Virgin Holidays, www.virginholidays.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

None

Their administration is appalling. There seems to be no checks made between what is booked and what is confirmed and no cross checks made when the travel documents are sent out. It's relatively easy to get through to Sales, but it's downhill from there.

Booked the rather expensive 'Out of Africa' tour back in September 2009 for departure on 4 April 2009. Took three weeks for availability to come through. Waited four weeks for confirmation invoice and when it did arrive, the balance due date was the same as the invoice date - impossible! Repeated requests made for an amended invoice - waited nine weeks for this. Thinking that we would keep everything in one pot, we booked connecting flights between Manchester and London through Virgin - big mistake! When the travel documents arrived a couple of weeks before departure we noticed they had us down for the incorrect flight from Manchester. Tried unsuccessfully to contact them to query this and in the end I had to call BMI myself to check that we were on the afternoon flight as originally scheduled. We still needed an amended e-ticket from Virgin but with three days to go before the holiday we were still struggling to get through. I did get through to Customer Relations who were of no help at all, needing, as they said, to put me through to Worldwide where I would have to join a queue. Eventually contact was made and we insisted they send the correct e-ticket by email as there was no time to wait for the post. They sent 15 emails with attachments (full itineraries but still with the wrong flight). It was as if they weren't listening - the 16th email contained the correct flight and corresponding e-ticket. Off we went on the 4th - on the correct flight down to London. Checked in at the automatic screen for the Virgin flight to Nairobi; went to the bag drop and ..... another Virgin mess. We were told our ticket had been cancelled because payment was not shown so it was voided and a refund made to us! Needless to say none of this was correct - it was eventually sorted by the Customer Service lady at Heathrow but it was a horrible experience. I'm on my fifth letter now to Virgin and have received neither an acknowledgement nor a reply to any of them to date.