Forced Flight & Airline Change - No assistance

[drcrox]

Good evening to all,

My family and I had a forced flight and airline change on Sep 21. VA cancelled our flight from CNS to MEL (and chose to notify by email rather than anything immediate such as SMS or via their app) and shunted us onto a JQ flight 7 hours later, but at least same day. This process was moderately annoying and led to extra costs for car hire, meals and our pick-up from MEL airport - I have chosen to claim the costs incurred via my AMEX Platinum Travel Insurance rather than deal with a VA claim.

What is cheesing me off though is that despite 2 lengthy calls to the VA call centre to polite but completely useless call operators, none of us has received Velocity FF points or status credits for the flight. I was verbally informed that points and SC would be honoured and the JQ flight was allocated a VA flight number. My last interaction with the VA call centre resulted in a request to lodge a missing points claim via the website - I have tried to do that today as now 14 days post-travel and the website simply returns an error message with advice to contact the customer service team!!!! Compounding my displeasure is that I was on a double SC promo for the travel, and when SC are received this will result in a jump in status level....

Grateful for advice from the brain's trust. TIA.

 

[dajop]

The only advice I have (generic for any airline, I'm afraid not specific to VA) is to use the very specific terminology requesting "Original Routing Credit" for the flights you originally purchased but were disrupted.

 

[drcrox]

The only advice I have (generic for any airline, I'm afraid not specific to VA) is to use the very specific terminology requesting "Original Routing Credit" for the flights you originally purchased but were disrupted.

Thanks for the advice. I’ll try to find a way to email them using that terminology. I really cannot cope with having to explain everything to another customer service agent in the Philippines!

 

[HSB44]

Social media!

 

[Cynicor]

Don’t call for this sort of thing- email.

 

[Steven of Mysore]

Good evening to all,

My family and I had a forced flight and airline change on Sep 21. VA cancelled our flight from CNS to MEL (and chose to notify by email rather than anything immediate such as SMS or via their app) and shunted us onto a JQ flight 7 hours later, but at least same day. This process was moderately annoying and led to extra costs for car hire, meals and our pick-up from MEL airport - I have chosen to claim the costs incurred via my AMEX Platinum Travel Insurance rather than deal with a VA claim.

What is cheesing me off though is that despite 2 lengthy calls to the VA call centre to polite but completely useless call operators, none of us has received Velocity FF points or status credits for the flight. I was verbally informed that points and SC would be honoured and the JQ flight was allocated a VA flight number. My last interaction with the VA call centre resulted in a request to lodge a missing points claim via the website - I have tried to do that today as now 14 days post-travel and the website simply returns an error message with advice to contact the customer service team!!!! Compounding my displeasure is that I was on a double SC promo for the travel, and when SC are received this will result in a jump in status level....

Grateful for advice from the brain's trust. TIA.

I would be surprised if Amex will satisfy a claim until all claim processes are completed with Virgin. It's fairly normal to require a claim against the original service provider before trying an insurance claim for the entire amount or any residual.

 

[drcrox]

I would be surprised if Amex will satisfy a claim until all claim processes are completed with Virgin. It's fairly normal to require a claim against the original service provider before trying an insurance claim for the entire amount or any residual.

It’s covered by their travel delay policy - any delay of more than 4 hours and they will reimburse up to $700 of reasonable costs incurred without any excess payable. I have used it without issues previously. So much easier than dealing with VA

 

[Steven of Mysore]

It’s covered by their travel delay policy - any delay of more than 4 hours and they will reimburse up to $700 of reasonable costs incurred without any excess payable. I have used it without issues previously. So much easier than dealing with VA

That's interesting. Qantas ...