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Hi all,
I may have to cancel a booking in October. I booked the flights on my Virgin Atlantic Credit Card but have since cancelled the card a few months ago. I booked the flight over the phone because I applied my upgrade voucher and the agent on the phone said to cancel it would cost £350 per person. I’m ok with that as the refund would still be over £1000 each plus I would obviously cut my losses on hotel/car hire etc. I have a few questions.
1) if I do cancel, can I ask Virgin to refund me via bank transfer or another method that doesn’t involve a refund to the original payment method. I don’t want to faff around with the credit card having to be reopened and have the money transferred back to me.
2) the itinerary I had was a multi city route from LHR – SFO – SLC – LHR. This is three sectors in total. Each sector has had a time change since the original booking. Do you think that because it’s had so many changes I could wangle not having to pay the cancellation fee?
Thanks in advance.
1) No. It will go back to your card, then you’ll have to ring up and get it sent to your bank from there. The card doesn’t reopen in any real way.
2) Yes if the time is greater a couple of hours. If it is a minor change however it is still worth asking as they may have it anyway if you state it no longer works for your onwards travel plans… but you may not have a right to free cancellation, depending on the times.
on 1 they will likely insist on refunding to your now ex credit card. I don’t think the card will be re-opened but the £ just held in suspense but you will need to contact the CC company to get it back. If they do agree to pay by e.g. bank transfer it will still be a faff re as they will want ID, address and bank statements
on 2 it depends on the degree of the schedule changes and when in the trip they have occured. I think with VS it’s a 4 hour minimum change before you can cancel for free.
Here’s the T+C’s for standard virgin ticketing:
https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/partner-hub/policies/schedule-changes.html
3hrs is the magic limit for having a right to cancellation, however there are some other opportunities such as onward connection difficulties.
As an aside – are you on a standard non-flex ticket? Surprised to hear that the cancellation fee’s are ‘only’ £350, unless this is the price less government taxes/APD.
As an aside – are you on a standard non-flex ticket? Surprised to hear that the cancellation fee’s are ‘only’ £350, unless this is the price less government taxes/APD.
I did think when I booked it that the refund fee quoted was less than I was expecting, usually it’s pretty much that you loose all your money apart from taxes. It may have been because I booked a cash fare with an upgrade voucher so that made it into a different sort of fare rule? Not sure.
Here’s the T+C’s for standard virgin ticketing:
https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/partner-hub/policies/schedule-changes.html
3hrs is the magic limit for having a right to cancellation, however there are some other opportunities such as onward connection difficulties.
As it turns out, the final sector from SLC to LHR has had a change to an earlier time – and the change is over 3 hours. If I was going on the trip the new time would actually be better than what I booked, but as I now want to cancel it’s a pretty convenient problem to have as they have agreed to refund me in full!
Anyone have any recent experience of the time a refund should take to be processed? The email I got from Virgin said 7 business days, so that would be this coming Tuesday 30th as the 7th day. If I haven’t heard anything from them by this date is it worth chasing?
TBH I’d give it a few days after that before chasing to allow time for it to appear on your CC statement.
The 7 days is their processing time not when it gets to your account – and they don’t control that part of the process
Yes, but I assume I’ll receive some sort of communication that the refund has been processed irrespective of the time it takes to come back to my card, so my question was really at what point should I chase if I’ve had no communication rather than actually seen the money land in my account.
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