New booking engine is up

[anchew]

There's no option to use gift vouchers anymore? Did a dummy booking and the option didn't come up.
Also, when paying using CC, have to re-enter billing address details. Too bad if you live in units or apartments. Using '/' gives an error. Oh well.

 

[QF WP]

Thanks Lindsay. By manual credit, do you know if she meant they'll go searching themselves, or do we need to visit them with a cattle prod (telephone call)? Seems the bots on strike in my case (8 days)!

I have four flights to book for next week and I'm a little edgy about using VA.

Ring up and they will manually credit after doing search for bookings. I'm ready to email all the BP's and relocs to make it easy for them.

 

[QF WP]

Go was based around sabre being able to support the cutover at this time. Had they not gone now, they couldn't have gone live until June or so because just like aircraft taking off, other airlines around the world are queued up to do their own cutovers with sabre and sabre do them one at a time.

Considering the original cutover was meant to be 29 Oct 12, they were fortunate to have retained the pre-implementing Sabre staff for another 2.5 months. IIRC, those staff are now over in Canada doing an airline there.

 

[markis10]

There's no option to use gift vouchers anymore? Did a dummy booking and the option didn't come up.
Also, when paying using CC, have to re-enter billing address details. Too bad if you live in units or apartments. Using '/' gives an error. Oh well.

U before the Unit Apartment number is the accepted syntax these days in many cases.

 

[QF WP]

Fantastic (tongue firmly in cheek).

Checked my account this morning and no flights credited, so off to ring VA TODAY.

Happened to check the current SC balance - well it looks like part of their system is working :shock:, as I now have 80 SC's less than I did yesterday. Then I'll lose another 100 SC's on 21/1.

Another layer of complexity to discuss with CS.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

Checked my account this morning and no flights credited, so off to ring VA TODAY.

Another layer of complexity to discuss with CS.

You have to laugh. I foolishly decided to take on two problematic web sites together and succeeded with neither!

VA - One flight from last Wed has not credited
Hertz - deleted VA profie completely, added VS profile, made booking. Today, first Hertz rental shows up in VA account despite the rental agreement showing a VS CDP and VA not even in my Hertz account.......yes, yes, I know it's my fault as I knew Hertz was useless at this and yes, I do realise this is not VAs fault.

......as Lindsay Wilson has just said "Another layer of complexity to discuss with CS."

 

[WCFCHobart]

There's no option to use gift vouchers anymore? Did a dummy booking and the option didn't come up.
Also, when paying using CC, have to re-enter billing address details. Too bad if you live in units or apartments. Using '/' gives an error. Oh well.

I have vouchers to use and a booking to make. Called the contact centre yesterday who confirmed that the voucher system is not yet available, so vouchers can't be used either online or through the contact centre. It's annoying to me, but I can understand why this would be on the list of lower priority items in the migration.

 

[CeeJayOz]

It appears Premium Saver (R and O) is available on flights to US but not to Abu Dhabi/Europe, which is Premium (W) only, or Business Saver, which is a little over my budget! The entire cabin seems to be available on the dates I checked, so it's not that they've sold out. Any guesses whether this is a bug that's likely to be fixed? Although I'm kinda hoping there will be some kind of sale/offer after the dust settles?

 

[KCMil]

The Platinum call centre is finally back on line, apparently ther Manilla call centre was out of action for a day or two which made delays even worse. Anyone else managed to get through to Gold/Plat call centre without issues? I have to keep waiting to be transferred, doesn't seem to be recognising Vel number automatically. Makes for long long calls.
Though a pvt msg on faceache page got a response this morning, and comp upgrade to J for all the waiting time and mistakes made on my reservations.
The staff member stated that the problems are being resolved one by one but as one is fixed another seems to arise so (CeeJayOz) you may see a solution, but who knows when!!! She said that they are forwarding all errors or issues reported directly to IT / Sabre but aren't expecting smooth sailing for some time yet.

 

[justcallmeryan]

It appears Premium Saver (R and O) is available on flights to US but not to Abu Dhabi/Europe, which is Premium (W) only, or Business Saver, which is a little over my budget! The entire cabin seems to be available on the dates I checked, so it's not that they've sold out. Any guesses whether this is a bug that's likely to be fixed? Although I'm kinda hoping there will be some kind of sale/offer after the dust settles?

I have been unable to get any Y+ saver fares to LA on the virgin website at all. However, I was able to book a Y+ saver ticket to LA on expedia for a reasonable rate, so maybe check there?

 

[cmon0005]

The Platinum call centre is finally back on line, apparently ther Manilla call centre was out of action for a day or two which made delays even worse. Anyone else managed to get through to Gold/Plat call centre without issues? I have to keep waiting to be transferred, doesn't seem to be recognising Vel number automatically. Makes for long long calls.

Are they still going to move the Manila Call centre back to Brisbane this year?

JB mentioned this back in 2011 that by 2013 it will be moved back..
Virgin Australia aims to steal the hearts and minds of Australians from Qantas | thetelegraph.com.au

 

[smit0847]

Even as a loyal VA supporter, I think this week has been an absolute disaster for VA. I think last weekend went well in terms of minimal impact on customers at airports, but the online systems and phone support have surely gone much worse than they anticipated and there is no end in sight.

