boeing 777 airplane.
Fast forward to this past week. We received a message on our answering machine from a representative asking us to call back and reference our booking number. That’s never a good sign. Finally, after sitting on hold for a good 1/2 hour, we’re told that our flight has been changed to a day earlier. Yep, not good. When asked why, the representative said they hadn’t received the number of planes needed from Boeing to make daily flights from Sydney to Los Angeles possible. Ok, so while this was out of their hands, the way they dealt with the problem was not. They knew this was going to be a problem, all the way back in December, yet failed to contact us until now. Why? Because we booked at a higher fare than what was currently being offered.
We were told by the customer service representative that because it was just a time change, we’d unlikely be able to apply for a refund. Now I can understand changing the departure time by a few hours, but an entire day? That causes issues with work, getting the dog to the kennel, and otherwise arranging trasportation to the airport. Sorry, not good enough. We were then referred to a ‘customer service’ number, where they could ‘theoretically’ authorise a refund. So we called. No answer. We were asked to leave a message and they’d return our phone call within 24 hours. OK, not ideal, but good enough.
Three days later, we received a phone call, after spending a total of 3 hours on hold. After explaining the situation, and how it had become such an inconvenience, we were offered a full refund. While no apology was made, nor any form of compensation or compramise from V Australia, we were at least able to rebook on another airline. You’d think they’d make more of an effort to keep customers, especially with Delta entering the LA to Sydney market later this year. But on top of all the other hardship that we were put through, our refund will take 21 days. Why should we wait, when the mistake was not our fault?
Ultimately, it all worked out for the best. We were able to find seats on a Qantas flight for the appropriate days, and even managed to save $600 over the previously booked fare. While that’s all well and good, it has convinced me to steer clear of V Australia. Based on my experiences, I believe you should too. Just try to have a look around to see what else is out there first, if you’re thinking of V Australia.
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Hmmm. My husband and I flew Johannesburg to London with Virgin Airlines in 2002. Despite being a glowing, happy honeymoon couple, we decided never, ever to fly Virgin ever again.
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Almost the same thing happened to us on Jetstar. But with us, the flight is leaving a day later instead of a day earlier. It wasn’t a huge deal fortunately. We get one less day in Hawaii and one more day in Sydney.
I’m sorry you had all that trouble.
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Things are worse Stateside!
We received and email on Thursday the 22nd of January from Vaustralia requesting we call. You guessed it, our LA to Brisbane Flight had been cancelled and we were being routed through Sydney on different days. As of today (January 28th), one testy email and two phone calls later: nothing. 24 hours my ass. To top if off, we can fly Qantas direct from LAX to BNE for a lot less.
Jim, sorry to hear you’re having trouble as well. I’d hope they would let you cancel as well. I know the originating factor wasn’t their fault, but they’re not doing a good job handling the situation.
Hey…
I heard about the heatwave.. How bad is it there?
I was planning to go in February..
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In Sydney, it hasn’t been terrible, but Melbourne and Adelaide have been abnormally hot. Here in Sydney, it has been around 30c during the day, and 22c or so during the night. Almost perfect if you ask me. It’s supposed to heat up next week though. Upper 30’s, low 40’s. Yuck.
Here here. Today is Wednesday, and I am (was) due to fly Sydney – Los Angeles with V Australia next week on Tuesday. I received a confirmed itinerary yesterday via email (didn’t check my email until today), and by pure chance noticed that the flight had been rescheduled to Sunday – i.e. in 4 days time. I still cannot believe that no one called me. There wasn’t even anything in the email to draw my attention to the changed date. Now comes the fun part of trying to reschedule hotels and internal domestic flights booked directly with other airlines