I'm hoping with me starting a new thread you will post this as my previous two comments have not been posted on the forum for some reason.

I was eventually contacted today regarding a price for my possible flight upgrade and was quoted £542! Obviously the prices must have gone up in the 9 days I've waited for a response. Upon checking the Virgin Atlantic website I was very disappointed to discover the price difference had actually gone down to a mere £85.50 return!! Now I know you mentioned you buy the seats in bulk, and the gentleman I spoke to suggested these tickets are in very high demand and February is a peak month for travelling to India, but I still find this a very excessive mark-up. Please could you justify this? I would expect to pay some extra, but over £400 is ridiculous.

I've read posts from other forum members who have managed to get a good seat in Economy and would like to know if anyone has any helpful hints. Also, when I check-in for my flight, can I upgrade my seat in Economy myself or do I have to go through JY again? 

Regards

Caroline

Hi,

I'm hoping with me starting a new thread you will post this as my previous two comments have not been posted on the forum for some reason.

I was eventually contacted today regarding a price for my possible flight upgrade and was quoted £542! Obviously the prices must have gone up in the 9 days I've waited for a response. Upon checking the Virgin Atlantic website I was very disappointed to discover the price difference had actually gone down to a mere £85.50 return!! Now I know you mentioned you buy the seats in bulk, and the gentleman I spoke to suggested these tickets are in very high demand and February is a peak month for travelling to India, but I still find this a very excessive mark-up. Please could you justify this? I would expect to pay some extra, but over £400 is ridiculous.

I've read posts from other forum members who have managed to get a good seat in Economy and would like to know if anyone has any helpful hints. Also, when I check-in for my flight, can I upgrade my seat in Economy myself or do I have to go through JY again? 

Regards

Caroline

Hi Caroline,

First of all please rest assured we will never ignore your posts!

Sometimes we delay posting them on our community because we want to make sure we have the right answer for you.

As I mentioned in my answer on the other posts re the flight upgrades subject, Just You has a small mark up on flight upgrades but nothing like the £400 difference between our upgraded quote to you and what the Virgin website shows.

As Julia and I already explained, the price shown on the Virgin website is the cost of the upgrade on top of a standard economy fare on a particular day. When we quote an upgrade fare, we have to base the price differential on the price from which we have secured the seats at (which is lower than a standard fare) and the price of upgrade on the day it is requested.

Kind regards,

Elisa

Was interested to read some comments that others had had better luck with other tour companies when organising upgrades, and could even do it themselves apparently.  Would be really interested in hearing others experiences with other operators - this is a really big issue for me.  Am currently trying to organise going to Oz with another operator, with - what seems to be - a better procedure (my main difficulty organising this trip at the moment is getting enough time off work and agreeing dates.)

Regards

Katy

Just to add that what Elisa has said is correct. I book a lot of travel in my job, and can confirm that most companies book the flights at a cheaper fare. So when you try to upgrade the fare to a different class, you automatically have to upgrade the price of the ticket to a higher fare (one that allows the class change). Hence the higher price that JY are quoting you, ie the fare increase could be £350, then you add on the cost to upgrade to the next class , then on top of that there will be an airline change fee which could be as much as £70. Its daylight robbery but this is the airlines way of making money because most of us don't want to pay the full fare!!

You could try to upgrade yourself when/if you are able to check in online. If you cannot check-in on line then counter staff might be able to help you - however its not guaranteed.

Good Luck

Kezzer

Thanks so much for your very informative post, now you have explained where some of the costs come from, I can understand the price difference much better.

Now I just don't know whether to stick or twist. Whether to book the upgrade and choose my preferred seat now (which I'm presuming I'll be able to do), or wait until I check-in and see what availability there is then. I know I would rather get this sorted out now rather than waiting until check-in, then I can relax and wait for my holiday. With your knowledge, what would you advise?

Thanks again for your help.

Caroline

If you really want the upgrade I would do it now. You never know what will happen between now and when you travel - and the closer you get to the departure date the less seats there will be and potentially the more expensive the upgrade could be.

Kind Regards

Kezzer

Sue2-that's a great idea. It would be much better to get all costs at the beginning so you complete your booking straight away, I'm hoping it might be something JY can bring in sooner rather than later, even better if you could just book the whole lot on-line in one go, saves trying to get through on the phone.

