Credit where Credit is due....

I took a flight from MCO with my two young children mid Jan this year.
On the flight home our IFE froze and one of the overhead lights remained on for the biggest part of the flight.
I brought this to the crews attention and understandably there was very little she could do aside from the usual resetting procedure.

When i returned to the UK i sent an email to Virgin explaining how i was a little annoyed. To be honest i expected to get fobbed off. Which is exactly what happened. I got an email saying someone would be in touch within 30 days.

I forgot all about it and then today have just got an email from VS. Here it is:

Thank you for contacting us about your flight from Orlando.

I'm concerned to read that you and your children couldn't enjoy the in-flight entertainment on board. I can imagine how disappointing this must have been for you, more so since you have faced this problem before.

If we have a problem like this, we do everything we can to fix it on the spot. But because our in-flight entertainment system is so state-of-the-art, we do sometimes have to call out a specialist engineer.
And we can't do this while the plane is in the air.

What's disappointing to know is the way you felt our crew handled this situation. This must have only added to your annoyance. We always train our staff to be sensitive and helpful to our passengers but it looks like this didn't happen here. I've informed our crew performance manager about this to make sure that we don't repeat this again in future.

It's evident that you feel we've let you down but I assure you this isn't typical of us. As a gesture of our goodwill, I've credited your Flying Club account with 15000 miles for the trouble faced by you and your children. I hope you will accept this with my compliments.

Thank you for choosing to fly with us. I hope that the next time you fly with us, you will have all the games and channels we offer to keep you happy.

Kind regards

****************
Customer Relations Executive

So i feel credit should be given. I really only expected a run of the mill apology. However there are plenty of people who slate VS Customer service. This is proof that they do actually have one. And what seems an efficient one too.



preiffer: Removed name as per T's and C's.

I'm loving the line 'State-of-the-art' [:D]

[Darren Wheeler]

compared to Nova and Odyssey it is [:w]

I think we had Nova? The one where you have to wait for the movie to end before you can watch anything else.

With both systems, you have to wait for the movies to end before they restart. The way to tell is if the handset is fixed in the armrest, its nova, if not Odyssey.

Can I ask what the cabin crew done to try to fix the problem and what was said. I am just wondering what the line in the e-mail about the cabin crew means. Hope they were not rude to you. Pleased you are happy with our customer relations response though.

Had a similar experience on our outbound this christmas to LA. Were in PE, so I was between 2 of my kids in a row of 3. Both my kids IFE had frozen. I was still able to watch my movie. Told one of the cabin crew and she said she'd reset the kids IFE's. Told to not touch anything for 20 mins. Guess what! She only went and reset mine instead! Yep, now all 3 of us couldnt watch anything. Didnt even bother to come back and check. I then got another member of cabin crew to reset the kids. She had the courtesy of checking later to make sure they were fixed.

Originally posted by virgin is the best
Can I ask what the cabin crew done to try to fix the problem and what was said. I am just wondering what the line in the e-mail about the cabin crew means. Hope they were not rude to you. Pleased you are happy with our customer relations response though.

Sure, I told the girl my IFE wasnt working and she explained she could try and reset it. Away she went then about 20 mins later she passed and i asked her if she had reset it and she had forgot.
She came back and told me it had been reset, i showed her nothing had changed and said there was nothing she could do. I asked if it was worth resetting it again in a little while. She told me she had x amount of other passengers to tend to and couldnt spend the whole flight trying to sort out my IFE. She then told me that at the end of the day most pax sleep on an overnight flight so why couldnt my children and I.

To be honest it was more to do with the uncaring, arrogant and obnoxious attitude than anything else.

Nonetheless VS customer service have taken my comments on board and acted accordingly and in my opinion satisfactory.

[Decker]

Got to love that 'I've got to attend to all the other sleeping pax'....

[RichardMannion]

Yep, sounds like you had a member of crew that needs to go back to the Base to redo the entire course and remember they are in the customer service industry.

[Darren Wheeler]

'"sleeping

Originally posted by Decker
Got to love that 'I've got to attend to all the other sleeping pax'....

[:D][:D][:D]

Superb!!!

John

Not trying to defend the CC in question as that attitude is wrong & out of place in that job, but the resets available in flight aren't very reliable & depend very heavily on the passenger not attempting to use the IFE until reset.

Not trying to defend the CC in question as that attitude is wrong & out of place in that job, but the resets available in flight aren't very reliable & depend very heavily on the passenger not attempting to use the IFE until reset.

Well even if that had happened, the FA could have taken the time to explain the procedure.

45.

that was 'state of the ARC' they meant to write then.

The attitude you were faced with seems reminicant of some comments made on forums during the pay debate.

I have come accross similar attitude problems on this route as well, though it has to be said not the whole crews usually the odd one on a flight.

Please anyone if anyone comes accross a CCM with that type of atitude in the future please tell them you want to see the Cabin Service Supervisor. That is shocking what she said. I would have brought her down a peg or 2 and written a report on her to back up customer relations when they speak to her manager.

A resit should always be done at least 3 times. 9 times out of 10 it will normally be ok after that.

If 3 resets are done close together it will do more harm than good, the seat box needs to fully reboot before repeating reset.

Agree with VITB on the action following this kind of treatment by CC though.

Originally posted by virgin is the best
Please anyone if anyone comes accross a CCM with that type of atitude in the future please tell them you want to see the Cabin Service Supervisor. That is shocking what she said. I would have brought her down a peg or 2 and written a report on her to back up customer relations when they speak to her manager.

A resit should always be done at least 3 times. 9 times out of 10 it will normally be ok after that.

Truly would that do the trick or would we be made to feel like crap for the remainder of the flight. If had known it were so easy I would have
done as you suggest on the three occaisions I suffered bad attitude, two of which coincidentally were by the same person on two seperate flights with 12 months in between on one occaision I saw this person belittleing other people in PE in a similar fashion, fortunately I was in upper on that flight and my experience was faultless. I did write to VA customer feedback on one occaision but got no reply.

Some cabin crew would be well advised to remember that people travelling on those routes remember them from previous flights and how they have treated people previously, I am sure on the bucket n spade routes its easy to think you won't see the same passengers ever again so its ok to give some attitude or vent frustrations on them.

Just a few can taint so many others who work really hard it needs sorting because I have read more and more people saying they didn't care much for the 'whatever' attitude they got on VA and they are usually all the more dissapointed because they paid extra to fly Virgin or were recommended to by the likes of me.

[RichardMannion]

Well said EGG.

From the Customer Relations response, it sounds as though the crew member in question is either a CSS or an FSM!

i have to agree with virgin is the best. we are taught that we should attemp 3 resets and after 20 mins go back to the passenger to check. Not defending the crew member attitude as i think it is shocking, there could have been alot of resets going on and it does annoy the crew as much as you when a screen doesn't work as alot of the time we do have a really good entertainment system. also this problem occurs alot on our gatwick flights, but what this crew member has clearly forgotten is a few simple facts, while it maybe their 20th screen not working it is likely to be the first time you have ever had this problem, alot of people (myself included) cannot sleep on a plane, and no matter where we are going or what time it is if a passenger has a problem we shoud always be sympathetic ( no matter what the problem is) and attempt to deal with it ourselves. if you or anyone ever experiences this sort of negative attitude on a virgin flight then please ask to see the CSS or FSM as this is symply not the virgin way. i hope any future flights with us are much better than this.