The Perfect Storm

[Lord Mud]

Hi guys, I am sorry for posting this here but could not quite figure out a better place for it.

Yesterday was the worst flight experience I have ever taken. I have recently returned to Australia and have taken a job with a company that likes to fly "cheapest option first" between virgin and Qantas. So yesterday was a Virgin day. Those of you who flew yetsreday are probably aware of the hell that was the Virgins flights especially on the eastern seaboard.

I hate to whinge but I have tried to send Virgins complaints dept. a nice email outlining my issues yesterday only to find out that the complaints emails from the website can be no longer than 2400 chars. I tried to call them to get an email address or to talk to someone and was told there is no direct access to the Guest Relations dept via phone an that I can fax or mail it to them with 21day turnaround. There is no direct email address.:shock:

I am going to tap your collective minds and ask is there actually someone I can contact and get spoken to in a quicker period of time? Or an email address of someone who can take a complaint? I was going to post my complaint letter here but there is no point doing that until I can actually get it to the airline itself..

Is this common (lack of) service from Virgin?

 

[samh004]

This relatively un-recent thread reveals that they only deal with complaints through the web form, so perhaps you could shorten it and add on that you have more to say, but you can’t because of the restriction, then when they do reply, tack the rest on.

You could also try the email on this page, but assuming it’s the wrong department, I’m not sure they’ll pass it onto the right one.

 

[markis10]

I am curious as to the problems you encountered yesterday that would be worthy of a complaint, perhaps you would like to share your experience here, you could always post your complaint here and just put the URL on the Virgin feedback form!

 

[Lord Mud]

Thanks for that advice samh004.

I went ahead and did that. I got an automated response saying that I will get a response within 21 days.

This is bizarre from a company that values itself on customer service so heavily. Every person I hear about raves about Virgins customer service. I wonder if they get so few complaints that they feel they don't need a fulltime Guest relations dept.

markis10 I will post the letter I had hoped to send. It details my day fairly well.

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to you to discuss the way I was "handled" by your company on Tuesday 10/8/10. I had a flight booked between Brisbane and Melbourne scheduled for 5pm. I logged onto your website in order to check in at 1145am to be informed by an error screen that there was a problem with my booking and that in the background could see the word "cancelled". I tried again and was told the same. I then had to search your site for a contact number. I then proceeded to contact your reservation dept. and finally (20minutes) later spoke to a lady whose name I did not get. I asked her about my flight and her response was that "the airline can't contact everyone quickly and that my name was probably on the list" She asked me if I would like to change my flight and she gave the option of a 2pm flight via Sydney or a 7pm flight via Adelaide as there was no more room on any Melbourne direct flights. I asked for the 2pm Sydney flight as I felt the closer to home the sooner was better for me.

I headed to the airport and I asked to speak to a guest relations person at the airport and was told there were none. I was also told that I should "suck it up" and that I wasn't the only one in this position. I was then told to proceed to the baggage drop counter. The lady there was helpful and gave me your general number make a complaint. I was sent to gate 45 for a 1330 boarding. The flight started boarding at around 1445 and finally took off at 1515. This obviously put my connecting flight to Melbourne in jeopardy. I tried to speak to a FA who politely brushed me off and said that she would look into it. No-one got back to me however and I had to approach someone at the gate lounge in Sydney. When flying with Qantas in similar situations they have always tried to let you know what's going on before you arrive to save customers the hassle of searching for information or being stressed at missing a connecting flight. I spoke to a man at Sydney, who's name was Ben, and while he was somewhat helpful it was in some respects too little too late.

I was booked to fly DJ860 to Melbourne at 1615 but our Brisbane flight touched down at that time. Ben gave me a boarding card for flight DJ864 and gave me two $6 food vouchers and told me to rush down to another gate in order to catch the flight as it was leaving.

