Velocity website down

[DeKa]

Same issue here. I complained to gold@ and they responded saying it's a known issue... No ETA though.

 

[docjames]

Yes, some company rep info, preferably with some sort of update, would be useful.

 

[RooFlyer]

Possibly the only entertaining thing here is to imagine the emails or meetings going on within VA at the moment.

Does anyone know if John Borghetti ( sorry for spelling) does screaming?

 

[straitman]

I can log in and my wife can log in.

She just cancelled family pooling to me as I have re-qualified Platinum but it won't allow a new pooling to be set up in either direction.

Very frustrating :!:

 

[Clivem]

As a shareholder you’d have to wonder just how much money the ‘company’ is missing out on due to the poor performance of both the Virgin Aust. and Velocity Rewards web sites of late.
You only have to read the page after page of posts on Australian frequent flyer websites to know what a real and significant issue this is, anybody claiming it’s not is not in touch with reality – The ongoing ‘Spin’ doctoring- ‘that our team is working hard to fix these issues’ is not going to wash for very much longer and it has got to be effecting the bottom line – witness the recently announced profit down grade.
I really hope Mr. Sankar Narrayan, Mr. Mark Hessell, Mr. Neil Thompson, Mr. Lawrie Turner and a few others are not going to put out their collective hands looking for meaty bonuses this year as this ‘far from good’ state of affairs is very much going down on 'their collective watch'.
Some upfront advice to customers is now well over due ..... EG – The issues are these and they will be fixed by (insert date year) …. Continued uncertainty is only disestablishing things further.
Mr Bonghetti some word from you on this matter is now wholly warranted – you owe it to your, up to now, loyal and hopefully valued customers. There hard to win you don't want to lose them.

 

[pauly7]

Talk about Karma... Was having a bit of a laugh at all these posts and thought I'd give my account a try.

Blocked. Now I'm one of you! Should never have laughed!!

So I feel empathy for the guys who actually need access to the site and who are forced to fly VA at the moment. Thankfully 90% of my travel is QF at the moment and I don't really need to access my VA account.

But I'd be furious though if I did and went though the same circles you guys are being run around.

 

[lovestotravel]

As it stands now I just want to burn all my VFF points and have nothing to do with Virgin EVER again (unless JQ takes over all QF routes)

My previous thoughts of wait until March 2014 and then re-cough my views on VA is gone. I am done and dusted with Virgin and hope to never ever fly them domestically and will burn my 2 million FF points on flights to/from the USA.

I have 3 vouchers from flights I cancelled (due to a schedule change LOL LOL LOL)sitting in the system, and to be honest I am happy enough to let them go, however I will probably redeem them as it will cost Virgin $ to have me there flying and eating/drinking in the lounge.

My rant aside, if we look at April 2013 domestic passenger numbers
Virgin down 5.0%
Qantas up 2.7%

March
Virgin down 3.3%
Qantas down 1.5%

It's one of the bigger jumps for QF of recent times that I can remember, no doubt markis10 will correct me or post more figures :mrgreen:

 

[docjames]

As it stands now I just want to burn all my VFF points and have nothing to do with Virgin EVER again (unless JQ takes over all QF routes)

My previous thoughts of wait until March 2014 and then re-cough my views on VA is gone. I am done and dusted with Virgin and hope to never ever fly them domestically and will burn my 2 million FF points on flights to/from the USA.

I have 3 vouchers from flights I cancelled (due to a schedule change LOL LOL LOL)sitting in the system, and to be honest I am happy enough to let them go, however I will probably redeem them as it will cost Virgin $ to have me there flying and eating/drinking in the lounge.

My rant aside, if we look at April 2013 domestic passenger numbers
Virgin down 5.0%
Qantas up 2.7%

March
Virgin down 3.3%
Qantas down 1.5%

It's one of the bigger jumps for QF of recent times that I can remember, no doubt markis10 will correct me or post more figures :mrgreen:

Over-reaction much?

 

[eastwest101]

Talk about Karma... Was having a bit of a laugh at all these posts and thought I'd give my account a try.

Blocked. Now I'm one of you! Should never have laughed!!

So I feel empathy for the guys who actually need access to the site and who are forced to fly VA at the moment. Thankfully 90% of my travel is QF at the moment and I don't really need to access my VA account.

But I'd be furious though if I did and went though the same circles you guys are being run around.

