Surprise! You've turned Gold!

[UP4014]

True, it was a mistake and you're no better off. But Virgin just made a whole bunch of members overjoyed, and then took them right down to below where they were before. So I'm sure you can understand why they feel hard done by.

Virgin then had to think quickly and decided simply withdrawing the alleged offer would be the best course of action. But the misunderstood how many people they made happy from the offer, and now sad and mad.

Especially considering Virgin wants your email address, likes using online forums and processes to save them money. But only if it suits them of course.

 

[wallacej]

i was gob smacked to say the least when i saw the number of pages in this thread. I thought surely after 5 pages it would be done, so clicked on last page, and it took me to page 23! WOW. Like others, i simply deleted it, then the retraction came and i deleted that too.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[straitman]

I cannot believe this thread is still going.


Not really. At the very least we should receive a complimentary guess pass (valued at $30) to any Virgin Lounge simply for reading 2 emails.

A few people here should think about an email sign-off that I often use.


"If you have integrity, nothing else matters.
If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."
--Alan Simpson

 

[drron]

And if it is like the Amex thread, we'll also see a plethora of superfluous posts - usually to repost something that has been stated ad nauseum - a lot of mud slinging (usually begging the question), and basically an excuse for all participants to boost their post counts :mrgreen:

That couldnt happen could it

 

[oz_mark]

'Tears in the office' over Virgin Blue email mistake

Virgin Blue's Velocity Gold Status email mistake

The head of Virgin Blue's loyalty program has revealed there were tears in their office after staff realised they had mistakenly sent a upgrade offer to more than one million members.

In the computer data processing error would have cost a fortune to honour, Virgin Blue offered free lounge memberships and upgrade to "gold" status to more than a million of its Velocity members, only to rescind the offer within two hours.

 

[db0447]

Re: Surprise! You've turned Gold!....NOT!

"Oops! Due to an error you've received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Warm regards, The Velocity Team." :shock:

 

[Aussie_flyer]

Re: Surprise! You've turned Gold!....NOT!

"Oops! Due to an error you've received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Warm regards, The Velocity Team." :shock:

yes thanks DB, i think by now we all now quite well what the retraction email said!

 

[AnonymousCoward]

The campaign is driven by Marketing (rather than being something IT e.g. software upgrade). I'm yet to see a business area just put blind faith in another area with such a project. Any reasonable management would have done the test extract of data first to verify the numbers being extracted as well as the quality of the sample, not just hand it over to IT saying, 'here's the text and send it to these customers, over to you.'

The latter may happen if Marketing did the extract themselves and didn't QA it properly, but that gets back to my original point that it sounds like a marketing stuff-up.

If it is the case that Marketing did entirely hand the job over to IT and there was no validation, review or sign-off once passing the requirements, then that indicates major business process failings rather than just a one-off event - as bad as it was.

I doubt marketing has the facilities to actually send two million emails. This is either outsourced to another firm, or it's going to be handled by IT.

Who knows how much QA was done. You can do as much extraction and filtering and QA as you like, but if someone executes the wrong thing in production, by not following the procedure, or by running something that was out-of-date, or whatever, then the wrong result gets generated. You only have to work in a large org to see how many changes go wrong every week to see how many mistakes people make like this.

 

[QF WP]

"Velocity. Rewards you faster" certainly is a correct statement, even if it was in error .

I had one member email me about his "surprise" offer and he mused to me that he thought it might be a mistake. Sure enough...

Offer and acceptance makes a contract, so by rescinding the offer quickly it doesn't make a contract.

Love some of the comments to the Brisbane Times article

 

[StevePER]

Re: 'Tears in the office' over Virgin Blue email mistake

Virgin Blue's Velocity Gold Status email mistake

I think the quote from the GM of Velocity Rewards sums it up nicely:
"Jesus, we've done a mistake," he said, recalling the moment.

 

[crazydave98]

Secondly, its interesting that crazydave hasn't commented here yet... in the past he's been happy to post negative news articles very quickly against DJ's competitors.... (e.g. Tiger) but I would have thought it would have been a good idea to get a spokesperson in places like this pretty quickly to mitigate a pretty big negative discussion and news against DJ.

Having said that DJ may well have gagged him for a while, sometimes in disasters only certain people are allowed to communicate on behalf of the company for consistancy.... Or he could be involved in trying to sory out the mess himself elsewhere and just hasn't made it here yet.

