V-Flyer

After just over 3 weeks in San Francisco (and surroundings) it was time to go home again - this had been a combined trip, first a week holiday (B2B, Wine county, Yosemite), then 2 weeks of meetings for my new job.

So, it all started at 4.55pm exactly to try and bag that seq 1, but I was stopped in my track by a message saying "sorry we can't check you in online"

So, after a lazy morning, and a quick trip to the office to pick up some stuff it was off to SFO, and about 3 hours before the flight there were no queues at all, so straight to the PE desk, and lo and behold I couldn't check in there either

So, off to the ticketing desk, and it transpires that they need more money off me. For those of you who followed my earlier threads, I had moved my sale K fare, and was charged 120 GBP, but (and I knew this) they hadn't taken the money from my credit card. I hoped they wouldn't remember, but it seems they did. Anyway, I was checked in, and asked for an exit row - no luck - a request was put in, but no guarantee.

With 2 hours to kill I had a beer and burger from the firewood cafe landside, and then treked through security (managed to avoid the new body scanner), and then hung around the gate browsing the web using 3G tethering.

Boarding was called at about 4:20, and we all on pretty quickly, push back was a bit early and we headed off home to London. After absolutely ages v-port was fired up with that awful video they sometimes force down everyone's throat. The horror of horrors - my screen wouldn't play any video or audio. 2 miserable reboots later and it still wasn't fixed, and as all the DVD players had been handed out I got a GQ magazine and an offer of 5000 miles - perhaps I should have held out for more

Dinner was unremarkable (some chicken and pasta thing), and then I tried to get some sleep which for some reason I really struggled this time - perhaps too little alcohol...

Breakfast arrived, and it has changed! Sadly it is now an equally bad choice of Ham and 'cheese' bagel or egg and cheese (or was it ham) muffin. I tried the bagel, but it didn't do anything for me, and I left almost all of it. Fruit was for once actually handed out, although far too late for my liking.

We landed really early, and went straight to a gate, I was off reasonably quickly, through immigration, and my bag came off very early - I like to think that is because of the upper class tag on it left over from a previous trip....

Sadly, I realised my passport had really seen better days, and as I'm off again next weekend I decided to get a new passport, and spent Tuesday in London getting it - I have to say they were very efficient, 4 hours after my appointment I was in possession of a shiny new passport!

All in all a pretty rubbish flight, let down by bad food (breakfast, urgh!), and no entertainment.

your food sounds identical to ours, the PE fare at the moment is disgraceful

your food sounds identical to ours, the PE fare at the moment is disgraceful

Crispin

Thanks for the TR

It was great meeting you in San Fran for the B2B, and meeting us V-Flyers for the first time couldn't be all bad, as you have shared your return trip home with us all

I have to agree, that breakfast in PE is absolutely dire Seems like VS have forgotten the first rule of customer service - that spongy concoction, leaves an indelible (or is it inedible) impression with which customers will remember next time they want to book.

5K miles is 5K miles - no doubt the absence of the IFE compounded your inability to get to sleep

Good Luck with the new job

buns

Thank you for the great TR.

Shame about the breakfast.

Sigh, the miles were added to my account, but only 4000 miles, I phoned them up and got the indian call centre who are absolutely useless and just said I need to email in ....

crispin wrote:Sigh, the miles were added to my account, but only 4000 miles, I phoned them up and got the indian call centre who are absolutely useless and just said I need to email in ....

Good luck with your fight

buns

Finally, VS customer relations have got back to me, and I have got the missing 1000 miles.

Apparently 4000 is their standard now - it doesn't seem that long ago when 10000 was their standard for a broken IFE...