“AWFUL ADVICE ON A HOTEL IN ORLANDO. WE BOOKED THE COCO KEYS AS ADVISED IT WAS GREAT, FOUND TO OUR COST IT WAS A MOTEL NOT HOTEL AND SHOCKING CLIENTELE AND SERVICE. HOLIDAY SO BAD WOULD NEVER VISIT AMERICA AGAIN OR USE VIRGIN. FAMILY HOTEL WITH SEX SHOP OPPOSITE AND MASSAGE PARLOUR A FEW DOORS DOWN. AVOID AT ALL COSTS”
“False advertising and a 4 day delay in customer services returning a call.
Booked to go to the grand Orlando hotel in Florida. Virgin gives this resort 4/5 rating. It’s a absolute hole... dirty, damp, drug use by ‘family pool’ and unsafe fittings in room. I immediately emailed virgin reps to request a move and had no response for 4 days. They then offered a 3/5 rating hotel and said if I didn’t like the situation I can break contract and find my own place.
Totally below standard customer services. They are absolute amateurs. I had to move for the safety of my family. They’ll honestly ruin your holiday.”
“Similar to previous posts if there was a '0' rating I would have used that. Virgin Holidays have categorically been the worst holiday company we have used for holiday bookings.
We had an issue with them some years ago regarding lost luggage and at they were shocking then and we had never used them since. However, we booked a holiday to Sri Lanka this year through Virgin, giving them the benefit of the doubt, and the service has been a disgrace.
Whilst I completely appreciate that the tragic events in Sri Lanka were completely outside of any travel company control they did not deal with the situation professionally or with any personal conduct. Despite being in constant communication with Virgin from April until the beginning of June (driven by ourselves) to determine whether our holiday would still go ahead, we were finally assured that given the Foreign Office had declared it safe to travel, we would be travelling as normal on 18 July. We then proceeded to arrange and pay for Visas, and organised consultations and vaccinations (all within relatively short timescales) in preparation for our trip.
Low and behold we received a voicemail last week to advise that Virgin were no longer sending travelers to Sri Lanka and our holiday was cancelled, with only 2 weeks before travel. No apology, no explanation, no alternative. Following a call, they still could not advise the rationale behind the cancellation only that there could be a Health and Safety risk or something wrong with the infrastructure, but the lady on the phone could not give a definitive answer. She did say she could look at an alternative and similar holiday; offering us a trip to Asia at an additional £4k on top of what we had already paid. As we declined she advised there was nothing further she could do to help and provided a full refund, which did not reach our account until c.4 days later.
I will be avoiding Virgin Holidays at all cost in future.”
“Absolutely the worst holiday company ever. Care only about the cash. We had a health problem before flight and couldn't travel that day. They were not interested in moving any of the holiday and wanted another 4k to book more seats.
They are not the same company as Virgin Atlantic. They are owned by a completely separate company.
You don't need to use this company. I have since booked a further two holidays to the Caribean. I book the flights direct with Virgin Atlantic and the holiday direct with Sandals. If they are not going to be bothered when things go wrong I may as well take the risks myself.
You have lost good revenue here my friends! Serves you right.”
“We had a fly drive holiday booked with virgin in may this year. The flight was horrendous we had been given seats next to two very very large people. The lady was sitting half of her bum over my seat. I complained and I had to move and spend the rest of the long flight not being able to sit with my husband. We picked up car and went straight to first hotel we had jet lag and needed sleep. 1st hotel comfort suites Kissimmee. Terrible hotel the room was not clean and the breakfast terrible kitchen unclean too. 1 night stay. On driving down to next hotel to Fort Lauderdale husband did not feel well so we swapped places and I drove down to next hotel on itinerary in Fort Lauderdale. Husband was in hotel room very ill for 2 days 5 6 may then hospital for 7 to 21 may. Transpires I was bitten by bedbugs and husband was bitten by a venomous brown recluse spider in 1st hotel. He was so bad he nearly died. We told the hotel comfort suites and virgin about my husbands sickness. The whole holiday ruined. No holiday just a nightmare. We think the comfort suites no virgin customers should be booked in to stay here as it not only is unclean it is dangerous to stay there!”
“Again, would be a 0 if it was a choice. Agree a holiday and a price then they change a lot of to and you just have to accept the changes with no recompense. Absolutely dire customer services and even worse Cheif Executive Office. As others have said, so many bad reviews can't all be wrong. Choose a different company if you want the holiday you booked and one you will enjoy.”
“Again, would be a 0 if it was a choice. Agree a holiday and a price then they change a lot of to and you just have to accept the changes with no recompense. Absolutely dire customer services and even worse Cheif Executive Office. As others have said, so many bad reviews can't all be wrong. Choose a different company if you want the holiday you booked and one you will enjoy.”
