Is it just me, or does Virgin's website need some work?

[lazybones1987]

I just asked the QF website for a price for CNS-BOM-SIN-LHR / FRA-CNS, and it gave me one. Almost $14k in discount

My apologies. I have always assumed that you would not be able to book multi-city trips with Qantas.

 

[maninblack]

I have pretty much given up on it. The website is simply not usable and highly erratic. It is appalling actually. Heading back to QF for the time being until Virgin develop an interface that actually works.

 

[Sequel]

Any idea why the Velocity Login on the DJ front page now opens in a new window? They were starting to show some integration when the new site was launched (which while not working at first did seem to be remidied for a few weeks), but they seem to have gone back to their old ways!

While I love the competition and will re-qual my matched WP with a few months to spare, there is still a lot that irks me, and some of it seems so simple to fix.

 

[Rotation]

Last time I checked everything, including alcoholic drinks, were all included on long haul (i.e. the old V Australia)?

When I flew VA MEL-LAX-MEL last year, alcoholic drinks were available to purchase outside of the main meal time - you got a beer or wine with dinner in International Economy, but outside that you had to pay. Well, actually, you got a top up if they still had a bottle of red or white still open after the meal service and wanted to get rid of it.

IIRC all other drinks were complimentary, but I don't remember asking for one!

 

[VOZZY]

It seems it realy needs some refining. I think the handoffs between the old and new sections of the website are a bit sloppy. I also find that OLCI is buggy and unreliable especially when accessed from Safari.

Vozzy

 

[Sequel]

Well, you can now log in to velocity from the DJ front page again, but when you try to "manage" a booking, it asks you to re-enter your velocity password.

Is it really that difficult?

The other option is to "manage account", which then opens in a new window (ahhhh!), then select "my bookings", then for DJ flights "more bookings" and finally get to your bookings, or if it is a VA flight (hang on, aren't we all the well publicised "Virgin Australia single airline" now? Doesn't seem so), and then start entering more information, and then I'd hate to think how many more steps it is. Could it be any more drawn out?

Which leads me to my other (OT) bugbear, the DJ versus VA muddle. e.g. Book BNE - LAX, and the non direct flights involve VA code sharing on DJ! WTF? Cant I just have a DJ flight number which is easy to see on the FIDS and called at the lounge? WIll this get fixed when they move to a single booking system?

 

[maninblack]

Oh baby it's a mess:!: What is really worthwhile though is that the members of this forum keep giving their feedback so Virgin know the thoughts of frequent flyers. Eventually someone at Virgin with two neurons to rub together will take a serious look at getting it all fixed. Perhaps their CEO needs some feedback, afterall the buck stops with him and I am seeing far more deficiencies in the Virgin operation at the moment than would be at all acceptable in my organisation.

 

[Sequel]

To add to the list of feed back for DJ:

When trying to search for reward flights, there is no way change dates or "Start Again" once you have started the search.

 

[eastwest101]

To add to the list of feed back for DJ:

When trying to search for reward flights, there is no way change dates or "Start Again" once you have started the search.

Ah yes - the good old "road to nowhere" in a booking site, people love that....

 

[maninblack]

Apparently at Virgin they believe that it is important to get things right. With that in mind what happened to fixing the website which is currently one of the worst in the industry. (at least out of the half dozen or so I have used ) (Air Australia did have a worse one!) After just using the site (or trying to) I thought we just better keep this topic alive.

 

[777]

Apparently at Virgin they believe that it is important to get things right. With that in mind what happened to fixing the website which is currently one of the worst in the industry. (at least out of the half dozen or so I have used ) (Air Australia did have a worse one!) After just using the site (or trying to) I thought we just better keep this topic alive.

They really should do something about this...

Virgin prepares to drop Navitaire for Sabre - Software - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

 

[maninblack]

They really should do something about this...

Another one for their list of things they should have done a long time ago but will do one day in the future

But seriously, is the somewhat dysfunctional website totally caused by their booking system?

 

[Mal]

I needed to book an international open jaw this morning. Bne to akl, hlz to bne. Cant fo it from the dj site. Ended up booking the legs seperately but it cost me about $80 more. Grrrr. Could have worked around it but just accepted the issue

Also the last few times I've used Mobile phone based web check-in it has had issues. SMSs haven't arrived on two occasions. On the third it checked me in, but told me to collect BP at the airport.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using AustFreqFly

 

[777]

Another one for their list of things they should have done a long time ago but will do one day in the future

But seriously, is the somewhat dysfunctional website totally caused by their booking system?

Several key aspects of it are - they are using two separate reservation systems that don't necessarily talk to each other very well. If you read that article it really makes it sound like the system has reached the point of being a patch installed on top of a patch on top of a hack etc that are basically extending software well beyond it's intended use. Yes, undoubtedly there are some aspects of the functionality that can be tweaked and improved without waiting but many of the criticisms regularly raised here are a product of the underlying LCC reservation system that they will be getting rid of.

 

[drron]

In my new role of being even handed I certainly find a few things about the VA website irritating.
Being in your velocity page,making a booking only to have to put in your number again,so many steps to redeem an award.
But the QF website also can be difficult-in particular the Y/J award problem or if you happen to be silly enough to book a JQ flight through QF.
Funnily I find the JQ site the best.Great I can just tick a box for automatic checkin,good descriptions of the various bundles.
So both VA and QF need to lift their game.

 

[Warks]

As a long time QF user I've crossed to this side for half my flights after getting comp Gold. Most things work okay but a bit clunkier than QF.

One thing that is total rubbish though is web check-in. I'm logged in, I'm looking at my booking, I click "web check-in" and lo and behold it asks me for my destination AND reservation number (who has that to hand?) OR my Velocity number? That's just bizarre.

Tonight I can't even click in any of the boxes to enter my details.

 

[mavrick9]

Glitch --
You login with your Velocity Gold number to make a booking (JOHN), it asks if your travelling or just making a booking. You select Just making booking.

Then you complete JANE's Name and FF Details. Then it says, "Hi JANE, are you travelling or just making a booking" -

you think you should answer this question correctly, so you say "Yes Travelling"

It then populates all the fields with JOHN's details, and then you're back where you started.

 

[Noob]

Another one for their list of things they should have done a long time ago but will do one day in the future

But seriously, is the somewhat dysfunctional website totally caused by their booking system?

So you are saying they should have invested in an expensive program designed for 'full service' airlines a long time ago when they were a low cost carrier trying to keep costs as low as possible?