Virgin Atlantic Omdömen 510

They will rinse your money for what you can. Needed to change my flight to a day earlier and it cost me over £200 (£150 change fee) despite my flight being two months away - and you also loose the £30 you have to pay for a standard seat. Behind all the smiles in the ads its just grabby capitalism

Luggage didn't get boarded onto our flight, and no reason as to why given.
was told I had 21days to submit a claim, we were on a safari and flew on the Monday didn't receive our luggage until the Thursday night
and when we did receive it my trainers were missing from the case.
Now I've been told I should have informed them of my intention to claim within 5 days! we were not told this and I cant see this on their site, we were in a remote area of south Africa on safari with no Internet so this would have been impossible. No mention of this either on the letter from airport staff. Virgin have said they won't do anything no reimbursement for my trainers and no consideration for the stress they caused us by not bording our luggage a service we'd paid for.
on top of this our flight home was horrific a young boy was unwell and had x2 episodes of diarrhea in the seat, the staff were rude and derogatory to the boys mother and made her struggle to remove the seat covers with no help and then gave her a row for doing so, no infection control measure taken for well over an hour then they decided to wipe the handles of the toilet doors. They took ages to take away the contaminated wipes etc and were too busy gossiping about the incident. An air hostess removed my USB cable so roughly that it broke, instead of asking me to remove it. Me and my husband were served at different times by different teams and they would not serve us together. The food was awful and they ran out of options on both flights so you had no option to choose from. on awful experience with virgin from the airport, to the flights and customer service. I wouldn't even give them 1* avoid this company

Greedy, poor service, liars.

That's all you need to know about the people working at Virgin Atlantic and the kind of service they provide to paying customers.

The customer service from Virgin has deteriorated over the last few months to the point of being entirely unhelpful.
Firstly, when you call you get a recorded message saying they have unusually high call volumes... every single time.
If its always high call volumes then its not unusual, that's a call center staffing issue!

Secondly, and the main issue: I applied for a refund for a mistaken double booking (a booking that was made via an agent on their website by the way, so their fault) in December 2024. Originally, they said I should receive the refund in 7-14 working days. So I waited and nothing happened. 2 months of calls as follows:

1st call to Agent: 20mins wait time to answer - initially said the refund had been paid. When asked to where it had been paid, he was unable to answer and discovered that it actually hadnt been paid. He then had a 15min chat to his manager and escalated the refund to the refund department.

2nd call to Agent 1+ month later: 20min wait time to answer - Also initially said the refund had been paid. Again, when asked to where it had been paid, she was unable to answer and discovered that it actually hadnt been paid (again). She also noted that no previous escalation had actually been placed on the refund. She then had a 15min chat to her manager (again) and apparently urgently escalated the refund to the refund department (again). I was told to wait 10 working days and my money would be refunded.

3rd call agent 11 working days later - 35min waiting time to answer. Almost the exact same conversation as twice before:
- believed me when I said the refund had not been paid
- noted that no previous escalations had actually been placed on the refund again
- then had a 15min chat to his manager (again) - this time, the customer service manager called the refunds manager for 15mins, but apparently the refunds department weren't responding (in the middle of the working day, 3pm in the UK and they're UK based). I was then told I would be called back as soon as refunds called customer service back.

Its a complete shambles of an organization behind the scenes. No one seems to be doing anything, and there's no record of them doing anything when they do do it (unless they tell you what you want to hear just to get you off the phone)! I look forward to inevitably adding to this review in future.

Unacceptable customer service, for peace of mind, its worth paying a little extra with some other airline, avoid the stress.

Horrendous customer service - lost baggage
Absolutely horrendous experience with their customer service and baggage claims departments. Multiple forms completed online, multiple emails sent, followed up with numerous phone calls and further emails with absolutely no useful response. The 2 responses that we did have via email, 5 days later, were blatantly scripted and the advisors clearly hadn’t bothered to read our email so they could address the relevant question.

Rang them today and after a 47 minute wait on the phone I was advised I’d receive a call back within 20 minutes, I expressed my concern that they wouldn’t call me back and lo and behold - no call back.

It has now been nearly a month since they “misplaced” our baggage which we may be able to tolerate , as mistakes happen, but the lack of response , service and care has been disgusting.

If there was something less than 1 star would have selected that.

Adverts on TV about taking sports equipment yet they are so strict on measurements!! and what you can take.

Also £150 admin fee for any changes, I'd be happy to have changed my own flight online but I couldn't so had to call. I understand a fee but not £150.

