Last week, I received an email from Velocity Rewards, the loyalty program of Virgin Blue saying that my member status had been upgraded to Gold (for a year). Now given that I'm about 25% of the way to Silver ... I thought, wah... this is a super bonus! The perks are fairly good, the main stand-out benefits being use of the Velocity Lounge as well as free luggage allowance (that's worth $10 each way). Now, as I didn't think I'd earned enough points to warrant a free generous upgrade like that, I thought it was because I recently signed up with V-Insiders, this invite-only forum/discussion room moderated by Virgin Blue, to get people's opinions etc about the airline industry and get feedback on future promotions.
Unfortunately... it was a HUGE mistake!!! They sent that upgrade email to what could be, everyone on their members database. Within 3 hours, they sent an email - saying that the first one was sent out in error and they blamed Friday the 13th. Man, what a let-down. The local newspapers carried this story the following Monday... and people got upset, demanding compensation, etc. As much as I was not pleased or impressed with this whole fiasco, I was really disappointed when I found out it was an error. I don't expect them to honour the first email, (they'd probably lose money and go out of business) but what a letdown! The Velocity website has since taken off their announcement that they made a mistake sending the upgrade email to everyone (within a week) ... like they want to forget about it quickly ... I'm writing about it, so it at least stays on my blog! :P Also, since this happened, the person who was moderating the forums @ V-Insider, seems to be missing-in-action. :P Some further explanation would have been good.
But anyway, as much as I was/am disappointed by this - flying with them is still better than flying with Tiger Airways... so better they stay in business than they go out of business and I have to travel with Tiger...
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