This particular Arsehole and his family spent some time in the US in March 2018 and all hold Gold or higher status with Virgin Australia. This is meant to provide a few privileges:
- Access to lounges with Virgin Australia and their partners, including Delta
- A 75% bonus on points earned in Virgin Australia and Delta flights (100% if you’re a Platinum member, which this particular Arsehole is)
- Priority boarding and baggage
- Priority phone service from a specialised team of Virgin Australia staff
Unfortunately, the to-date smooth experience my family and I have enjoyed with Virgin Australia experienced turbulence:
- As if they were inflicting the “experience” of “flying” Jetstar upon themselves, my parents were denied access to the Delta SkyClub at Los Angeles International
- Even though Virgin Australia state that Velocity Gold members earn a 75% Points Bonus on all airfares on VA and DL tickets operated by either VA or DL, bonuses of a mere 37.5% were awarded.
- 12 days after completing the trans-Pacific leg of their journey, the earned points and status credits had not credited to my family’s accounts. At all.
- The Family Pooling arrangement between two of my family’s members was severed, but VA continued sweeping the points and status credits to the beneficiary anyway.
This particular Arsehole didn’t think this would be a problem, as the situation could be discussed with the skilled, customer-focused people that Gold and Platinum members get access to. Alas, this was not to be the case:
- Platinum members are now shunted into the same contact centres as everyone else.
- Basic mathematics was provably impossible for those tasked with addressing my concerns.
- The first response was seemingly written by someone that failed remedial high school English and was named Chan’tel by their evil, sadistic parents and contained a terrible turn of phrase:
I’m sorry that you feel that way
When a company states that they’re sorry that you “feel” a certain way, they have completely failed to comprehend the issue, let alone engage in acknowledgement, correction and making it right. I wrote back to Chan’tel Brit-tney L3a and stated the following:
- The stated concerns have not been addressed – please review the correspondence and correct this
- If a discussion is required, note that the aggrieved parties are currently on the US west coast
Things did not get better from this point.
We know where Ralph Wiggum went for work experience
At 11pm local time, my phone rang and a very insistent person calling themselves “Ignatius” decided that they would launch into telling me that the concerns my family and I had stated were wrong and that nothing needed to be done. This is an example of where preparation is the best possible weapon one has in such disputes:
- “Ignatius” attempted to ignore Virgin’s own earning charts
- “Ignatius” displayed a complete lack of awareness of prior correspondence beyond a highly-trivial extent
Most worryingly, and to my infinite horror, “Ignatius” didn’t understand my favourite C word!
In an act of defiance of this particular Arsehole, “Ignatius” sent me an e-mail summary of our conversation, if one applies the the term summary in this instance in the same way one applies “factual account” to Harry Potter.
At this point, this Arsehole was looking at inevitable defeat, with many wanting him to finally be put in his place.
To be continued.