Virgin's little secret

[blackcat20]

I see very little difference in an airline stuffing up fares (or rewards) and a contracting company stuffing up a tender offer. The only difference may be the contract conditions (T&Cs in VAs case). If they state they can pull out of their deal without penalty, then............

there is nothing in Virgins T&Cs that gives them an out....

 

[Jama]

And that relates to this thread, how?

Finding a wallet in the street and handing it into police is a big difference to legitimately buying a product where the seller has mucked up the price. In business, twice in my life I've stuffed up a quote and sold my companies services for less than what it has cost me to supply them. I had to honour the contract price or I'd have been sued. Some companies go broke trying to honour contracted prices which they've signed to. Some companies try to cut corners and ignore specifications to make the figures work (and that does not constitute a valid and legal option either).

I see very little difference in an airline stuffing up fares (or rewards) and a contracting company stuffing up a tender offer. The only difference may be the contract conditions (T&Cs in VAs case). If they state they can pull out of their deal without penalty, then............

I see no relationship to someones personal morals in returning a genuinely lost article to the rightful owner.

of all the people on this forum I always that you had the closest thinking to mine. I guess not in this case

there is a difference to specifically working out an offer and offering it, even if you didn't work it out correctly, to having something break down and put out offers that we're never meant to go out and you haven't even seen and had a choice to stop. even after this has happened how would you feel about it being hidden from you ( its your problem so you find it) so your lose is maximised and the error is taken advantage of over and over.

i call that taking advantage of someone else's misfortune. Its great that VA have honoured many of these but I don't see why they should be compelled to or why anyone should have the right to complain that they are the ones being taken advantage of.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

of all the people on this forum I always that you had the closest thinking to mine. I guess not in this case

Opps, I hope my post didn't come across as rude.....I didn't intend for that .

But.......if I blamed my calculator for my errors in quoting, I doubt that'd wash (and my faithful old Sharp EL-1607 does have some sticky buttons these days, given it's at least a quarter of a century old)! I have had companies come back to me and suggest I "relook" at some areas (many tenders require detailed breakdowns of the tender price) but many do not. The reality is, an error is an error that someone will pay for. The question is....who?

Recently I bought two 10 packs of AA Duracell batteries from Coles on sale for about $32. Just after I walked out, I went into a reject shop and saw a 24 pack of the same batteries for $26. I bought them and returned the "sale" ones to Coles. They gave me a refund of $36 which was the non-sale price. I told the young girl she made a mistake and her reply was "keep it, it'd take too much to fix" as it was refunded back to a card. I happily walked away with what I considered a good deal. Now on the other hand, had I bought those batteries from Coles for $32 and as I was walking away, a store manager came running up and said that price was a mistake and they were really $36 and I'd have to pay the difference, they'd have an almightly great argument in front of them.

IME, mistake pricing does happen, but it should never be up to the customer to advise of the mistake pricing. We all assume $0 fares + some points are mistakes, but JQ have been known to have $1 fare sales.........do we assume they are mistakes as well? It's only a dollar difference and neither are sustainable, but why should it be up to me to fathom whether a fare offered is a mistake or a limited time promo?

*Note - Prices above are from memory and may not be exact.

 

[Boof1]

there is nothing in Virgins T&Cs that gives them an out....

As the fares in question were booked as Velocity Reward fares there is plenty in the Velocity T&C's that gives Virgin an out, just as I pointed out a couple of months ago:

Have a peek at the Velocity T&C's Section 13.1.9 (b,c,&d). They can cancel or sub them if they wanted to.

Is there a chance that it's only the people that got the email from Virgin about the airfare being honoured that are getting to keep them? At one point it was rumoured that there was as many as 1000 fares sold in J class with this and similar mistakes. That could be as much as $5 million in lost revenue if you assume that the award revenue was sold at current prices.

Just a thought: given the profit down grade and loss guidance last week, that $5 mil might be handy hence why there has been a change of heart...

Boof

 

[muppet]

As the fares in question were booked as Velocity Reward fares there is plenty in the Velocity T&C's that gives Virgin an out, just as I pointed out a couple of months ago:



Is there a chance that it's only the people that got the email from Virgin about the airfare being honoured that are getting to keep them? At one point it was rumoured that there was as many as 1000 fares sold in J class with this and similar mistakes. That could be as much as $5 million in lost revenue if you assume that the award revenue was sold at current prices.

Just a thought: given the profit down grade and loss guidance last week, that $5 mil might be handy hence why there has been a change of heart...

Boof

There's a big difference between contacting a customer a few days later to cancel or sub a mistake fare and waiting 6 or 7 months to do so.
If Velocity waited this long to cancel fares or deny boarding, anyone with half a brain would take them to court for out of pocket expenses.

They have had plenty of opportunities to reduce the impact of their mistake on themselves and their customers and they've chosen not to do anything. In fact they circulated an email honouring the fares. Instead they could have put out an email saying fares won't be honoured, don't make plans or incurr costs.

 

[777]

We were part of the original group who got the "you got lucky" email. We booked CBR-BNE-DPS-MEL-CBR in J for 3 of us. We actually live In MEL so I pushed my luck and pushed the MEL-CBR (is that even the code for Canberra?) leg out by 3 or 4 months (had originally just planned to no show) and VA let us do that. We actually flew that last leg yesterday and no problem. Got a bit nervous looking at this thread.