“When we arrived we were told our 11 and 9 year old had no beds as Virgin booked a non existent room for us. Second hotel no bed sheets for children and didn’t get any until after midnight food was very poor three people in our family got food poisoning. Virgin changed our hotel last minute to a hotel we would never have chosen was like 18-30’s with smoking in swimming pool inappropriate games / entertainment and adults having sex in the pool. No option to move hotel or come home early awful customer service since we have been home. Would never go again with virgin”
“Booked a holiday with Virgin to Mexico 10 months ahead of our travel date. Had to travel on a Saturday due to work commitments and paid over £600 more to fly on the Saturday. 4 months after paying for the holiday I logged on to reserve seats to see the flights had moved from the Saturday to mid-week. I contacted Customer Services to be told they were no longer flying on a Saturday and it was within their rights to change our schedule. I asked when we were going to be informed of the change to be told ‘they would have got around to it at some point’.
I said we couldn’t fly mid-week so the holiday needed to be cancelled to be told I would incur a cancellation fee! I asked why, as this is not the holiday I had even booked to be told that is their policy. I eventually got the holiday cancelled but will never book with Virgin again due to their shocking customer service”
“Shocking duty of care failure and poor customer service after being flown out to Florida against our wishes into the already known path of hurricane irma only to be evacuated the day after we arrived. Now they won't give us a full refund. Like earlier posts I will not be booking with Virgin Holidays ever again.”
“Virgin flight staff very rude encouraging customers to complain chief air hostess abrupt. Hotel not up to standard for a 5 star hotel, glasses left all over the floors, smell of fish lingering over pool, staff have a could not careless attitude, food cold from main restaurant in the shingle creek hotel Orlando. Night porters talking outside rooms at 2.30am in the morning. Room next to us had more than three fully grown adults staying in it, very noisy so could not sleep. Virgin staff were never around to discuss issues. Virgin handbook does not tell you where you nearest meeting is. Virgin customer services is an absolute joke, they don't care at all about your experience they just want your money. An absolutely appalling honeymoon. I would not recommend virgin or there holidays to anyone.”
“Trying to find out about visas to Cuba, i have had 6 different answers and they all say something different - how hard is it to answer this simple question CORRECTLY Can i buy at the airport on the day and is it still £15”
“Firstly 6 weeks before our holiday to Antigua they changed our resort no options just put us where they wanted. When I tired to get information there was no answers to emails calling them was pointless and when I did get a call it was Vague. Once we arrived the room they promised wasn't it the hotel had to upgrade us and informed us that no communication from virgin had been received regarding our needs. Even though virgin promised they had. Rep wasn't interested ether.
We are currently leaving under hurricane irma virgin have non contacted us reassured us or anything. Disgusting and shocking. Should have booked with thompson. Once you've paid virgin you don't exist!”
“Bad treatment at check in by third party airline... booked with this lot and spent a lot of money with them. But the moment you have a complaint they don't want to know. Just receive emails telling you to contact the airline company direct. Simply a case of ........they've had your money and just don't care...........never ever again will we use this lot again!!!!
Save yourself thousands and book through another travel agent!!!!”
“Had a look for a group party going to Las Vagas for my Weddning in 2018. Some information was missing / did not understand so i used the website chat option. after being kept waiting for 7 minutes for the operator to answer my first question he was rude and unhelpful. i did explain to him its for a Wedding for 2 men and he kept saying bride and groom. if someone can make me feel like this on the internet what are the staff like in person??”
“We had to change are holiday date due to my dad been really ill, when we phoned virgin and explained we was told that we would loose are holiday .my sister had booked to go the same time as us but with Thomas cook they couldn't do enough for her she was told she had up to one year to book different dates and just had to pay the extra in the price of flights.[it cost her £20 each] . I phoned virgin back and told them this then i was told that they would change the dates but i had 24 hours to give them new dates and it would be £185 each and any extras for flights ect.[All together £700]. [We both had 3 in are party] My Dad was dying and it was the last thing i could think of . when i explained this i was told it wasn't them it was the airline so we just book any dates to stop us loosing the holiday. My dad died on the 27th of may when we would have been away . In the last few week i have found out from virgin atlantic that virgin hols had lied to us that they had not taken any payments for the flight or the £185 each to change the flights .We was told under them circumstances they wouldn't for charge us to amend . When i phoned virgin hols back i was told to be great full we still had a holiday.[ the customer service was so bad i have no words] . Please don't book with virgin if you want good customer service after they have your money book with Thomas cook”
“We are really disappointed with the Customer Service we've received from Virgin in regard to complaints from our recent holiday to Orlando.
We booked all aspects of our holiday through Virgin including flights, villa accommodation, park tickets and car. Our holiday party consisted of two OAP's, two adults and two young children (age 2 and 4). This was a big holiday for us, and we had been saving for nearly 3 years to be able to go.
In summary, our complaints were:
Alamo Car Hire (preferred supplier of Virgin) tried to tell us we'd booked a vehicle too small for our needs and tried to push a larger vehicle upon us with additional charges that we didn't need. It was only after we insisted we see the vehicle that we'd booked that she conceded it might be large enough, and it was.
As it was late by the time we'd cleared customs and been delayed by the attempted up-sell of the hire car, it was dark when we left with the hire car. In the morning we saw several dents and scrapes on the vehicle and were worried as a walk-around hadn't been carried out by Alamo. We had to contact Alamo to complain.
