So has anyone ever attempted to use points to book a hotel on the website?? (Apologies if a similar experience is buried in the preceding 56 pages of woe...Here goes)
1: Navigate to virginaustralia.com.au
2: Click Book hotels
3: Get redirected to Agoda.com
4: Remember that the VA site is rather "special"
5: Enter Velocity number at top of the screen. Try again. Land on agoda again
6: Swear
7: Try to work out how to get to the velocity website, because you know, in the customer's mind it should be obvious that the loyalty scheme is totally separate from the airline
8: Look up and enter velocity number (again)
9: Manage to find where to search for hotels. Not Agoda this time. Score.
8: Search Asia-->Hong Kong-->Kowloon. (because it's a one night stop over, I want to stay on that side, close to a friend's place in Mong kok).
9: No Kowloon hotels exist. Sorry.
10: Search on "Hong Kong Island". Properties on both sides of the harbour come up.
11: Scroll down, see a possible hotel, try to look at room pics. Pixelated and useless.
12: Hit back button. Spinning ball of death. "Your session has timed out"
13: Search on Hong Kong Island again.
14: Pick another possible hotel to look at. Open a new tab and look at photos on the hotel's own website so as not to crash the virgin....ooops...velocity site
15: Like the hotel I'm looking at. Click through to try to book, but hang on, nowhere does it show price in points.
16: Open FAQs in new tab. It says I need to click a pay in points box on the payment page. Fair enough I guess.
17: Prompted. To. Enter. Velocity. Number. Again. (even though top of page says my name...)
18: Swear. Stomp. Give up.
How hard can it possibly be from an IT pov to have a single sign in that sticks? Not to mention all the other bugs. Maybe I'm just more familiar with how things work on the QF website and the sequence over there, but sorry VA, status match offers and all via my employer, but you just haven't managed to shake your LCC roots.
Don't even get me started on the lottery of whether I need to reach for my wallet if I want something to eat on a flight....