Your complaint is important to us and is in a queue

pete m says:

08:51am | 31/08/09

These things are annoying, but remember, flying is subject to weather (outside their control), mechanical issues which cannot be found during normal services and a thousand other little things liek late passengers having their bags removed.  Quite often it is the flyer who causes delays, to other flyers, leaving the airline to cop0 the raw prawn.  But yeah, it is hell annoying.

Funny you pick on Virgin - they have the best on time record in Aust.  Can’t wait for you to try Tiger Airways.

ps I have no link to any airline - just another mug flyer.

Jake the Muss says:

09:46am | 31/08/09

So your complaint is that sometimes planes are late, people like books that you don’t like, and that even though you are aware that supply and demand puts the price of an airport mars bar at $3, you are either incapable of purchasing a mars bar prior to arrival, or actually don’t want a mars bar at all but just are desperately grabbing onto any petty thing you can find to whinge about?

As for complaining about not receiving food; it is better that people who want food individually order and pay for it.  If everyone receives food the amount is inbuilt into the price of the ticket.  Those that don’t want the food are not only being ‘forced’ to purchase it, they are subsidising those that do want the food.  Hardly efficient.  As the old saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Like Pete said, Virgin are pretty awesome.  Wait till you fly Tiger (read:  DON’T fly Tiger).

David says:

10:12am | 31/08/09

Tissue?

Flights are delayed sometimes.  A lot of the time, they’re not.  But you forget about them, don’t you?

I’ve flown a bit this year, and have rarely had any delays.

There’s nothing you can do about it, and writing an article about it isn’t going to make one iota of difference.

If you don’t like it, catch a train or a bus.

Jenn J says:

10:23am | 31/08/09

Lucky you, David. My experienceis closer to the writers. I know sometimes delays can’t be helped, but you’ve got to admit, it’s a mess a lot of the time. What’s wrong with excpecting a service you’ve paid good money for to be on time?

Swill Sieve says:

10:38am | 31/08/09

Airlines rank up there with furniture removalists and plumbers. They’ll get there sometime within a four hour timeframe. Not convenient? Tough.

Heard a discussion last week about a very fast train system between the ‘fat’ (ie profitable) route between Sydney and Melbourne. Setting aside business modelling for the moment, it would take about the same amount of time as getting to the airport, checking in etc etc. I, for one, would give it a go.

Darryl Price says:

11:00am | 31/08/09

So Annie, you had a typical budget airline moment? Nevertheless, a good opportunity for an empathetic (though somewhat lazy) lead into a story. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, I doubt “Dicky” is likely to lose sleep over your comments. Virgin Group - Richard Branson - is not the majority shareholder of Virgin Blue - TOLL hold twice as many shares and control of the airline. As national on-line chief of staff I hope you encourage more research than you apply yourself. In any case is there anyone in Australia who was not aware of the takeover of VBA by Patrick Holdings some years ago?

Christian Bowie says:

03:48pm | 31/08/09

I had a similar issue but regarding a flight closing on me before it was scheduled to leave. I was at the gate a good 15min before it was meant to leave. The plane was still there, myself with only carry-on baggage.

I admitted that I had gotten their later than their required 30 min, but the ground crew staff were rude, not helpful and just plain bitchy. After around $400 later, I was forced to purchase a full fare (again) to get myself to Adelaide.

A formal complaint was raised and I was not to expect anything for four weeks. Yes, you heard right, four weeks. A whole month. Now when that month passed I was would be able to then, query my complaint. But not until then would I be able to see the status of my complaint.

I demanded to speak to someone, and they said there was no way of contact anyone in complaints, no telephone, no email, nothing.

That just infuriated me even more! They push you out of the picture and make it so hard hoping that you’ll forget about it.

Now Virgin as a whole prides itself on customer service, but when you have an issue, it doesn’t want to hear about it.

After waiting the four weeks, I rang back to see what was happening with my complaint. All I got was that I could ring a number and leave a message and they ‘might’ get back to me.

It wasn’t even a person but a voice recording system. With that, I got my letter and emailed it to every email contact at Virign Blue I could find on the internet with the threat of taking further action if I was not responded to. Well within 48 hours came a ‘brush-off’ email from their PR department. Saying that all my requests were denied… basically bad luck.

So with that I’m still bitter about Virgin Blue and their shocking level of service. I still call upon the CEO of Virgin Blue to actually get in line with his customers and see whats happening on the front line rather than sitting on the backbench collecting his hordes of plummeting stocks.

Edward Elric says:

09:24pm | 31/08/09

@Christian - you arrived late. If you read your tickets, you have to be there around 45 mins earlier or you will not be let on the flight. This isn’t bad_service, this is you not being able to read, or thinking that you’re such a speshul snowflake that the rules don’t apply to you.

Christian Bowie says:

05:46pm | 03/09/09

@Edward Eric - I respected the fact that I wasnt at the gate on time. Granted. But the real issue is that I had checked in to my flight (according to Virgin Blue) to speed up checkin and go directly to my gate.

Now you see the Virgin group of companies pride itself on service of their customers. The Sydney ground crew were completely unsympathetic to the situation and were outright rude. At the end of the day I had still payed $200 or so for that flight which goes straight into their pocket.

Now Virign’s policy if you miss your flight is that for an extra $50 they’ll put you on the next flight. Which fairenough, you’d pay.

But here is the issue…because I had used the online check-in feature, to check in to my flight in the cab on the way to the airport, I somehow forfeit this right. Apposed to if I had waited at the check-in desk as my flight was boarding, and checked in with the desks.

Now considering their is no mention of this anywhere, they could have just let me on with just paying the $50.

I feel that for the point of keeping a customer happy and boarding them on the next flight they were determined to rip as much money out of me as possible..

With any customer orientated company, the customer is the most important and I expected more out of Virgin Blue.

Christiaaaan says:

11:07am | 29/10/09

Hey Annie, good to see you’re faffying about here.  I think the problem of waiting rooms and appointment slippage is something which can likely be solved.  We already have the technologies we need to sort this out once and for all—trusted, effortless web interfaces for the service providers;  information feeds for the customers that also provide anonymity;  and hand-held web apps that everyone likes to use.  Now to bring it together, with a healthy dose of reliability, a scalable architecture and a dash of viral marketing.

H of SA says:

11:46am | 22/02/10

Here’s a tip Annie, if you want good airline service….stop paying for the cheapie airlines. .

Ever heard that old saying:

We have 3 kinds of service: Good, Cheap and Fast

Good Serivce is not Cheap
Cheap Service is not Good
Fast Service is not Cheap
Fast Service Cheap is not Good
Good Fast Service is not Cheap

Fly budget, factor in the potential delay