Hi pauly7 - do you remember how long its been since you logged into Velocity? For some reason I have been able to log into Velocity and see my details throughout this week. I was just thinking that since becoming a member way back (in 2010?) I have never re-set my login password for Velocity since it was first established, maybe I am wrong here but are all the people whom are having trouble logging into Velocity now had a password re-set (either by themselves or by a Velocity operator) since Jan 2013, and maybe people whom have not had a password re-set are still able to log in fine? Just a thought.

In any case - I was most surprised to see my correct SC balance and points balance on the Velocity website immediately before and after the weekend maintenence on the 2nd June.

 

[pauly7]

Hi pauly7 - do you remember how long its been since you logged into Velocity? For some reason I have been able to log into Velocity and see my details throughout this week. I was just thinking that since becoming a member way back (in 2010?) I have never re-set my login password for Velocity since it was first established, maybe I am wrong here but are all the people whom are having trouble logging into Velocity now had a password re-set (either by themselves or by a Velocity operator) since Jan 2013, and maybe people whom have not had a password re-set are still able to log in fine? Just a thought.

In any case - I was most surprised to see my correct SC balance and points balance on the Velocity website immediately before and after the weekend maintenence on the 2nd June.

Probably about 3 weeks ago to see if my 'shop and not earn' points had posted ironically.

Have never reset my password either...

 

[eastwest101]

...

My previous thoughts of wait until March 2014 and then re-cough my views on VA is gone. I am done and dusted with Virgin and hope to never ever fly them domestically and will burn my 2 million FF points on flights to/from the USA.

...

My rant aside, if we look at April 2013 domestic passenger numbers
Virgin down 5.0%
Qantas up 2.7%

March
Virgin down 3.3%
Qantas down 1.5%

It's one of the bigger jumps for QF of recent times that I can remember, no doubt markis10 will correct me or post more figures :mrgreen:

I can sympathsize with your problems lovestotravel and appreciate you sharing your views, is it really the VA and Velocity website problems that have pushed you back to QF or is it a mix of that plus other things?

On the traffic numbers - passenger numbers down in April and May 2013 either from a base of April/May 2012 or from last month may be more about the domestic economy in Australia with possibly leisure travel down as well as business related travel. Alan Kohler was saying that the domestic economy in Australia is now in recession so no surprises that passenger numbers are dropping accross the board. I am sure there are more expert opinions than me about making sense of the passenger numbers....

 

[eastwest101]

Have never reset my password either...

Ok so that theory out the window then. It seems everyone's experiences of the VA and Velocity web sites are sometimes bad but often in such different ways that it isn't easy to make sense of how localized or widespread the numerous problems are!

 

[lovestotravel]

Over-reaction much?

Nope I Virgin has a long list of issues of which has been documented time and time again on here. As per my post the issue of not being able to access my account, nor Virgin taking ownership of the issues is the final straw for me and Virgin.

I can sympathsize with your problems lovestotravel and appreciate you sharing your views, is it really the VA and Velocity website problems that have pushed you back to QF or is it a mix of that plus other things?

Combination, but the website fail of this year just tips me right over.

1. Flight cancellations & schedule changes - Out of say 40 flights I had booked with VA, 16 of them were cancelled totally, most of the others had timing changes. I then booked a few more for this year (3) and again schedule changes of about 1 hour. Not good enough
2. The business product on the 737's. - It had so much potential, but is really a failure in terms of seat, seat comfort, IFE and staff
3. Food onboard - Luke this, Luke that, how long does it take to change a menu, perhaps another trial.....
4. Food in the lounges, hot dogs, hot dogs, hot dogs. Again just pathetic
5. Website - How long does it take to fix a website.... Well for Virgin - Who knows
6. Lounges - Generally too busy, wasting time on a "Club" but no better lounge for Plat/business class. No I don't have tall poppy syndrome as I am well aware of the Qantas C.Lounge of which I will never have access. But to lump plat/business customers in the same lounge as general members is annoying, mainly because of the lack of spirits and lack of food. If the food offerings were better that would be a great start. Of course improving the food standards to that of the QF J lounges simply won't happen as you have so many people in there, they wouldn't be able to afford it, nor keep up with the demand.
7. We are looking into it, we are going to trial it etc etc - How long does it take for things to change.....

QF is by no means perfect, PB being their major failure, but the QF call centre staff are light years ahead, their business product is solid and the lounges far better.

Also their A330's need a refurbishment badly, and starting in late 2014 is very poor to say the least as it will be mid 2015 before you even start to see many of them flying about, that is over 2 year away.

Anyways, Virgin fix your damn website, but of course you know it's cough but just can't get it fixed.