“0 stars if there was an option. There’s is such lack of communication when you book a holiday. I very recently had an experience where virgin had changed there flight time completely and didn’t bother letting me know so I ended up spending 9 hours in the airport twiddling my thumbs. No compensation no nothing.
When I emailed about the problem it took two weeks to get back to me!!
Would not recommend as a company to anyone”
“Initially my husband and I couldn’t have the room type we had booked and paid a considerable amount extra for. This was sorted on our second night but we were only in NYC for 5 nights so this was a disappointing start. The rest of the holiday was very good until I had to deal with Virgin customer services or lack of service!
The hotel then overcharged us by £1573.99. We tried to get a refund via the hotel but Virgin’s intermediate company meant we could not get the money back direct and we had to deal with Virgin customer services.
It took a significant number of phone calls and emails over two months before I finally managed to get a manger to send me the supposed refund documents but they clearly showed the money had been refunded to a different random account to the one charged.
During this period on three separate occasions customer complaints staff had told me that I would hear back either by a phone message or email on the same day - this never happened.
The manager has never responded to my email responses or when I have tried to speak with her she has never been directly contactable.
After pointing out the account number error I have been refunded £1385.97 and still have £75.65 of interest charges due to the length of time this has gone on for (initial overcharge was on 14/12/18). Therefore, I am still owed £263.67 despite all my efforts and time wasted writing emails and making phone calls - several of which were never even answered.
For a company which supposedly prides itself on customer service I hope very much that this is deemed unacceptable and I hope to get all the money back soon.”
“My partner and I had booked to go to Jamaica in October 2019 to stay at a Sandals Resort in Ocho Rios so as you can imagine a very expensive holiday. We were really looking forward to it. We had nearly paid off to outstanding balance then received an email which stated ‘’Your flight has been cancelled and this will effect your holiday plans. You have two options.. 1-loose one night and gain £100 refund. 2-gain 2 extra nights and pay us £780 more. I phoned them twice trying to talk about alternatives or just to cancel. In the end we cancelled because they said they can’t cover the cost even though they are at fault. Every time I phoned, I was put on hold, no apology or explanation. We have been into store where we booked it and they kept sending us away saying there’s nothing they can do. They were quick enough to take our money yet can’t deal with their consequences! We felt like we’d been conned. After a few weeks of stress we finally got ALL of our money back, after having to prove the exact amount we were owed! I just feel like it was handled very poorly by virgin over all and I never write bad reviews but we are so disappointed.”
“Booked holiday to Orlando over £8000 11 months prior to travel. Booked the V room. 4 months before due to depart flight changed. 18 days before due to travel e mail received to say lounge fully booked, refund due. Obviously someone didn't carry over the full booking when the flight changed. Due to late notification, no other lounges were available. Very poor customer service. Did a complaint but got a reply which basically said tough. Never book with them again.”
“On holiday at Jumeirah at Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi. Hotel was very good, except that we had booked this hotel particularly because it had a sauna, it might sound a little daft but I always make sure the hotel has a sauna whenever I go away, I really like a good sauna.
Really disappointed to learn, when we got here, that the sauna was not open it was still undergoing testing. Now I can totally understand when you build a new hotel everything will not be ready on day one, but it's really not difficult to advise customers of the fact that a service is not available BEFORE they book the hotel.
This point has been raised twice on the hotel reviews before, so the hotel did know it was causing customers some frustration. I only checked the reviews when we got here.
The first time we have booked with Virgin holidays, my wife saw your new store in Milton Keynes when out shopping, and feel really conned, don't think we can trust you to tell us the truth and that is not good. We take around five holidays a year and will be booking elsewhere else in the future.”
“Spent £10k on a family holiday. Spent first day on the floor in Newark airport with a 5 yr old. No overnight stay pointed out to us. No accommodation booked. Virgin just outsourced the whole holiday to other companies. Terrible aftersales response. I’ll never book again through Virgin. No repeat business.”
“Terrible company I will never book with them again. There planes stink there was rubbish was lying around. had so many hidden costs added on to our holiday we were told we had free car hire when booking but had to upgrade to a bigger car so that is extra you need to pay then when we arrived at the airport the car company didn’t have any cars similar to what we booked was told we can take a car that’s to small for us or upgrade we had to upgrade spend an extra £400. also there was nothing on our paperwork about paying a non refundable damage deposit for our villa at resort but we had to pay it or would have to leave resort”
“2 weeks befor your due to go on holiday and virgin first lie to you saying the hotel has overbooked and then that they use a third party who were to blame for the overbooking(
didn’t realise I was going through two third parties !). There online availability was incorrect and the Room booked was not available.