This flight turned out to be a red herring. We boarded at 1715 and then taxied out to the run way only to be told that the plane had engineering issues and that we would have to go back to the terminal to get an engineer to look at the plane. The plane took 20mins to get back to the terminal and then we were asked to sit and wait as the engineer did an inspection. This took around 20 minutes and we were finally told that we were to disembark and seek other arrangements. I disembarked and made my way to the gate desk again this time to be told virtually nothing. The gate clerk said I was now booked on DJ876 that is boarding at 1810. I made my way down to the gate and had to wait until 1915 before this plane started boarding. Once we had barded we sat on the end of the gantry for around 20 minutes as now the jetway was not functioning and that the motor needed replacing. This plane finally took off 1950 and we arrived in Melbourne at 2045.

I now had to wait and see if my bag managed to follow me on the same plane. This was not to be the case and I had to then file a claim for my bag and wait for a courier to deliver it at some time in the middle of the night. I finally made it home at 10pm. The courier showed up at 1am.

In my years of flying, in places all over the world, I have never had a day like this before. A comedy of errors you could say. I came across all types of your staff, from the helpful to the downright rude, and was pushed around like a farm animal going to market. Not once was anyone from your airline proactive in your approach to customer service. I was largely ignored, my concerns just more to add to the list. I understand bad days, bad weather, engineering issues, but I would have liked for someone to have approached me to tell me that I was going to miss my connection and that other arrangements were being made, would have made me feel better about the system. But even before that a text or email telling me my original flight was cancelled in lieu of a phone call would have allowed me adequate time to make better arrangements.

All of these things I would expect and have received from other airlines like Qantas and even Jetstar. I hope my letter helps you to investigate and solve what went wrong yesterday, however my willingness to fly your airline has significantly diminished and will only be doing so at the request of my company when other arrangements cannot be made.

Regards

"Lord Mud"

 

[samh004]

Not much emotion in that, well worded!

To chime in with a similar situation that was handled better with Qantas, I flew back from ZQN on Sunday on a delayed 1310 flight that actually left around 1700. Before we landed the cabin crew announced what would happen regarding different onward connections to various cities, and when the plane landed, there was a man handing out official apology letters explaining the entire situation as we disembarked.

Announcements were made in the baggage hall regarding bags that had to be offloaded, though most came with the a/c and when I got through to the domestic terminal, I’d already been rebooked on a later flight that left a little late, but arrived on time.

It’s not hard to do things the right way.

 

[Flashback]

Reading that though, I don't really see anything wrong with what happened. Original flight was canceled (for whatever reason) and you were then accommodated on another flight (of which you had the choice of which ones to take).

All up I'd say that everything was handled as it should be.

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Not much emotion in that, well worded!

+1

Maybe send "Crazy Dave" a PM. He's like the unofficial DJ rep around here.

Sounded like you had "one of those days". They are a right royal pain in the back side when it happens. I try to just "go with the flow", but it's difficult at the best of times on a day like that. I'm sure that if this happened while flying QF, you'd get a $50 or $100 voucher out of it.

Ok, l think that l might have summarized it here;

BNE-MEL 5pm scheduled DJ flight
Logs in @11:45 on flight departure day to find out a problem with the flight 5pm flight
He calls DJ hotline and is put on a 2pm BNE-SYD-MEL flight
Was told to harden up by DJ (disputable) at airport
Heads to gate for a 13:30 boarding time
Boarding starts at 14:45 (45 minutes "after" departure time)
Takes off @15:15 - will miss SYD-MEL (DJ860 14:15dep) connection because of delay
Asked FA's on board for help with connecting flight, was brushed off
Lands at SYD @16:15
Misses SYD-MEL flight because of late arrival of previous flight.
Is put on DJ864 flight, SYD-MEL 16:45 departure
Mechanical problems on this flight, unloaded
Put on another flight, DJ876 departure 18:10
Departs at 19:50 (over an hour and a half late)
Arrive in MEL 20:45
Bags lost in transit
Arrives home at 22:00
Bags arrive at 01:00 next morning

 

[JeniSkunk]

This is bizarre from a company that values itself on customer service so heavily. Every person I hear about raves about Virgins customer service. I wonder if they get so few complaints that they feel they don't need a fulltime Guest relations dept.

markis10 I will post the letter I had hoped to send. It details my day fairly well.

Another suggestion would be to PM the known reps from Virgin here on the forums about this thread, so they can know of what happened and also read the complete e-mail that you'd intended to send.

