Velocity Frequent Flyer

Last week I flew to Sydney and I really should comment on just how good the team at Virgin were. I was a bit flustered on arrival as the traffic was heavy in the M1. The lovely lady at the counter said it is alright the plane has been delayed 10 minutes. You have time for a coffee and a snack at the bar and we will call the flight shortly. She then asked would I like a seat with extra leg room at no charge. I accepted. On departure from the lounge she said, I hope you enjoy the flight Mr Sharp. On reaching the departure gate the Virgin employee said welcome aboard Mr Sharp. Are you willing and able to assist. I confirmed. She then said use the front door entrance. On boarding, again I was addressed by my name. She must be a quick reader. The cabin crew were just so professional and polite that you could not help but feel like honoured guests. I actually went to sleep for most of the flight. On waking I asked was it possible to get a glass of water as it helps unblock my ears. No problem although the in flight service had concluded. Nothing was too much trouble. Everything was done with a smile. Such a pleasant change from Qantas that I flew with recently. I was in business class with them on a long haul flight and they were curt, haughty and devoid of any humour. It did not help that the plane was 3 hours late in departing because they did not book a new crew in. So we all were all waiting 3 hours while the crew had their allotted time off. The plane was waiting in the tarmac the whole time we were there. Honestly, Virgin are miles better in everything. Professionalism, service, demeanour and sticking to a timetable. Well done and I will continue to fly with Virgin whenever I can. Pity they don’t operate to Santiago. If that were the case I would never fly Qantas again. A great big well done to Virgin. Phillip

Positives. This is a great app for when you are traveling with all your trips stored in a single location. It makes checking in easy at the airport. Negatives. Several times I have been unable to book using the app when using points, I have had no problems when an book using a credit card. I was very frustrated to get caught in a loop that kept asking me to login to finalise the booking when I was already logged in. After several tries, it works, but last week, I had to eventually call to book the flight to ensure that I was on the same flight as my partner. I wasted 2 hours and ended up paying more than twice the points than I would have had the app worked the first time. I emailed Customer Care and got the same line about prices changing due to high demand. I sent proof that I was logged in when I received the error message, but that fact was not acknowledged.

It’s now 7 weeks after a flight and still no miles or status credits posted to my account. The flight is the 3rd of 4 on the same eticket with the same airline. Flights 1,2 and 4 have all posted to my account. I’ve encountered generally very poor service snd language skills at the offshore Velocity Call Centre. Most of the operators can only work from what seems to be a script. Should you ask probing questions you tend to get an unintelligent and irrelevant answer to your questions. If I could have rated my experience a zero I would have. One simple solution would be to have at least some onshore based call centre support to whom matters can be escalated when they cannot be resolved within a reasonable time frame by the offshore call centre.