Using Virgin Complimentary Companion reward

[mikki.young]

We got a virgin Credit card in January. Mainly thanks to moving house we have already hit the £15k spending level to get the free comapnion trip reward. (spend level as at June statement was £3k over necessary limit). Rang flying club and it is not showing as available. Rang virgin credit card and told they are sending an email to Marketing department to see if eligible - 10 working days response time before they think about contacting me. Is this normal? Seems more than convoluted to me! Hope the fact I have already agreed to 'upgrade' to their Amex card won't complicate matters!

 

[Pootle]

I'll be interested in the replies you get to this.

When are you travelling? It could be they have a small allocation of seats for companion/booked with miles on most flights (BA do) and so you have to book far out to stand a chance of getting them

I've been mulling over getting a VA credit card for some time now but I did wonder how easy it would be to get the free companion ticket. We've never had any problem with BA to 'our' destinations of LA and Orlando, but I have read of people who do (eg, I think if you want Barbados in winter months it's a hard call).

So, how easy is it to get a free companion flight to Orlando with Virgin?

 

[Pootle]

Just re-read your post. I think it's just the voucher - and the time taken to receive - rather than a specific flight you are talking about, sorry

I'd still be interested in anyone's experiences with this though

 

[yo-ho-yo-ho]

Interesting i was looking at the same card yesterday. Did you get your PE upgrade voucher's yet ?

 

[Soprano]

EDIT- Oh, the Virgin AmEx.

 

[Laurafoster]

There are benfits with getting a card still, you get 2 points per £1 you spend with Virgin Holidays.

 

[nicolanunn]

I'd be interested to hear the answer to this too.

I contacted Virgin CC to ask about the Companion flight and Premium economy reward upgrades too. The answer was - ''Don't know - this is all so new blah blah blah someone will ring you back''. Not holding out much hope of a phone call I must say!

Good luck and I hope the answer is simple!

 

[mikki.young]

It's interesting they said it's new because that reward was on the old card as well as the new Amex card. I don't know if I get a voucher or they just tell Flying Club. I know there are companion flights currently available when I want to go, I just hope they are still there when the credit card people finally sort it out.

Is there anyone out there who got a flight for spending enough on their Virgin card? Is there some silly rule that you can't get it until the anniversary of the card?

 

[Yoga Deb]

We have had these the last couple of years. You don't get a voucher it just shows up on your flying club account when you login just like your regular air miles appear each month. Availability on each flight is very limited, so book way in advance. The qualifying paid ticket has to be a full price ticket and not a discounted type. Miles plus money is usually better value than the companion ticket so we always ring and check the price for both options if available.

 

[patdavies]

Companion tickets with Virgin are only worth using with the lowest qualifying PE fare.

To use in UC, means that you have to buy a J class (full-price) UC ticket. It is cheaper to ignore the companion voucher and get 2 x Z class (cheapest) UC ticket.

Similarly with Economy.

Also companion flights travel on the same ticket classes as reward flights. These are very limited and need to be booked very early.

 

[mikki.young]

I was planning to use it in PE as this came out as the cheapest way to go PE by a couple of hundred pounds. Did the flight show up in your flying club account at the end of the year or when you had reached the spending limit?

 

[Pootle]

Companion tickets with Virgin are only worth using with the lowest qualifying PE fare.

To use in UC, means that you have to buy a J class (full-price) UC ticket. It is cheaper to ignore the companion voucher and get 2 x Z class (cheapest) UC ticket.

Similarly with Economy.

Also companion flights travel on the same ticket classes as reward flights. These are very limited and need to be booked very early.

Thanks for this information Pat, it was very useful.

Would 'the lowest qualifying PE fare' be around the £1k mark (LGW-MCO) and not the £650-ish figure available during VA's recent 5-day sale?

If you held the black fee VA card, would you get a PE upgrade reward at £5k spend, a companion ticket reward at £7.5k spend and a further PE upgrade at £10k (within a year)? Anyone know? It seems very generous if that is the case.

