Velocity/Virgin websites are RUBBISH

[anat0l]

Maybe if they keep ignoring it, the problems will go away!

This happened 2 days ago: Airport chaos as Virgin's check-in system goes down nationwide

I don't think that has much to do with the website functionality.

 

[Milefest]

I don't think that has much to do with the website functionality.

It has to do with incompetence though. Which is what we're seeing across the board with VA's IT systems. Relying on one piece of hardware for critical VA services is severely irresponsible.

 

[rtyuiop]

Wow - back around the sabre cutover I was thinking once they got past that they could just improve things incrementally, but I swear it's just slowly getting worse. Astonishing...

 

[theevilmuppet]

It has to do with incompetence though. Which is what we're seeing across the board with VA's IT systems. Relying on one piece of hardware for critical VA services is severely irresponsible.

Who said anything about it being a single piece of hardware?

From what I've read, the issue was caused by routing issues. Given the way routing protocols work, these can be very difficult to track down and fix.

 

[rtyuiop]

I'm a network guy (well, network security guy) who works for a company with several heavily used critical networks - my guess would be that article's description of the root cause being 'a malfunctioning internet router' is either completely wrong, or so over simplified it's not at all useful.

 

[theevilmuppet]

I'm a network guy (well, network security guy) who works for a company with several heavily used critical networks - my guess would be that article's description of the root cause being 'a malfunctioning internet router' is either completely wrong, or so over simplified it's not at all useful.

More likely the actual cause is something along the lines of something like:

- A poorly authored filtering rule allowed for eBGP and/or iBGP announcements from a peer router to cause routing issues.

- A line card in a Cisco CRS-3/Juniper T1600/<insert high end box here> developed a fault that was not reliably detected via OAM or BFD.

- Some knob plugged in a device that was configured with the wrong flavour of Spanning Tree Protocol.

- Some other knob uttering "We should have probably provisioned a better sized failover link" after the fact (this happens worryingly frequently)

From what has been published it looks like Virgin outsource their network operations to Optus and my experience with their faults resolution process mirrors those of Telstra, AAPT and TPG - not overly quick due to the layers of process in place, which are unfortunately required when running a non-trivial network and needing to employ not overly technical people at the helpdesk level.

 

[theevilmuppet]

Excellent - Virgin have done some more inconsequential visual tweaking of their booking page:




How exactly effort is being spent on cosmetic changes on the client side entirely achieved with JavaScript and CSS changes (using the discontinued YUI library no less) without any of the actual important functional and non-functional issues being addressed is beyond me. In fact, somehow the basics of Interface Design and HCI have been disregarded as now more clicks and interactions are required to book flights than prior to this change! The list of issues is still unchanged from over 2 years ago:

* There is no way to search for VA-operated flight Award seats without also seeing Any Seat redemptions
* There is no way to only see dates for which there are Award seats available
* Performance is shockingly bad
* The Virgin and Velocity sites are often out of sync with regard to Velocity Points balance
* No calendar view for bookings
* No flexible date search (even Jetstar has this)
* No mixed class Award redemptions
* Aircraft for a given booking are listed by aircraft code - a small thing but really trivial to fix
* All flight information and active JavaScript are embedded in the page instead of referenced or pulled down as required - this isn't helping the poor performance of the site
* Upgrades still require an additional set of steps post-booking, involving calling the GCC for Long Haul International (why?)

This latest change brings the font family, weight and size for the booking flows inline with the recent changes to the Velocity site but breaks consistency with the rest of the Virgin website. Again, this is an incredibly poor choice to make when it comes to ensuring a consistent experience for customers. Why effort is being spent on such changes whilst leaving existing problems unresolved (and not even being able to correctly pluralise "Status Credits" on the Velocity site) is beyond me.

 

[clarkkent]

They've fixed the gift voucher date problem, yay.

 

[anat0l]

Excellent - Virgin have done some more inconsequential visual tweaking of their booking page:
...


How exactly effort is being spent on cosmetic changes on the client side entirely achieved with JavaScript and CSS changes (using the discontinued YUI library no less) without any of the actual important functional and non-functional issues being addressed is beyond me. In fact, somehow the basics of Interface Design and HCI have been disregarded as now more clicks and interactions are required to book flights than prior to this change! The list of issues is still unchanged from over 2 years ago:

* There is no way to search for VA-operated flight Award seats without also seeing Any Seat redemptions
* There is no way to only see dates for which there are Award seats available
* Performance is shockingly bad
* The Virgin and Velocity sites are often out of sync with regard to Velocity Points balance
* No calendar view for bookings
* No flexible date search (even Jetstar has this)
* No mixed class Award redemptions
* Aircraft for a given booking are listed by aircraft code - a small thing but really trivial to fix
* All flight information and active JavaScript are embedded in the page instead of referenced or pulled down as required - this isn't helping the poor performance of the site
* Upgrades still require an additional set of steps post-booking, involving calling the GCC for Long Haul International (why?)

This latest change brings the font family, weight and size for the booking flows inline with the recent changes to the Velocity site but breaks consistency with the rest of the Virgin website. Again, this is an incredibly poor choice to make when it comes to ensuring a consistent experience for customers. Why effort is being spent on such changes whilst leaving existing problems unresolved (and not even being able to correctly pluralise "Status Credits" on the Velocity site) is beyond me.

