The Complaint Shop

    All Your Complaints under one Roof

Tell the World

what went wrong

and hopefully the

world gets better

Last update

17/10/2007

Return to Index

Home

   Contacts

Virgin Atlantic overcharge.
We booked a holiday to America with Virgin Holidays back in July 2002. To include a virgin flight to New York on 25 August, then four days later an internal U.S. flight to Orlando, although we were never actually told what airline would be flying us to Orlando, we assumed it would be Delta as we knew they were a Virgin partner. We paid 840 pounds for this one way flight for a family of four.
When we arrived at the airport we were directed to the Song boarding gate. We had never heard of Song. They flew us to Orlando, it turns out that Song is a Budget Airline and is part of Delta. The price for a ticket being under seventy pounds per head for our flight.
That's a mark-up of over five hundred pounds for our family. Meals and drinks extra too.
I have discovered that Song only started their service in April 2003, long after we originally booked. Nobody told us of the switch from a Delta flight to a Song Budget flight.
It would seem that Virgin have decided to keep the difference in the ticket price to COVER their overheads as letters to them have had the usual meaningless standard letters of reply.

Regretfully we had to disappoint Mr. Kilby and, whilst we fully sympathised with him,  that he felt that Virgin Holidays have benefited from him, we had to tell him that legally speaking they had done nothing wrong.

When he made his booking with Virgin Holidays in 2002 they undertook to fly him and his family from New York to Orlando at a charge which was the valid fare with Delta at the time of booking. They were not to know that Delta would create a budget airline later and move his flight to their budget airline. Had the prices changed the other way Virgin could not have sent him a bill for the higher charges; they accepted the risk of fluctuating air fares and he accepted their price when he paid for his tickets in the same way as he cannot claim a refund from a retailer if he buys something before Christmas and finds it cheaper in the sales later .
We were sorry that we could not give him any better news but there really is nothing we could do to make Virgin change their mind.

Thank you for your advice, I have spoken with several parties
about this and none have put the situation in perspective for me as you have.

Although disappointing, I do understand my situation better now.

Thanks again,
 

 Complaint Status:   closed