Beware: Velocity HUGE Penalty Charges compared with Qantas

[one9]

I regularly redeem Qantas Award flights.

I decided to have a look at redeeming Velocity Award flights.

With Qantas you can change or cancel an award flight (up to 24 hours before the flight) and you only get charged 5000 points.

I did a search on the Velocity website for flights on V Australia from Sydney to LA. Not only did it require more points then on Qantas, but they charge a penalty fee of 55,000 points (or $550) to cancel the flight.

Looking at Virgin Blue domestic flights, I noticed that they also had higher fees and more restrictions on changes and cancellations including the fact that they won't refund your points, but will only give you a limited time credit less a fee.

Velocity has a long way to go in my opinion. I believe the penalty charges are much more than the other frequent flyer programs that I redeem points for - Qantas, Thai airways & Singapore airlines.

 

[esquire]

Hi one9,

I noticed a similar thing over the weekend - I have tons of QFF points and have used them easily with little issue (and amazingly even managed to get long weekends and peak periods). Cancellations have always been easy and any penalty fair (especially compared to others).

I also have a miserly 60,000 Velocity points and thought I should use these up - I tried every long weekend/holiday period to about 10 locations until October 2010- all blocked, or so-called "SOLD OUT". On other (regular) weekends some flights needed so many points I could only have traveled one way- or I could have bought the ticket for about $20 more than the points + $ price! The whole process left me very unimpressed with Virgin's program.

 

[sampson]

I found VA/Velocity seats always available even on really short notice, unlike Qantas.

As for fees, a date change on Vaust was needed for my flight and cost $250 per passenger. Such is life I figure. (My only gripe is a recent change in arrival time in LA by 45 minutes that means I miss non-stop flights that won't restart until 4pm. Grrrr)

The rep was also willing to upgrade the seat to premium for another $300 (I think). (I'd take it but is it really any different? Lie flat beds are worth it, but PE looks too much the same as economy. Besides, why punt more money if they re route the plane thru Sydney: I'd cut my losses and fly AirNZ).

Anyway, I like them and hope their Melb-LA flight days suit me. If not, there's Air NZ and other airlines that fly to where I want to go, SFO

 

[clifford]

Cancellations have always been easy and any penalty fair (especially compared to others).

Well, the penalty for me when I cancel/change a UA award booking is zero. That's quite good too.

 

[one9]

As for fees, a date change on Vaust was needed for my flight and cost $250 per passenger. Such is life I figure.

I think the point that I am trying to make is that Velocity has the worst penalties of any airline's reward program that I am familiar with.

Virgin has tried to give themselves an image other than of a very low cost carrier. However it seems that Velocity Rewards operates similar to Tiger Airways or Ryanair.

 

[Blackswan]

I'm not impressed with Velocity either. I travel regularly PER-SYD and PER-MEL and I get a far better return with QF. I find theres more availability on QF - short and long term.

As I don't want to redeem my flyer points for a Hoyts movie pass, looks like I'm going to continue with QF.