No, I have not been gagged, but what's left to say? There was a stuff up, and the follow-up email was sent out (even if was not as well worded as one might hope). People want to vent and I doubt anything I could have posted here would have helped either them or Virgin Blue.

As it happens, I was physically well away from any access to phones or the internet and hadn't heard about it until days after the event - being in a crackberry-free zone is bliss.

cheers

CrazyDave98

 

[dajop]

Re: 'Tears in the office' over Virgin Blue email mistake

I think the quote from the GM of Velocity Rewards sums it up nicely:
"Jesus, we've done a mistake," he said, recalling the moment.

Love it! One can but imagine what he really said:!:

 

[wallacej]

... - being in a crackberry-free zone is bliss.

cheers

CrazyDave98

And where exactly does one find that zone???? Please share, I want to go there
(And yes, I know there is an off button, just so dammed hard to press it)

 

[medhead]

And where exactly does one find that zone???? Please share, I want to go there

The Arkaroola Resort and Wilderness Sanctuary is in spectacular, rugged mountains of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia's remote Outback. It offers a unique range of nature and science based tours and activities

for a start

 

[Will]

No, I have not been gagged, but what's left to say? There was a stuff up, and the follow-up email was sent out (even if was not as well worded as one might hope). People want to vent and I doubt anything I could have posted here would have helped either them or Virgin Blue.

Thanks for your thoughts crazydave, and I hope I speak for the majority of us when I say we have sympathy for whoever was involved - I'm sure most of us have made mistakes like this (or bigger).

All this talk of lawsuits etc is a little disappointing. I thought that we could maybe see the funny side, and maybe share a laugh, but to take it any further is vindictive and less than I would expect from this group. We are all about uncovering the best legitimate value from airlines, not about jumping on people's mistakes and screwing them for it.

This episode hasn't changed my opinion of Virgin Blue one way or another. A mistake happened - a big one, but one easily made - and it was rectified. I can't know yet, but I assume that flights booked in the interim period will be refunded if the client states it was bought only based on the mistaken email (if indeed anyone did this).

 

[oz_mark]

Thanks for your thoughts crazydave, and I hope I speak for the majority of us when I say we have sympathy for whoever was involved - I'm sure most of us have made mistakes like this (or bigger).

Forunately for some of us, a little less public

 

[docjames]

Thanks for replying crazydave. Agree wholeheartedly with Will.

If a positive is to come out of this, I guess it shows there are people out there who want DJ Gold status. Ignoring those who never fly but have velocity accounts (who seem to be a large % of those complaining / demanding things), perhaps another round of targetted QF Gold status-match (or even a few high QF silvers into DJ Gold) might pull some business towards DJ. Combine that with the ability to upgrade to Y+ for gold members etc and DJ should be able to snare more of those lucrative corporates!

 

[Mal]

Forunately for some of us, a little less public

Hehe, one email mistake I made once while troubleshooting issues with a mailing list ended up with me sending a completely blank email to over 1000 internal staffers...

It didn't end up on Twitter, or NoNews, so I was pretty happy. But the weird and wonderful responses I got via phone and email did make me laugh.

I also managed to crash an email server while trying to stop the email flow... but that's another story for another time!

 

[UP4014]

Thanks for replying crazydave. Agree wholeheartedly with Will.

If a positive is to come out of this, I guess it shows there are people out there who want DJ Gold status. Ignoring those who never fly but have velocity accounts (who seem to be a large % of those complaining / demanding things), perhaps another round of targetted QF Gold status-match (or even a few high QF silvers into DJ Gold) might pull some business towards DJ. Combine that with the ability to upgrade to Y+ for gold members etc and DJ should be able to snare more of those lucrative corporates!

Good idea, hey, perhaps they could send out an email about it...

 

[QF WP]

Good to see that you were in a work-free environment crazydave98 - methinks you doth work too hard at the BNE HQ (I drive past every morning on my way to work in Fortitude Valley, thinking of you and Brett).

Yes, I'm sure that there were a bit of crisis management that played out in the couple of hours after they realised the mistake and the rescinding email.

What do they say - not all publicity is good publicity. I think the jury is still out on that one....for one, I can see some glimmer of good publicity coming from it.