Virgin to Miami changing to Heathrow

[keith&carol]

Hi Everyone,
Had a letter from Virgin to say our Oct flight to Miami from Gatwick will now be going from Heathrow.
Very kind of them especially as we fly back from Orlando into Gatwick!
Now we both hate Heathrow and are only flying to Miami cos the Orlando flights out are full so after long phone calls all we were offered was £15 towards the airport shuttle bus! This is despite being FV Gold Members and V.A. silver flying club members.
Nil points for customer service Virgin cos I'm not lugging my wheelchair onto a shuttle bus!
We've now had to fork out for P.E. as Virgin Holidays only has one seat available and V.A. have seats left but won't release even one more to Orlando.
Will we continue to be loyal customers?
I wonder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Carol

 

[Hilary]

Sorry to hear that your plans have gone awry and that Virgin don't seem to be doing much to help with making the best of a bad job.

We very nearly booked the same London/ Miami / Orlando / London round trip as you, but in the end settled for a straight London / Miami return for our trip next March / April.

In fact, Heathrow suits us much better than Gatwick, so we're very happy with the change - but I wouldn't be too pleased if we ended up in a different airport from where we left our parked car at the beginning of the holiday!

 

[Mrs Dazzle]

Just logged on for the first time in about a week and the first two threads I see are about problems with Virgin

Well, I'm afraid I'm going to join in.

Last Friday sat down to play on the Vigin website to gather info ready to book our skiing Xmas trip to the US. Whilst on there, I thought I'd check out the prices to make sure they weren't any cheaper for our trip with them to St Lucia in May. Imagine my surprise when the flight times were different to the ones we'd been quoted at the time of booking (Feb) and even on our invoice (The prices were the same ). Thought I'd better ring Virgin to make sure because we'd arranged for a treat and were having a taxi trip to the airport and back. When we travel to Florida, we normally stay overnight at the Gatwick Hilton, but given our flights weren't due to depart until 2pm, thought the luxury of a taxi would be cool.

According to the Virgin website the flights were now departing at 1pm and arriving back into Gatwick 08.30 - not the 10am flight we were quoted. Now this really messed our timings up. Last thing we would want would be to wait around Gatwick airport for an hour and a half - specially me because I can't sleep on planes. I get real cranky when I'm tired and waiting around Gatwick for an hour and a half for our pre-booked taxi wasn't an option. Neither was a 1pm departure - DH suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome set off by stress (ie FLYING ). We really wanted the luxury of a taxi ride back from Gatwick (3 hour plus trip) after an overnight flight, so I've ended up booking the Hilton overnight and - fortunately - changing the date and times of our taxi. And I didn't even get an apology from Virgin when I phoned . . . just one of the "can't understand it". I wouldn't mind, but I even had to point out the flight times are posted in their brochure and are 14:00 and 10:00 on our invoice

I can feel a letter to Virgin coming on . . . . Like Carol we're FVC and Flying Club members, for what good it serves these days (10% off if mighty useful though ).

 

[NatalieD]

I had a phone call from the travel agent who we booked our august virgin flights through on thursday. We were meant to be flying from LGW to MCO and then coming home miami to LGW. We have booked the hilton overnight the night before we fly and are parking the car there whilst we are away. The TA told me that the Miami flights are no longer flying to LGW but to LHR instead - when I told her that I was'nt very happy about this as I did'nt really fancy a trek to LGW from LHR after a 9 hour flight with 2 kids in tow she said that Virgin would pay for us to get there on the 'speedlink'??? Anyway I stood my ground and the upshot is that they have switched us to the MCO-LGW route.
I'm not too impressed with Virgin this time around as only a few weeks ago we had a letter off them telling us that our flydrives were increasing by £20pp due to the 'situation in Iraq - I wish I had'nt cancelled my travel city booking now - originally had flydrives booked with them including their upgrade to Sunshine first which they then told me that we could'nt have as we did'nt have any accomodation booked with them-they offered me a 'free' cancellation when I voiced my annoyance.