 

[Plutonus]

1. Never acknowledged as a Platinum member

You'll have to excuse my lack of knowledge as I'm not platinum with Qantas, but how do they specifically acknowledge your status when you call? "I see here you're a platinum frequent flyer, thank you so much for choosing to fly with us you're a very important customer of ours and I can't thank you enough"?

Whilst your experience is obviously poor and VA has work to do on both their website and how they handle queries about such things, I feel (and maybe others do too) that you have long declared your dislike for Virgin and your announcement today that you will no longer fly them except to burn points doesn't seem all that different to your previous position, perhaps resulting in your declaration not having that much of a dramatic effect.

 

[QF WP]

Haven't had a response from the CSA on the Plat line with an update. Thank God that their hard product is good, otherwise I'd have cancelled my existing bookings and switched to QF.

Time to escalate? Think a call to my contact on the Office of the CEO.

Maybe I should start a complaint thread and we can "sign" it - then send that into JB with real names and status. Then we might get some action

 

[lovestotravel]

You'll have to excuse my lack of knowledge as I'm not platinum with Qantas, but how do they specifically acknowledge your status when you call? "I see here you're a platinum frequent flyer, thank you so much for choosing to fly with us you're a very important customer of ours and I can't thank you enough"?

Whilst your experience is obviously poor and VA has work to do on both their website and how they handle queries about such things, I feel (and maybe others do too) that you have long declared your dislike for Virgin and your announcement today that you will no longer fly them except to burn points doesn't seem all that different to your previous position, perhaps resulting in your declaration not having that much of a dramatic effect.

QF - They either introduce the call as being the premium/platinum area and the staff are trained far far better than the VA staff.

My issue was when I called VA and I was handballed around, even after entering my correct FF number and pressing the correct options I ended up in an off-shore call centre.

No-one took responsibility to fix the issue, just an eventual handball to "IT support" and no idea if anyone will call me or when it would be fixed.

I had an outstanding issue with Qantas a few years back as a Silver member and they took the time to take the issue on-board and call me back when it was resolved.

Handballing an issue to IT Support is not acceptable. Most companies educate and train staff to take the issues onboard and keep the customer informed. Was I expecting daily calls ? NO. Would I like a call in say a week - Yes. A simple call to say they are still looking into it would have gone along way.

I am not going for a dramatic effect, but clearly stating that due to continuing incompetence from VA they have lost me for a LONG period of time.

VA staff do read this and maybe one day they will work out that annoying their "most valued FF members" is not a key to long-term success.

You can only status match for so long before people will stick with what works from them and for me it's clearly QF

The number of complaints on the VA Facebook wall just grows daily, yet the number on the QF wall is far far less.

No doubt QF will do something at some stage to annoy me, but I highly doubt it could come close to the ongoing VA issues, of which there seems to be no ETA to be fixed. Those issues I have covered off many times and have only repeated them again when asked by the VA rep or other forum members.

All this being said, VA need to actually make some $ and fix the outstanding issues. If VA don't provide a high-level of service, QF would not be doing anything to improve their service. We need 2 well run domestic airlines that provide a premium product for those that want to pay.

QF is playing catch-up in some areas such as the B717 and A330 but I am ranting far too much now.

I'll just continue to post about the inability to log into the Velocity website

 

[QF WP]

Nice comments lovestotravel - have to agree with a lot of them.

 

[oz_mark]

Nope I Virgin has a long list of issues of which has been documented time and time again on here. As per my post the issue of not being able to access my account, nor Virgin taking ownership of the issues is the final straw for me and Virgin.

To me Virgin seem to have made a lot of improvements, but have downed tools before they have really completed any of them. The website, the IFE etc., all offered much promise, but progress seems to have stalled.

Perhaps perception, perhaps reality, but they certainly don't seem to be making progress in addressing the issues. Perhaps what we've got is as good as we're going to get....

 

[docjames]

Interesting list, clearly I don't agree with all of them.

As always, and it seems in this case, your mileage does vary.

 

[Princess Fiona]

To me Virgin seem to have made a lot of improvements, but have downed tools before they have really completed any of them. The website, the IFE etc., all offered much promise, but progress seems to have stalled.

Perhaps perception, perhaps reality, but they certainly don't seem to be making progress in addressing the issues. Perhaps what we've got is as good as we're going to get....

What a depressing thought
I do have to report some good customer service from Carrie-Anne at the BNE Lounge and the Velocity Platinum call centre. I had a fairly complicated 5 segment trip today which went belly up when my second sector BNE-MEL went tech (1 hour late) and I knew I wasn't going to make any of the next 3 sectors. Both Carrie-Anne and the Velocity team were superb, each having to work around website issues and my flights were re-booked without major difficulty