Interesting what they've done to the booking process to add an extra step explaining the choice of inclusions before actually registering the fare for selection (this includes Business where there is only one selection). Also, a bit more flipping if you want to change your mind on a selection. Seems to be the case for both cash and points bookings. Points bookings are a bit more bizarre because you have both Saver classes of travel represented, and then the Any Seat selection out on its own; viz. I don't see why they just don't consolidate the two (unless they clearly want to show where there is and is not any Reward seating), or otherwise separate out Reward seats and Any Seat displays (three different renders of the fare selection table might be pushing it).

My experience is limited as I don't often go to the VA page, but calendar view has not made an appearance for a rather long time for either cash or points bookings. The only way to do a "flexible" booking is to take advantage of the week-long scroller on the top of the page, which, at least for cash bookings, shows the lowest fare on each day. At least for cash bookings you got a handy indicator of the lowest price in the week-long day scroller (which is a bit broken in the new version appearance-wise).

The only advantage of having all flight info inside the page rather than pulled on demand is that, in theory, that information will be available if one is temporarily offline. I guess it also somewhat decreases the loads on both sides of the connection by reducing the number of potential connections / queries made (viz. one query made to grab all the flight information per day rather than per flight, the latter which is probably not cached either).

Performance wise... there does appear to be some lag and effort when the fare selection table needs to re-render between the main display, selecting a specific fare, or choosing another flight. Not sure how smoothly that manages on non-desktop devices, e.g. tablets.

 

[kevrosmith]

I HATE the new changes... they have no understanding of their supposed market. I don't buy the cheapest fare of the day... I buy flexi fares. I don't want to know the cheapest price for economy. I want to know what the cheapest Flexi fare is across flights. They are dumb dumb dumb. They have reverted to a LCC mindset instead of maintaining their business-customer focus. What was wrong with having the different fare classes all listed?

 

[theevilmuppet]

The only advantage of having all flight info inside the page rather than pulled on demand is that, in theory, that information will be available if one is temporarily offline. I guess it also somewhat decreases the loads on both sides of the connection by reducing the number of potential connections / queries made (viz. one query made to grab all the flight information per day rather than per flight, the latter which is probably not cached either).

Performance wise... there does appear to be some lag and effort when the fare selection table needs to re-render between the main display, selecting a specific fare, or choosing another flight. Not sure how smoothly that manages on non-desktop devices, e.g. tablets.

That advantage is easily achieved with a simple AJAX call, and the minification of the browser-side application would result in greater benefit than their current approach. Their current approach of needing to actively build the page server-side with embedded booking information is an example of poor performance engineering, as the browser-side application could be served as static content resulting in reduced server load and bandwidth usage through web/application acceleration at the network edge.

The Qantas search screen for Classic Rewards is an example of this done properly - classes of interest can be selected and all are displayed on an easy-to-understand calendar and it has been that way for years. Why Virgin can't do something remotely approaching this is mind boggling.

 

[anat0l]

What was wrong with having the different fare classes all listed?

Less fat finger syndrome? (On tablets, that is)

Better than when they separated out Economy and Business.

The Qantas search screen for Classic Rewards is an example of this done properly - classes of interest can be selected and all are displayed on an easy-to-understand calendar and it has been that way for years. Why Virgin can't do something remotely approaching this is mind boggling.

Mind you, that calendar display only achieves the goal to a rather elementary level. It is routinely debatable whether that calendar screen is worth the effort.

 

[theevilmuppet]

Mind you, that calendar display only achieves the goal to a rather elementary level. It is routinely debatable whether that calendar screen is worth the effort.

You're right on the display being somewhat elementary - there are plenty of Business Class availability cases that end up being mixed class redemptions, with a leg from MEL-SYD being in Business and SYD-LAX being in Economy (for example).

Given that Virgin can't seem to manage mixed class redemptions other than for the case of Premium Economy (as that class is only available on the Long Haul routes), I don't think we're in danger of that problem occurring.

 

[Fiches Mouser]

I HATE the new changes... they have no understanding of their supposed market. I don't buy the cheapest fare of the day... I buy flexi fares. I don't want to know the cheapest price for economy. I want to know what the cheapest Flexi fare is across flights. They are dumb dumb dumb. They have reverted to a LCC mindset instead of maintaining their business-customer focus. What was wrong with having the different fare classes all listed?

Agreed! It's like trying to find flexis when booking flights through VA Holidays... but at least that's targeting the LCC market.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

Agreed! It's like trying to find flexis when booking flights through VA Holidays... but at least that's targeting the LCC market.

Now that comment has taken me by surprise! I didn't realise anyone actually used VA holidays? :shock:

 

[Fiches Mouser]

Now that comment has taken me by surprise! I didn't realise anyone actually used VA holidays? :shock:

It's as close to multi-city international as VA gets...

 

[theevilmuppet]

Virgin have seemingly rolled back the changes they made to the booking page earlier. Weird.

 

[RickyT84]

I just wish the VA booking page/system is more stable as it occasionally gives me a 400 error when I am browsing flights.

 

[anat0l]

Virgin have seemingly rolled back the changes they made to the booking page earlier. Weird.

Indeed. Though I didn't notice when they implemented this auto-jump thing when you select a fare. Kind of annoying, especially when the fare summary sidebar then scrolls out of view.

Someone did remark that Virgin supposedly listen and act rather quickly, so who knows - maybe they got a heck of a bad rap on the latest concept.

 

[kevrosmith]

Indeed. Though I didn't notice when they implemented this auto-jump thing when you select a fare. Kind of annoying, especially when the fare summary sidebar then scrolls out of view.

Someone did remark that Virgin supposedly listen and act rather quickly, so who knows - maybe they got a heck of a bad rap on the latest concept.

I submitted feedback to their website straight after I posted my comment. Though I highly doubt that my feedback would've had any direct impact on a decision to rollback...