I've tried at 3 different times today to get these queries answered by VA but each time get the 'we are currently experiencing high call volumes .....' Call me mean, but I'm not keen on being kept on hold with an 0870 number

 

[patdavies]

Thanks for this information Pat, it was very useful.

Would 'the lowest qualifying PE fare' be around the £1k mark (LGW-MCO) and not the £650-ish figure available during VA's recent 5-day sale?

If you held the black fee VA card, would you get a PE upgrade reward at £5k spend, a companion ticket reward at £7.5k spend and a further PE upgrade at £10k (within a year)? Anyone know? It seems very generous if that is the case.

I've tried at 3 different times today to get these queries answered by VA but each time get the 'we are currently experiencing high call volumes .....' Call me mean, but I'm not keen on being kept on hold with an 0870 number

I can only answer the first question. The qualifying PE ticket types are W (full fare) and S (part discounted); K (cheapest) fares do not qualify.

If you go to VA's website and get a fare fore your route/dates in PE cheapest, then this will usually provide the K fare. If you chose fully flexible, you will get the W fare. S will be somewhere in between. (caveat: if you are checking dates that are close, cheapest may well bring up S fare as the date is too close to qualify for K or K has already been sold out on that flight.)

 

[Pootle]

I can only answer the first question. The qualifying PE ticket types are W (full fare) and S (part discounted); K (cheapest) fares do not qualify.

Just what I wanted. I noticed from Virgin's website, that they do not actually tell you the ticket category until stage 5 (confirmation) so it's a bit tricky to find this information (unless you ring them I suppose ).

Thanks again Pat

Edited to add that according to a thread on v-flyer, the black card would give two upgrades from economy to premium and a companion reward for a £10k spend within a year. Sounds good ......

 

[Sarnia]

From my understanding the free companion flight gets credited to your account on the anniversary of when you opened the account, so normally it would be after 1 year. I'm sure though that if you ask for it earlier they wil credit it to you, I can see no reason why they wouldn't.

I recently realised that we had never been given the free companion flight despite having the card for nearly 3 years and exceeding the spending limit every year. After lots of calls I discovered they had made an error and not cedited them, so now we have 2 free companion flights and a third coming soon, but I doubt we will be able to use them all.

You don't get sent a voucher, it just shows on your online statement.

 

[Ziggy]

From my understanding the free companion flight gets credited to your account on the anniversary of when you opened the account, so normally it would be after 1 year...You don't get sent a voucher, it just shows on your online statement.

That's what happened to me, it expires a year later.

I have booked two companion flights with Virgin for this year but used miles. I booked them the day they came out and the cost was about £1200 for PE in August, sounds steep but its over £800 in economy. I was charged the price that showed up when I did a flight search on their website, so don't think they are over priced.

 

[mikki.young]

From my understanding the free companion flight gets credited to your account on the anniversary of when you opened the account, so normally it would be after 1 year. I'm sure though that if you ask for it earlier they wil credit it to you, I can see no reason why they wouldn't.


You don't get sent a voucher, it just shows on your online statement.

Thanks - I guess I have asked for it now so we will see if they do do it earlier than the anniversary. I have enough miles to do a companion flight but would rather save them as they last longer than the credit card one.

 

[mikki.young]

I have now had it confirmed by Virgin that the companion reward is issued on the anniversary of the card. I have also been able to use existing points to get a companion flight for our trip in January so have got to PE tickets for around £1k which I think is pretty good value.

Flying Club were really helpful and looked the various options and even better they don't currently charge for using credit cards, even Amex, so using the new Virgin Amex card with them is worth doing. I decided not to wait for the new card because I wanted to be sure I could get the flights I wanted and I'm still going to get the Virgin Mastercard points on it.

Thanks for everyone's help

 

[Pootle]

I have now had it confirmed by Virgin that the companion reward is issued on the anniversary of the card. I have also been able to use existing points to get a companion flight for our trip in January so have got to PE tickets for around £1k which I think is pretty good value.

That sounds like an excellent deal

 

[Miffy2003]

Moving this across to Community

It does sound like an absolutely excellent deal to me