I assume they will roll out some big promo/special/sale when the dust settles to appease unhappy customers who seem to be moving back to QF faster than they moved to VA during the QF grounding.

Any bets as to what the promo will be? I reckon they will have to do something really big - there has been so much damage to the brand this week. DSC? Double points? 30% off all flights?

 

[KCMil]

Are they still going to move the Manila Call centre back to Brisbane this year?

JB mentioned this back in 2011 that by 2013 it will be moved back..
Virgin Australia aims to steal the hearts and minds of Australians from Qantas | thetelegraph.com.au

I passionately hope so because my experiences this week have been somewhat less than fantastic, and a big part of that is the mucking around dealing with people who I can barely understand, or, who don't actually seem to know what they are doing. I just can't believe that they closed the Plat / Gold centre for three days and lumped everyone into one big basket, though obviously they had decided that this would be best to get through the anticipated call volumes, except it didn't quite work out that way. Fingers crossed for a speedy resolution.

 

[anat0l]

...unhappy customers who seem to be moving back to QF faster than they moved to VA during the QF grounding.

I highly doubt the desertion rate is that bad. So far on the forum we have had but a handful of cases; big deal. Even if there was desertion I would put it down to temporary and people are only booking on the others out of sheer immediate necessity.

Besides, not like JB is getting death threats over this, unlike AJ when he grounded the fleet. Passengers aren't stranded, planes aren't at any safety risk...

 

[markis10]

Even as a loyal VA supporter, I think this week has been an absolute disaster for VA. I think last weekend went well in terms of minimal impact on customers at airports, but the online systems and phone support have surely gone much worse than they anticipated and there is no end in sight.

Disaster - Nope, that is a term best left for when nothing is working and VA were far from that. As to no end in sight, I disagree, clearly wait times for issues have been higher at the start but it would appear based on the experiences expressed here that they are back to a level of satisfactory response times equivalent to pre changeover! One can only wonder if folks had sat on their issues and let the dust settle what might have prevailed, but human nature as it is often people dont consider the circumstances of their request and the issues it creates, cest la vie! After all is hardly peak period for flying for the market both airlines are trying to grab - this business flyer, so I doubt any exodus will be of customers that are high yielding in the majority.

As for a promo, I reckon getting status credit for rewards is a pretty good one, apart from that I dont see much else being on offer, airfares are already at their lowest they will get once adjusted for inflation, while delays and cancellations are also at their lowest in some time, so as consumers we have it pretty good while at the same time we have two competitive airlines trying to keep each other honest. As someone who has status across both camps (both long held), I am enjoying the competition and freedom of choice on offer.

 

[Jurahn]

The Platinum call centre is finally back on line, apparently ther Manilla call centre was out of action for a day or two which made delays even worse. Anyone else managed to get through to Gold/Plat call centre without issues? I have to keep waiting to be transferred, doesn't seem to be recognising Vel number automatically. Makes for long long calls.

The Gold call centre was (thankfully) operational on Tuesday evening - my husband rang them about a problem with his long-haul booking to the US (caused by the Sabre migration), about a 5 minute wait to get to talk to someone and then almost an hour on the phone to get the issue resolved, but it was finally all sorted out.

I agree with other posters - I think a double SC promo would be one of the best ways to compensate customers for all the hassles this week - some really good sale fares in J wouldn't go astray either, especially for us Perth-ites .

 

[notzac]

Having spent a bit of time on the Virgin and Velocity websites post migration, one of the things I'm struggling with is how incredibly slow the Velocity site is to log in (assuming that you get anything other than an error screen).

As for the Virgin website, the UI for booking is not as good as it could be; I love that there are plenty of options in selecting flights, but do not love the stupidly long page as a result of all those options. Why are the contact details on the pax information page not shown until you click a completely non-intuitive button? On the payment page, why is it able to pull my name out of the Velocity profile on the pax information page, but not my billing details? Similarly on the billing page, what is with the ridiculous telephone input boxes that have no labels or suggestions of what is expected?

If they undertook any sort of UAT on the website, they did a terrible job of it.

 

[robd]

Not sure if it's already been mentioned here, but just in case it hasn't, I just logged into my Velocity account to check my email preferences in case the elusive DSC offer eventuates as hoped, and all my preferences for email communcations for offers, sales etc. were all unticked - GONE!

I've re-ticked them all and hope I don't miss out. :shock:

 

[Jurahn]

Not sure if it's already been mentioned here, but just in case it hasn't, I just logged into my Velocity account to check my email preferences in case the elusive DSC offer eventuates as hoped, and all my preferences for email communcations for offers, sales etc. were all unticked - GONE!

I've re-ticked them all and hope I don't miss out. :shock:

I had exactly the same thing - every single option was unticked, so I've had to re-tick them all too - did that a few days ago so might log in again and check that they're all still there! I found my seat preference was gone as well.

However my husband's account was still OK, all his preferences were still in place.

 

[pants]

Considering the original cutover was meant to be 29 Oct 12, they were fortunate to have retained the pre-implementing Sabre staff for another 2.5 months. IIRC, those staff are now over in Canada doing an airline there.

Maybe they wanted to go live before Etihad...