virginholidays.co.uk

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

Impossible to contact Virgin Holidays, I have spent a huge amount of money with them in past, my frequent number is four figures. Due to be in Florida Easter, spent hours on hold at beginning of lockdown 27 hours in Total, only to find out For over a week at beginning of lockdown they were not taking calls, I tried emails text WhatsApp all to no avail , in desperation I tried emailing board of Directors, all on leave until May 1st , even secretaries. Now it is not possible to email to complaint, crazy thing if only they would speak with me my issue could have been resolved and I was prepared to spend more money, now I will never book a Virgin Holiday again. Walt Disney Travel company spoke with customers and refunded monies within 2 days, also Walt Disney Cruises also were excellent. I would recommend these companies not Virgin Holidays.

Spoke to Vicky on Thursday evening 8.30pm on 26.10.17 Very helpful and bubbly. Will definitely book with Virgin Holidays again.

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.

Spoke with Becky yesterday and she was very helpful, I was told I would get a full refund for our trip to Barbados which unfortunately has been cancelled due to covid 19. Hopefully all staff will keep their jobs and things will get back to some sort of normality,looking forward to flying with you again in the future.

I have recently booked a holiday to Orlando with Virgin Atlantic that has then been passed to Virgin Holidays. I have experienced truly awful customer service and the information given to me is so often incorrect I am unsure to what is true now. If cancelling the holiday and booking with another company was an option without loosing my deposit I would do it. Plus other companies were cheaper but we decided to pay the extra and book with Virgin but what a mistake. Definitely wont be doing it again.

we were due to fly to Barbados last Saturday. Virgin phoned me and offered me a couple of options but when I asked for refund was told to contact my insurance and claim off them, this I did and was sent a copy of there policy cover which states your holiday provider should refund you as of FCO rules. Sent copy to Virgin and within 8 mins was told a refund was being actioned.

Flew to barbados on 16th March, despite expecting the holiday to not go ahead. Gatwick was deserted! Two days into holiday, told we were to be repatriate. Then virgin changed their minds twice after that !1 Had to cancel most things booked ( and paid for). Finally told on Saturday afternoon we were being collected art 1.30 next day !! Land line calls to UK to try and find a taxi able to collect us. Fortunately, at the least the hotel staff helped with flight details and e.t.a etc. No help from Virgin. Downgraded on seats coming home. Nobody from Virgin to greet us when we arrived at Gatwick. Virgin have not replied to Maile sent to them, both signed for registered and 2 emails .Shocking company, We are owed £3000 for the outstanding part of the holiday. The hole and staff are superb, and they too were treated appallingly by Virgin.

Just come back from two weeks in st Lucia booked with virgin. Had excellent service throughout from the moment we booked, flight service, holiday hotel and virgin reps were excellent. Thank you we really did unleash our mojo!

Product/holiday titled as Cape, Kruger & Falls. Never informed at point of sale that there was 2 itineries. Natually assumed we were allocated to the accommodations advertised on the website / brochure, which was confirmed 2 days later after booking 10 months ahead. Established following final payment that all 4 accommodations had been changed, apparently we had always been allocated to these itinerary 2 accomodations. Research indicated 2 of them were lower ratings and also we were allocated some 50 kms from the Kruger NP. Pre holiday raised complaint with ABTA and received compensation for VH miss marking and miss selling. Post holiday, have raised another complaint regarding itinerary timings leading to missed inclusive tours and turning up at 1 of the hotels only to find our booking had been made for the same date but for the previous month. In summary Virgin "Howler" Holidays obviously outsource to suppliers and undertake NO due diligence checks. Their South Africa supplier Thompson SA think they can just cut and paste between their itineries 1 & 2 without auditing whether the changes seriously impact inclusive tour events. WILL NEVER USE VIRGIN HOLIDAYS AGAIN

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

i am in the same situation as stephen am due to travel to usa in aug and have to pay final balance in begining of june but am unable to contact virgin (if they are still in business). do i pay !!! or lose my deposit. i dont really want to fork out £3000 if the airline is not running

10 days all inclusive in Mexico was fabulous

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.

I have always been a fan of Virgin, I am even a flying club member, but not from now on. I booked a holiday with them in November to New Orleans, as they were my go to option. However, after looking into the holiday in more detail, I have realised they are charging me over £1000 more per person that British Airways and other companies! I live chatted with one of their customer service representatives to see if they could price match, or if there was just anything they could do, as £1000 per person is a lot. Her initial response was "you can cancel your holiday with us, but you'll lose £200". I didn't even mention cancelling, I just wanted to see if there was something they could do. However, she pretty much refused and just kept repeating that I could cancel. So fine, I will cancel and I will not recommend them nor book a holiday with them again.

Booked a holiday to the Grenadines in December, requiring flight to Barbados and connecting flight. Both flight and hotel through Virgin holidays as a package. Have recently received an email stating that the flight is now moved back by an hour, meaning that we miss the connecting island flight. This requires an overnight stay in Barbados and connecting flight next day. We are only going for 7 days and the idea of missing a day at our end destination does not appeal. Virgin holidays stated that it is not their fault as Virgin Airlines are a different company. In which case, why offer the holiday as a package? Virgin Holidays offered to provide accommodation for the overnight stay in Barbados but given that I booked as a package this is not really sufficient recompense as we will effectively be taking an extra day to get t9 our destination, through no fault of our own. They were unwilling to fulfil the 7 day stay and so I have had to cancel. Please be aware if you are booking with Virgin Holidays that they will not be responsible for the flights, despite the fact that they offer a full package of flights and hotels. I booked the holiday during their sale period and can’t help wondering whether this apparent flight change is really just a way of squeezing me out to allow a more profitable booking.

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

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.

I have just returned from the "Southern explorer" tour. 14 of the 15 days of the holiday were exceptionally well organised and I would recommend it to anybody unless like me you have mobility issues as there is a fair amount of walking involved The only day that disappointed was day1 . We were supposed to be met at JFK by a transfer vehicle and transported to our Manhatten hotel . We landed around 1500 hrs. When we went to arrivals and looked for somebody brandishing a board with our information on , there was nothing . We waited for NINETY minutes , we even made up a card with our names , virgin and ATI on it to attract attention . At 1630 hrs we decided to phone the help line number we had in our documents , every time we called we were given the usual " press one, press two " routine . To speak to a person we had to press four , but every time we pressed four the line went dead Eventually we decided to take a taxi which cost us $85 plus a $15 dollar tip . We complained to the ATI rep at the hotel who handled the situation very well and the next day refunded our $100 . The company who were supposed to meet us alleged that they had 3 drivers waiting at the terminal. THIS IS UNTRUE . An excellent tour was almost ruined but thanks to the professionalism of the ATI staff the rest of our tour was faultless

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!