This airline has seriously deteriorated in my opinion it used to be good, but not any more!

Booked flight from Orlando to Manchester, and the airline decided to abandon the passengers at Heathrow airport (probably because there was a delay and it could have gone over three hours) so rather than refuel and land in Manchester we was all abandoned at Heathrow airport on January 9th 2025 and then the luggage was delayed to be taken of the plane by over three hours and to find there wasn’t enough no transport for all of us to get to Manchester airport so we had to sort our own way back? Which ended up being over 12 hours before we got to Manchester no food offered, no drinks offered, and the airline is not interested

Be aware !!!
Do not travel with virgin !.
Booked a flight wanted to change the name & they couldn’t do it
So I told them I wanna cancel the flight (after an hour waiting on the phone …!) they told Me I won’t get a refund
I’ve booked more then 200 flights in my life dealed with all airlines
Virgin is a scam. (In “one” word)

I had a great customer experience with booking my flights and had professional good advice during the process. I used Virgin now for over 20 years and just wanted to give a shout out. especially after experiencing British Airways recently.

I booked flights with Virgin nearly 3 weeks ago, and have made a payment of over £4k. There is the final part to sort out and was told I would be called within 3 days to resolve and pay the balance. More than 2 weeks later this has not happened. I have been trying to call every days since, but being told of over 3 hours waiting time to get through. The chat bot says the same, sorry we are busy, and then cuts off. At present my flight is not valid, and getting closer to the flying date. If I cannot speak to someone, I will not be able to fly, even though they have already been paid more than £4k. The service is a disgrace, and I really need to be able to speak to someone soon

I tried to book two economy seats for London to Fort Myers via New York (2 flights). The web site was difficult to navigate and to my surprise appeared to require me to pay for both transactions separately. However, having made the first payment it froze on the second. No way could I get it to take payment for the second transaction nor did it show whether these seats were going to be held for me. Worse, I did not receive a confirmation of my first payment although my credit card showed that the transaction had gone through. The 2 numbers I called to speak to someone about this did not help me. Both had recorded messages asking me to call another time with indicative waiting times of 60 and 90 minutes respectively. This is appalling service at any time. It's a Thursday afternoon. I'm not expecting great things on the flight now. Virgin clearly threaten you to book (and pay extra) for economy seats by emphasising that there is no guarantee a family will be seated together. They should at least have the decency to employ enough staff to handle problems when websites go wrong or employ better programmers to design their systems.

It's impossible to reach customer service.
The phonecall always disconnect after 29 minutes and 54 seconds.
All e-mail bounce back.
Chat is not available, I think because Virgin cannot find my booking.

Wife's milestone birthday so she wanted to go to Caribbean and a cruise. Upper class flights and 2 hotels, pre and post cruise through VA-mistake.
Checked inat Manchester, cases were weighed and tagged then we were told to take the bags off the scales and put them with a load of other cases as the baggage belt wasn't working and VA would have to take the baggage to the plane manually. Boarded the plane, announcement stating take off would be 50mins late so they could complete baggage loading. On our descent into Bridgetown crew announcement said "Unfortunately a few bags haven't made it onto the plane, but it isn't our fault its down to Manchester airport-WRONG. Waiting at carousel it was clear our bags hadn't made it so Mrs. Went to file a lost baggage report, when she had done it on turning round there were 100+ waiting to do the same so a bit more than a FEW bags hadn't made it.
Went to hotel and checked VA flights, no flight next day but one on the Saturday( the day we were joining the ship !!so first day ofbour holiday was spent shopping for toiletries and some smart clothes for the ship.
Went to guest services on the ship(Seabourn) and they were excellent, took details of the missing baggage and said they would try and find it. On returning to our suite there were 2 cases waiting for us, one was ours the other wasn't event hough it was clearly ,marked with a different surname to ours and a mobile phone contact number. VA have a tracing app that supposedly keeps you updated on your missing luggage, like the people who operate it it's not fit for purpose. I emailed the CEO of VA but they struggled to give us any updates. I spent on average 2 hours each day we were on our cruise answering emails from VA. One update from Tracing stated BOTH our bags were on a flight from Manchester even though we had one in our suite !! Another update stated they were "Diligently trying ( their words) to locate our missing baggage but the baggage reference they were quoting wasnt one of our and even when we gave them the correct reference they gave us messages they were still trying to locate our baggage using the incorrect reference. Eventually we were told our missing bag was in Barbados but they couldn't get it to us while we were on the ship so we gave them details of our hotel post cruise so they could deliver ut there. On arriving at the hotel NO CASE. Later front desk rang to say a case had been delivered for us but on rushing downstairs wasn't our case, it was the same incorrect they delivered to the ship. Later another case was delivered which was ours, 21:30 on DAY13 of our 16 DAY MILESTONE BIRTHDAY HOLIDAY.
SOif you're foolish enough to book WITH VA and unfortunate enough to have luggage lost neither baggage Tracing nor the CEO's office will be of any use. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I am extremely disappointed with Virgin Atlantic’s handling of an issue related to my companion voucher and points deduction.

