Virgin Atlantic Sucks

My girlfriend arrived at IAD yesterday from CDG via London-Heathrow. So before she even got to Dulles customs she was pissed at Virgin Atlantic. Why? They have a one carry-on only policy, but didn't tell her this in Paris. So she arrived at Heathrow with two carry-ons. Virgin Atlantic would not even let her into the transfer area with two carry-ons (apparently they've never heard of "gate-check"). So she had to go through British customs to check one of her carry-ons.

When she arrives at Dulles, one of her checked bags never shows up. Dulles customs sucks bad enough without losing your bag. Believe it or not, this is just the beginning of how terrible Virgin Atlantic is at customer service. So she fills out the lost bag form and goes through customs.

Now, they give her an phone number for baggage services (1-800-880-6253), who of course say "It's too early to know where your bag is, give us until tomorrow." She asked to be transferred to the customer service department and is told that the Virgin Atlantic customer service department doesn't have a phone number!

She's still mad, so she wants to talk to a customer service agent. However, the Virgin Atlantic baggage office is closed and locked. We waited there for half an hour, then went upstairs to the ticket counter.

The woman at the ticket counter is entirely unhelpful. She keeps repeating that it's too early to search for her bag. No shit! We want to know if you are going to give her a couple dollars to buy some underwear and a clean T-shirt. My girlfriend remains remarkably calm in the face of such ridiculous service and asks if we can speak to a manager. We are speaking to the ticket counter manager.
-Where is the baggage manager?
-At the gate for the next departure.
-When will he or she be back?
-Probably about 8 PM (this is at 6 PM).
-Is there anyone else we can talk to?
-Try this pamphlet with phone numbers.

So I immediately dial the "Virgin Atlantic Customer Relations (US)" phone number (1-800-496-6661). You should dial it, it's an amazing exercise in futility. It takes you to a recording that tells you that "the fastest way to get a response is to use email at customer.relations.us@fly.virgin.com" After that it tells you that you can mail them at Virgin Atlantic Airways 501 W. Fort Ave. PM Box 331 Norwalk, CT 06851 or fax them at 866-258-0951. Then it asks if you would like to repeat the message. If you don't repeat the message, it hangs up. It is literally impossible to speak to a live person who works for Virgin Atlantic customer service.

I try to explain this to the manager at the ticket counter. She says, I'm not kidding, "Are you sure? There's a lot of numbers on that sheet." My other choices are all international phone numbers.

So eventually we give up and leave the airport. Today it gets even better. My girlfriend tries to log onto their website to check on her bag. It asks for a 10 digit file number. She has no such thing. She's got a bag tag number (a British Airways tag at that, because the flight from London to Dulles was actually BA) and a Virgin Atlantic Property Irregularity Report number (6 digits).

She calls them twice more, each time the person asks for the file reference number and can't help her without it. So she tried explaining to them that she doesn't have one and could they please give her that number so she can check online and stop calling? The guy says that he'll call her back in an hour. That was at 10:35 AM. As I type this, it's 11:05 AM.

Given everything above, what is the likelihood that Virgin Atlantic will call back? They've got 30 minutes.

Moral of the story - Don't fly Virgin Atlantic, they could honestly care less about customer service.

Challenge to Virgin Atlantic - If you as a company ever discover this post and feel that it does not properly represent how you "put customer service and commitment to our passengers at the heart of what [you] do,"* then you should:

1. Create a comment on this post to justify why on earth a company that cares at all about it customers would have a customer service department that can never be reached by phone.
2. Admit and apologize for the behavior of your company. At every step of the process anyone that we have interacted with has said "Have you tried waiting and then using the internet instead of calling us?" Here's a hint for all companies - that's the worst possible thing to say to someone who's just been on hold for five minutes!

Here's an update - 11:17 AM, still no call back.


* - Source: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/customerrelations/index.jsp