The kitchen was under-equipped. It was a self-catering holiday but we were limited with what we could cook.
Both my 2 year old daughter and elderly mother-in-law slipped in the showers. No bath mats were provided. This was hazardous and Virgin have tried to absolve themselves of any responsibility by saying the villa owners are under no obligation to provide basic safety devices. My daughter was in tears every time we showered her afterwards, and there were no baths in the property.
Virgin's response was
'All of the homes are privately owned and as such their furnishings, facilities and décor can vary. There is no obligation on homeowners to provide bath mats and I’m sorry that your mother in law slipped whilst using it and you found the kitchen facilities lacking.'
When they could've both been seriously injured I find this response inadequate.
One of the showers was missing a shower screen which meant it couldn't be used. A note was left saying it would be replaced but it wasn't.
The air conditioning wasn't working correctly upon our arrival (although once reported an engineer was sent out and it was fixed).
Virgin's Customer Service response was very much along the lines that the issues aren't their problem as they use third party providers.
However, they are the providers of the holiday and we booked through them. Although each of our issues on their own may not be terribly significant, when culminated together they negatively affected what should have been an amazing holiday.
In terms of any form of compensation, all we have been offered is £50 from Alamo for the issues with the car hire (which we have yet to receive) and absolutely nothing from Virgin themselves.
When you spend over £7500 on a holiday and it isn't up to standard you expect a bit more than nothing from your holiday provider.
We are so disappointed with Virgin . The Customer Service throughout the initial holiday booking was excellent, but the after-holiday Customer Service has left a very bitter taste in our mouths and definitely changed our overall perception of Virgin Holidays.”
“Worst company ever! Staff are rude and contradict each other! They cancelled a flight on a holiday that cost £4000+ and expected us to pay an extra £200 for a connecting flight and couldn't even provide us with an explanation! STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY OR PAY THE PRICE!!!”
“Worst company ever! Staff are rude and contradict each other! They cancelled a flight on a holiday that cost £4000+ and expected us to pay an extra £200 for a connecting flight and couldn't even provide us with an explanation! STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY OR PAY THE PRICE!!!”
“Virgin are lucky to get one star, in a nutshell we booked 14 nights in Barbados after six days we got a phone call to say that the hotel will be closing and did Virgin not tell you,"er no".
Virgin knew about this three months prior to our travel. not happy, ongoing!!!!!!”
“raveled with Virgin Holidays for a christmas break to Mauritous and as a treat we booked business class for our return trip.
The first part of the return leg to Dubai was with Emerates and well worth the money but the second part with Qantas was an absolute joke and like economy with extra leg room.
Firstly there were not enough staff to cover the flight which was full, secondly it took over an hour for them to even offer any form of refreashment,thirdly my lay flat seat didn't work for the whole flight and when we came in to land at Heathrow we were asked to move to a seat that somebody had been sick in, which we refused and staff travelling on an upgrade were made to sit in them so we could have there seat.
After complaining on the flight about the service and getting no joy i decided to contact Virgin on our return to complain only to be told by them it was nothing to do with them as it was qantas that i flew with.
After explaining that we booked all of our holiday with virgin holidays as a package and it was there resposibility and not the suppliers responcibility they kept passing the buck to them who as we thought wiped there hands of all of it.
We have now been offered £250 as good will and have turned it down as the flight upgrade alone cost us £2500 and we feel totally let down and fobbed off and will now take the case up with our solicitor.
Please don't book with Virgin holidays they really ar'nt what they seem.”
“Hotel didn't meet expectations from Virgin's description plus there were building works taking place at the time of our stay & although we had received a letter advising of this the actual level was much worse then advised. Extremely duspoointing & the Virgin customer services I feel have made quite light of our dissatisfaction! Be careful if you are planning to book with them”
“Booked a holiday = they left it late to finalise with the tour operator, then tried to charge me extra (30 days before departure) for the higher prices they would incur.
Booked flights well in advance = they deleted the booking. Only looked on the off-chance the night before to notice this. Managed to put it right, after some stress.
Booked flight meal for wife (Gluten free) = didn't happen on outbound journey
Booked everything in my name = tour ended up booked in wife's name. Not a problem, except for the first hotel where we thought we had no reservation in place for 20 minutes.
Was a honeymoon so expected excellent, fault-free service = didn't happen
Advice to others: book it all on expedia or something. It will be cheaper, better organised and you'll know where you stand. Virgin Holidays are worth going out of business, I'm afraid.”
“We have not even been on holiday yet and I am afraid that the service is awful
I cant even get in contact to see why we haven't had an email with tickets .
It is always engaged. We leave in 5 days
I would not book with this company again.”
“We have booked a holiday to the Shangri La Rasa Ria in Borneo as recommended by Virgin holidays, it has an orangutan rehabilitation centre on the resort - only reason why we have booked this resort. By chance I found out that the centre will be closing a day before we go, therefore our dream holiday to see orangutans has been shattered, Virgin's response is that it is not their problem, it's the resort who have closed it, if we want to change dates or cancel there will be a charge to us. They did say that we could go on one of their excursions to see the orangutans which involves a 45 minute plane journey each way, at our cost!!! We have two young children the reason why we booked that resort is that we wouldn't have to travel to see them, Virgin are failing to understand that If we had just wanted to go to a beach resort we would have gone to Spain, not paying them over £4000 and travelling 13 hours to Borneo! Absolutely appalled by their Customer Service department!”