Here’s what has happened:

I used my companion voucher to make a booking in October 2024.

During the process, Virgin Atlantic advised me that they needed to deduct 35,000 points from my Flying Club account as an operational requirement. I was assured these points would be reinstated once the companion voucher was applied to the booking.

Months later, the points have still not been returned to my account. This unresolved issue has put me at a financial and practical disadvantage:

1. Missed Travel Opportunities: I was unable to use my points to book another trip I had planned, resulting in a significant loss and inconvenience.

2. Time-Consuming and Stressful Customer Service: Resolving this issue has been impossible. It takes hours to get through to anyone, likely due to the recent changes in dynamic pricing that have left customers flooding the phone lines. My complaint has been with Virgin Atlantic for over a month, yet no action has been taken.

Virgin Atlantic’s lack of accountability and the excessive delays are unacceptable. As a loyal customer, I expect better. I am still waiting for this to be resolved.

This experience has been frustrating and disappointing. Virgin Atlantic must address these operational and customer service failures to avoid alienating loyal customers.

Until then, I cannot recommend their services.

Trust is earned, and Virgin Atlantic has fallen short.

Since changing the flying club to dynamic pricing - 30 years of collecitng air miles has been ruined - no loyalty to their member. Very sad.

I got all the way through including buying insurance, seat reservations etc and put in all information for payment including security code. Then a message pops up saying the flights are no longer available at this price and to go back to the home page. The cost and extra costs were shown at all times as they appeared during the booking process. Very poor.

Call centre service is absolutely shambolic. Paid for excess baggage for my Mrs's flight. No confirmation email recieved even though moneys been deducted. Called CS, 40 min they took to answer and told me system is down, try chat to us. Another 25 min to get an agent assigned only to tell me that I've to call another number. 35 mins call time and they gave me a reference for my payment and now 4am UK time I am explaining supervisor in Dubai over the phone, as they still can't find baggage payment on their system.F***** 1* service.

Just had 2 return flights in may and July go to standby

Seats changed from decent neo front large seats that we upgraded too , to the horrible Dreamliner coffin class style - no refund and seats now scattered - they didn’t tell us at all that we lost money and no longer sat together

BA are doing better than virgin once again

Cutbacks since October with Virgin are showing - from boarding chaos to pens in the black welcome bags now missing etc

Other airlines keep you far better informed and compensate - even your staff say the customer care email is a waste of time so please don’t ask me to take time to message you - if you can’t get it right 1 to 3 times on the gold phone line, why should I give you more chances.

Waiting for a bot reply to message directly lol as the generic response

Came on just to see if our terrible experience came close to other VA users and rather than put our experiences LHW /MCO I will just say this has been my very worst experience in using VA in 30 years of loyalty as a regular customer. Family trip to Florida with flights alone costing £4500. Customer SERVICE ! NON EXISTENT lied to again and again. Premium service worse than economy meals ran out no hot beverage offered after meals and no amenity pack on return night flight. Staff were on the whole not too bad but their veneer has gone and uniforms old and scruffy. As are the planes. On top of that I also have a missing bag with no help being offered at Heathrow via Virgin.. Richard Branson should be squirming if he sees the decline in this once fun and beloved airline. Perhaps he could buy another island from the proceeds of starting Virgin II with all his original ideas - I live in hope!

Loved the flight food everything etc, but on way back flight got cancelled. Did not get any sort of communication. No call or anything until i tryed to check in but that was all still fine. I had to pay additional to rebook my next ticket and was told i can get it all refunded as flight was cancelled. When it came to the refund i been told its terrorism act etc damn bullshit. I wasted so much money on rebooking flight being told i will get refund and now after waiting for months i been told they cant give me a single penny back. Everyone i reccommended this flight to i will be telling not to ever book with them ever again. Shittest policy and service ever.