Jenifur Charne

 

[Lord Mud]

I am curious as to the problems you encountered yesterday that would be worthy of a complaint, perhaps you would like to share your experience here, you could always post your complaint here and just put the URL on the Virgin feedback form!

+1

Maybe send "Crazy Dave" a PM. He's like the unofficial DJ rep around here.

Sounded like you had "one of those days". They are a right royal pain in the back side when it happens. I try to just "go with the flow", but it's difficult at the best of times on a day like that. I'm sure that if this happened while flying QF, you'd get a $50 or $100 voucher out of it.

Ok, l think that l might have summarized it here;

BNE-MEL 5pm scheduled DJ flight
Logs in @11:45 on flight departure day to find out a problem with the flight 5pm flight
He calls DJ hotline and is put on a 2pm BNE-SYD-MEL flight
Was told to harden up by DJ (disputable) at airport
Heads to gate for a 13:30 boarding time
Boarding starts at 14:45 (45 minutes "after" departure time)
Takes off @15:15 - will miss SYD-MEL (DJ860 14:15dep) connection because of delay
Asked FA's on board for help with connecting flight, was brushed off
Lands at SYD @16:15
Misses SYD-MEL flight because of late arrival of previous flight.
Is put on DJ864 flight, SYD-MEL 16:45 departure
Mechanical problems on this flight, unloaded
Put on another flight, DJ876 departure 18:10
Departs at 19:50 (over an hour and a half late)
Arrive in MEL 20:45
Bags lost in transit
Arrives home at 22:00
Bags arrive at 01:00 next morning

That about sums it up.

Flash, its not about what actually happened I guess but more about the way it was handled. I am not unhappy I got home but I think that some form of contact proactively from the airline would have smoothed over the difficulty of the day. It is common for these problems to happen (I dont believe to this extent) and I have had experience with that and it makes little issue to me. I am taking exception to the lack of contact and lack of interest. It amazes me that a company with such a shtick about customer service can't even text its pax when there is a problem rather than have them find out the hard way. If I had not done an online check -in when I did, would I have made it home at all yesterday? Who knows?

 

[thewinchester]

DJ are pretty quick at responding to feedback, positive or otherwise... unlike a specific mainline Australian carrier who's poor behaviour in this regard is well known. On average I've always received a written response back within 10-14 days of enquiry, but never later. Never has an enquiry been ignored or forgotten about.

If you are really wanting to email them direct, their best email address for the Guest Relations Department is:
[email protected]

My best advice is to keep it simple. Some key points:

• Be objective,
• avoid dealing in emotions (unless you're summarising specifically your feelings arising from a staff interaction or an overall impression of the experience),
• keep your language conciliatory,
• where possible, identify people employed by the airline who delivered both positive and negative outcomes when interacting with them (award bouquets where deserved, brickbats where justified),
• Make sure there's reasonable descriptive (and non-emotional) detail so they can confirm the circumstances and and see the issue through your eyes to understand the impact.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

I think a number of cities were affected. The DJ flight DRW/BNE at 0140 on 11 Aug was cancelled due to bad weather and rescheduled about 14 hours later to 1515.

The inbound flight from BNE arrived at 0500 instead of 0100 but given the fact there was a ten hour break between the flight arriving & departing DRW it sounds like the crew were out of hours and had to have the mandatory rest period.

It's a pity DJ weren't able to pax a crew up on the inbound flight so they could operate back straight away.

I understand most of the pax stayed at the airport overnight as no hotel accomm was provided however they did receive a $40.00 voucher for future DJ travel.

Not sure of their policy with regards transferring pax on to other airlines flights but last time DJ cancelled their DRW/BNE flight they booked a lot of pax onto QF via SYD. The scenario was a little different though as the DJ flight had taken off from BNE but had to return to BNE due to a disruptive pax then flight was subsequently cancelled altogether.

In DJ's defence maybe they thought crew would be okay hours wise to operate back but that changed enroute. If they'd known a few hours before the flight got to DRW they would've had sufficient time to book pax on QF as they had over 90 seats available.

 

[Deleted member 24491]

I'm in BNE now - My flight on DJ342 to MEL was cancelled and I must fly direct at 7pm or via SYD. Hmm... Better communication should be a priority.