We can’t cancel as it’s now 1 week before we go ( Boxing Day) and the availability everywhere is scarce they have captured us and now we are travelling under duress.
Virgins offer is that we have to have two different rooms during our stay neither of which are the one we booked.
This has ruined our holiday before we even get their not mentioning the stress it has caused at this time of year with all the sestivity and pressures already in place I feel they have not only ruined our holiday but also our Christmas and also our daughters birthday on New Year’s Day !
We will not be able to settle for the first half of our hol knowing it’s not worth in packing because after 4 days we have to pack and move then unpack again.
There service has been awful and I’ve always respected Mr Bransons business ethics. There ethics are terrible !
We travel 4-5 times a year I can’t say I will use virgin again knowing that there systems are not trustworthy !
Be careful”
“Good Morning Virgin
Firstly to whom ever receives this email please accept my apologizes as this is not aimed at you as an individual or on a personal basis.
We booked through Virgin Holidays to go to Bali and from the start the booking was a nightmare it took over two an hours on the phone to make the booking because the CSR couldn't complete the booking because he didn't realize the
flights had to be paid up front in full.
We were then advised a few weeks before we flew that out return flight schedule had changed, we were now flying from Denpasa to Jakarta there we had a 12.5 stopover then we would fly Amsterdam have another 3 hour stopover before flying London Heathrow in to a different terminal to where our car was parked so we then had to get a train to terminal 3.
I emailed Virgin everyday and most days 2 -4 times a day from the 29th of October requesting a later flight so we would not have to be collected from the hotel at 5.25 am and have the 12.5 hour stopover at Jakarta, I had spoken to Guruda airlines and they had 5 later flights with availability and they were happy to change us to one of these they just needed Virgin to email them and re-issue the E Ticket you would have thought that would have been very simple? Instead we received an email from Ollie at Virgin saying as we had now returned home we would have to contact customer services I emailed back and asked Ollie to please read my email correctly and then reply with a suitable response as I was trying to sort out our return flights . More emails were sent and received and Virgin then said there were no later flight available a complete LIE.
We were then told we would be picked up from the hotel at 5.25 am so we got up at 4.15 am and went to reception at 5.15 am to be told there was no taxi for us and that it had been booked for 7.00 am but the text I have from the resort rep clearly states 5.25 am. ( Please see below ). The same rep was sent an email from Sam asking he / she to contact us a matter of urgency they replied with a very unprofessional response not even dealing with our request. (Please see emails below.)
We traveled 39 hours to get home and when we arrived at London Heathrow one of our suitcases was missing so we left the airport minus a suitcase.
The last few four days of our holiday were ruined as I was totally stressed out with responses we received as our requests were not even being read.
How can a company like Virgin Holidays get it so very very wrong.
Please do not fob us off with another poor response as very have received enough poor customer service from 7 individuals at Virgin Hoildays.
From Linzey Le-Luan a very unhappy customer .”
“Can't say yet as Holiday not due for three more weeks but have sent you a letter. After the poorest ever dealings with an Airline / Package Holiday agent in my 40 years of travelling the world, this is my first and last time using this organisation. I asked for a full refund as matter of courtesy but would get a cancellation charge of over £6,000!!
Listen folks, if you're travelling east stick to Cathay, Eva Air or Singapore. Stick to what you know.
I will tell you the details if this holiday takes place!! Don't hold your breathe.
What a dire organisation.
My Wife and I are not adverse to spending money on what we want on a holiday. Seems that Virgin want to sell a standard package holiday and if any deviation, such as upgrades from Economy to Business is requested then Virgin can't cope with it. Additionally, they do not read the Itinerary before emailing it to you. To this day my Itinerary is not correct and is worrying my Wife.
Poor, poor and poor.”
“My wife had serious accident a few weeks before our planned departure to Barbados, meaning that we could not travel.
The on-line brochure advised that the hotel was not suitable for persons in wheelchair.
So I contacted Virgin Holidays, explained the situation and requested that the holiday be delayed for a few weeks - happy to pay any additional costs.
But Virgin Holidays refused our request, and would only offer cancellation.
With eight weeks before departure Virgin Holidays insisted on 75% cancellation fee whereas booking conditions says 30%.
Emailed CEO of Virgin Holidays but got no help, he added that cancellation would increase to 100% if not cancelled in few days.
As very loyal customers of Virgin Holidays feel really upset at a horrendous treatment from Virgin Holidays.”
“Rubish. Booked a holliday with virgin holiday and they cancelled it by email without any kind of explanation. A total waste of time, nighmare customer service.”
