theevilmuppet
Member
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2015
- Posts
- 320
Hi all,
I thought I'd share a bit of a success story I experienced recently. I see a number of posts detailing problematic experiences, and personally I think it's important to give credit where credit is due, and in this case I assert that it is.
I recently enjoyed my first trip to the US and decided to exploit the comparatively low Business/First Class fares available and escape the cheap seats for the duration of the trip. My trip was MEL->AKL->LAX->LAS->SFO->MSP->CLE->DTW->BWI, followed by an (possibly inadvisable, especially given the child kicking the back of my BusinessElite seat and his inattentive and defensive parent) unbroken stretch of JFK->LAX->AKL->MEL . Throughout, I only flew with Virgin partners (Air New Zealand, Delta and Virgin America). All international legs were flown with Air New Zealand and all bar one segment in the US was flown with Delta, with the one remaining segment flown with Virgin America, and same is the point of this post.
As some members on this forum have indicated, Virgin America was a strange anomaly in that points and SCs from the only segment I flew on them for (LAS->SFO) had not appeared against my account well after all other segments had. I suspect booking via a travel agent was the issue here due to the way salutation and name are mangled when making bookings with Virgin America, hence my Velocity details not matching in terms of name (as indicated when attempting to add my Velocity details manually against the booking).
I contacted Virgin America to ensure my Velocity details were added to the booking and received a commendable level of customer service. I then contacted Velocity Rewards to indicate the expectation of points.
The specific issue here is slightly complicated by the timing of awards. Before flying the LAS->SFO segment, by SC balance was 465 - only 35 away from Velocity Gold, thus recording the VX flight in a timely fashion would have pushed me to Gold and given me access to the Delta lounge for all subsequent segments (DL First Class doesn't give passengers lounge access because...err...reasons). Further, I expected my SC earn to confirm Gold status for 2015/2016 given I would earn 400 SCs in total after the VX segment.
The SFO->MSP->CLE segment all occurred on one day and accounted for 80 SCs which would all be recorded on the same calendar day thus straddling a status boundary in the absence of the VX segment being recorded - a situation I observed upon waking up with a hangover on a Monday in Cleveland, OH. I sent a request to Velocity Rewards to get this sorted out on this day as I saw my status change to Gold without the VX flight being recorded.
Once I got back to Australia, Velocity Rewards beat their estimate of 4-6 weeks and credited the points (which are trivial) and SCs (which are awesome) to my account on 09/Jan/2014. They then called me on 12/Jan/2014 in the afternoon and confirmed that my SC situation was unusual and slightly complicated, detailed their understanding of events (which was completely correct) and confirmed that they had adjusted the ordering of SC awarding appropriately.
This resulted in my requirements to retain Gold going from 80 SCs to 0 SCs.
My only regret is that I did not have the presence of mind to ask the name and details of the Virgin staffer who called me - she and her colleagues deserve a commendation given the way they handled my case and treated me. Virgin staff (if reading) - please PM me so I can give you my details so this most excellent person and the colleagues that supported and helped her can be properly recognised.
I thought I'd share a bit of a success story I experienced recently. I see a number of posts detailing problematic experiences, and personally I think it's important to give credit where credit is due, and in this case I assert that it is.
I recently enjoyed my first trip to the US and decided to exploit the comparatively low Business/First Class fares available and escape the cheap seats for the duration of the trip. My trip was MEL->AKL->LAX->LAS->SFO->MSP->CLE->DTW->BWI, followed by an (possibly inadvisable, especially given the child kicking the back of my BusinessElite seat and his inattentive and defensive parent) unbroken stretch of JFK->LAX->AKL->MEL . Throughout, I only flew with Virgin partners (Air New Zealand, Delta and Virgin America). All international legs were flown with Air New Zealand and all bar one segment in the US was flown with Delta, with the one remaining segment flown with Virgin America, and same is the point of this post.
As some members on this forum have indicated, Virgin America was a strange anomaly in that points and SCs from the only segment I flew on them for (LAS->SFO) had not appeared against my account well after all other segments had. I suspect booking via a travel agent was the issue here due to the way salutation and name are mangled when making bookings with Virgin America, hence my Velocity details not matching in terms of name (as indicated when attempting to add my Velocity details manually against the booking).
I contacted Virgin America to ensure my Velocity details were added to the booking and received a commendable level of customer service. I then contacted Velocity Rewards to indicate the expectation of points.
The specific issue here is slightly complicated by the timing of awards. Before flying the LAS->SFO segment, by SC balance was 465 - only 35 away from Velocity Gold, thus recording the VX flight in a timely fashion would have pushed me to Gold and given me access to the Delta lounge for all subsequent segments (DL First Class doesn't give passengers lounge access because...err...reasons). Further, I expected my SC earn to confirm Gold status for 2015/2016 given I would earn 400 SCs in total after the VX segment.
The SFO->MSP->CLE segment all occurred on one day and accounted for 80 SCs which would all be recorded on the same calendar day thus straddling a status boundary in the absence of the VX segment being recorded - a situation I observed upon waking up with a hangover on a Monday in Cleveland, OH. I sent a request to Velocity Rewards to get this sorted out on this day as I saw my status change to Gold without the VX flight being recorded.
Once I got back to Australia, Velocity Rewards beat their estimate of 4-6 weeks and credited the points (which are trivial) and SCs (which are awesome) to my account on 09/Jan/2014. They then called me on 12/Jan/2014 in the afternoon and confirmed that my SC situation was unusual and slightly complicated, detailed their understanding of events (which was completely correct) and confirmed that they had adjusted the ordering of SC awarding appropriately.
This resulted in my requirements to retain Gold going from 80 SCs to 0 SCs.
My only regret is that I did not have the presence of mind to ask the name and details of the Virgin staffer who called me - she and her colleagues deserve a commendation given the way they handled my case and treated me. Virgin staff (if reading) - please PM me so I can give you my details so this most excellent person and the colleagues that supported and helped her can be properly recognised.