 

[crazydave98]

That about sums it up.

Flash, its not about what actually happened I guess but more about the way it was handled. I am not unhappy I got home but I think that some form of contact proactively from the airline would have smoothed over the difficulty of the day. It is common for these problems to happen (I dont believe to this extent) and I have had experience with that and it makes little issue to me. I am taking exception to the lack of contact and lack of interest. It amazes me that a company with such a shtick about customer service can't even text its pax when there is a problem rather than have them find out the hard way. If I had not done an online check -in when I did, would I have made it home at all yesterday? Who knows?

Lord Mud,
Thank you for your email - I will ensure it gets to our General Manager of Product and Guest Services. We naturally regret and apologise for the inconvenience. It is our intention to be proactive in situations like this but plainly our systems and processes were not up to the task on that day. I am not across the details of your specific situation, but without trying to make any excuses for our non-performance would like to make the following observations.

• At present our reaccommodation processes are manual. At the time you tried to check-in 5 hours prior to departure we were likely still in the process of moving guests from your flight to other flights. We do not contact people until we have confirmed alternative arrangements.
• Unfortunately because the process is manual, and sometimes flights are cancelled and guests have to be reaccommodated close to scheduled departure, sometimes we cannot contact people in time. In your case it is likely that the situation in the previous point applied and you contacted us before we had rebooked you on another flight.
• We are investing in a Sabre guest reaccomodation system which will automate and speed up the process and significantly reduce occurences such as described above. This is due to come online early next year. It should have been done some time ago but we have just changed reservations systems and need to first stabilise that system and roll out some later releases.
• You have highlighted a valuable point - that the error message in check-in should give you a hotline number to call rather than making you look for it and I will get that attended too.
• You have also highlighted that we need to ensure cabin crew receive and act on information about connecting guests. At present this is done manually (ops centre radios pilots who relay this information to cabin crew) and while it generally works evidently did not in this situation. We are introducing a ground-to-aircraft communications system called ACARS which will assist here.
• Finally you have also highlighted that communications on the ground neeeds to be improved with our ground staff provided more timely information. This is subject of an initiative which has the personal attention of our new CEO.

Lord Mud, I apologise again that the situation was not handled as it should have been and hope that my notes above at least give you confidence that we are conscious of the situation and taking steps to reduce the likelihood of reoccurence. Thank you for taking the time to put your experience in writing as it will serve as a valuable case study.

regards

CrazyDave98

 

[Oneworldplus2]

I think it's great that "Crazy Dave" has the balls (can l say that?) to get on a forum like this and apologize. I don't see QF doing such things. Well done.

 

[Flashback]

Great response crazydave98 and good to see that steps are being taken to try and prevent similar occurrences in the future.

 

[markis10]

I wonder why more companies dont understand the need to be approachable and communicative in similar situations. A resonable person would appreciate the problem being recognised and the feedback provided such as that by crazydave98 here as being a genuine attempt to make sure the experience is better in the future, then again we would have a lot less to discuss here :shock:.

 

[straitman]

Excellent response CrazyDave98.

 

[haydensydney]

[*]We are investing in a Sabre guest reaccomodation system...
[*]We are introducing a ground-to-aircraft communications system....

I am a big DJ fan however these two points strike me - for an airline that has been flying in Australian skies as long as you guys have, to not have these facilities in place already does seem somewhat sloppy. Has there always been this lack of investment, even for facilities that would normally be considered "essential" for an airline to run effectively?

 

[kamchatsky]

I am a big DJ fan however these two points strike me - for an airline that has been flying in Australian skies as long as you guys have, to not have these facilities in place already does seem somewhat sloppy. Has there always been this lack of investment, even for facilities that would normally be considered "essential" for an airline to run effectively?

I think it is slightly harsh on DJ here. Afterall they were originally a LCC, and it costs a fortune to implement and refresh IT systems. Give them time and they will improve. They need to keep their cash flow first.

BTW, well done crazydave98!

 

[markis10]

Access to ACARS as a ground station does cost a lot of money, I would suggest as DJ expand they see the value.