Another Bad Flying Experience: Virgin Atlantic

[Note: misposted this on /Message the other day. Jet lag. I moved the various comments over]

Headed to London from San Francisco, as I was checking in at Virgin, I saw a sign that suggested that for $110 I could upgrade for an emergency exit row, for extra leg room. “Sure,” I thought. Since I already had an aisle seat, I made sure it was an aisle. No problem. I was confirmed.

However, the seat I got, 38c, on Virgin’s flight 20, May 15 2007, had a broken controller for the media, lights, and other controls. But of course I didn’t discover that until we had taken off, and the well-meaning flight crew had already moved people from other seats into the various emergency exit seats that had not been sold. So the 38a, 3bf and 38g seats that I would have happily moved into are now occupied by various folks who have not paid a nickel extra, and their movie and light controls work perfectly. Now it is too late to move me into one of those seats, without displacing and pissing off some other traveler, although I was the only one who had paid to be there.

The purser tried, I must confess, to some extent. After rebooting the entertainment system twice, I pointed out that the lights didn’t work, so it was likely that the controller was broken. He fetched a tiny, tiny DVD player, and some DVDs to play. Although the screen was 1/2 the size of the back-of-the-seat players, I figured “Fine, what the hell.” But the audio for “Superman Returns” was inaudible using Virgin’s headphones. I used my iPod earphones, although they seemed to only work in mono. I had to cram a piece of napkin in my ear, because I got tired of manually pushing the earphone into my ear to hear the audio. Then the tracking started to fail, and then the audio died altogether. I gave it up as a bad deal.

I suggested to the purser that I should get my $110 back, or my old seat back. He said he was unable to do that, that I should just move to 28b, which has working lights and entertainment system. I pointed out that when I upgraded, I had an aisle, and that I only took the upgrade because they guaranteed me an aisle. Tough, he said, more or less, in a pseudo-polite way. “I am offering you a seat equivalent to the one you had, sir.” Although now, it is a middle seat, with a fat guy from Sun’s elbow sticking into it, which I would never have paid $110 to upgrade into. A fact that is miraculously lost on this guy.

At this moment, three other people are in window or aisle seats, with no one in the center seats: watching movies, with full use of their lights, without having paid a nickel extra. I ask for my money back and he says, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that (translated: Blow me.)”

He offered to get me another DVD player. Maybe this one would work better. Extra bonus points: When I pulled the earphones from my ears the casing on one earphone pulled off, the one secured with napkin. Note that you can’t buy those earphones from Apple anymore: the old iPod earbuds. They are shot. He’s sorry. I’m out a set of earphones. Luckily I have another pair of earphones (not classic Apple ones, though) in my luggage (so long as it appears at Heathrow).

I don’t think that my complaint is going to lead to financial devastation for Virgin, but the episode to date suggests that they don’t care. I am not sure that anyone cares about their customers anymore in the airline business, but I certainly plan to find alternatives, now, to Virgin.

It’s so strange, since I spent a lot of time the other day, struggling with their website. I had to try three different browsers to sign up for their frequent flyer program. Firefox and IE both crapped out on Mac. Safari finally worked. I really wanted to Virgin to be the answer to European travel.

Now I want to send them hate-mail, but I am certain that they are inured to it, and will simply ignore me. I guess they are competing on price, and there is no margin for the customer left. So I will have to find someone else for the next $100,000 of my travel to and from Europe. I am not giving another dime to Virgin unless they make this whole thing right. And how can they? Refund my $110 and a roundtrip for the headaches: that would be a good start. Chances of it happening: next to zero.

I told the purser I was going to blog it. “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir. You can fill in a complaint form, if you’d like.” Yes, I’d like.

I will give them one chance. and one week. I bet I will be flying back from Europe on a different airline. Anyone out there want my business?

Next morning: The Purser must have had a change of heart, because this morning he asked me to fill in a few fields in some form, stating that he “was going to try to get my money reimbursed.” It’s astonishing to me that the Purser on a flight can’t unilaterally decide to refund a fee in a circumstance such as this. We’ll see what happens. I am giving them a week.