Regards

Caroline

I agree totally with Kezzer. During my working life and having worked for large global corporates I too have made a lot of bookings and what Kezzer says is true. The price keeps on going up as the date of the trip gets nearer so it is always better to book way ahead. Same as train tickets!

Jaya

I've noticed a few posts complaining about a lack of response to phone calls, e-mails, etc. I'm just wondering if JY have cut back on their staff as it's almost impossible to get through to them at all now. I hope JY are looking to do something about this as I believe good customer service is vital to JY, especially when trying to attract new customers. Surely there must be an easier way to get through, whether it's being able to book more elements of a holiday on-line, or whether the person taking your telephone booking can do everything over one call, like book your connecting flights/upgrades, excursions, without having to call back at a later date, or pass your requirements onto another team? Obviously more staff would be needed for this. It's just I'd hate to see JY lose potential and existing customers through poor customer service.

Regards

Caroline

Hi Elsa

Can you please clarify (for a newbie!) does a flight upgrade have to be added at time of booking or can it be added later? I  ask because I'm interested in the Mekong Cruise (probably for 2018) and may not know at the time of booking if I can afford the extra.  Also is the upgrade price shown in the online booking system or would I have to ring up.

Sorry to butt in on your thread Caroline but I thought this was relevant to the question on upgrades.

Thanks

Rose

Hi Rose,

Apologies for the delay.

It can be added later but we’d ask you to ring in.  Fares are changeable, fares in the brochure on the tour page and on the website is a from price and are subject to change (but they are carefully checked to ensure they are achievable on at least one departure of the tour at time of going to print).  Fares will go up closer to departure usually, so we’d recommend that if you want to upgrade, you do it early.  One advantage of the upgrade fares we can obtain is that usually they don’t require pre-payment and can be added to the final balance.

Kind regards,

Elisa

What you need to consider is that the FULL price of the holiday is calculated upon us having cheaper air fares & buying power to present to the customer to best priced overall package we can provide. The holiday price is not representative of full price air travel, hotel & transfers as to price a holiday on that basis would make it overall much more expensive. The difference payable is best upgrade fare including taxes and fuel charges that we can obtain minus the complete economy fare including fuel and taxes that we have been granted on our allocation/contract and then a small mark up. Online offers/sales from airlines can appear from time to time, and one stipulation usually is that the fare is payable in full there and then, non-changeable and so on – and where we can take advantage of offers and pass the savings on with upgrade fare quotations, we do. If you are comparing the visible, online, economy fare on a given day versus an upgrade fare that day, that is a false calculation, they are not party to what we are paying for economy. It tends to be that the economy fare starts very low and goes up as the plane fills – and we bought our seats usually in the case of Virgin, as far as 15 months before travel or even longer occasionally.

Kind regards,

Elisa

Thanks Jaya, I still haven't had a callback so I'm hoping someone will contact me next week.

I've noticed a few posts complaining about a lack of response to phone calls, e-mails, etc. I'm just wondering if JY have cut back on their staff as it's almost impossible to get through to them at all now. I hope JY are looking to do something about this as I believe good customer service is vital to JY, especially when trying to attract new customers. Surely there must be an easier way to get through, whether it's being able to book more elements of a holiday on-line, or whether the person taking your telephone booking can do everything over one call, like book your connecting flights/upgrades, excursions, without having to call back at a later date, or pass your requirements onto another team? Obviously more staff would be needed for this. It's just I'd hate to see JY lose potential and existing customers through poor customer service.

Regards

Caroline

Hi Caroline,

On behalf of Just You, I would like to offer our apologies for the lack of contact from our team, this is certainly not the service that we pride ourselves on.

Due to the popularity of our holidays we have been experiencing an unprecedented volumes of calls and our team in the service centre have been working flat out. We have drafted in additional members of the team and we are now back at full capacity. I will ensure that you get a call back today and thank you for your patience.

Kind regards,

Elisa

Thanks Elisa, I had a call from a lovely gentleman called Craig who managed to sort my flight upgrade out over the phone and was very apologetic about the delay and I understand extra staff will be in place soon ?.

Regards

Caroline

I had a call from James yesterday saying the flights for this holiday have now been switched from Virgin Atlantic to Jet Airways, the reason being we could have 25kg luggage allowance instead of 20kg as our internal flights are with Jet as well (I can only have 23kg max as I'm on connecting flights with BA from Newcastle to Heathrow and back so couldn't have 25kg even if I wanted to). Jet don't have an equivalent of premium economy, I could upgrade to, presumably first class, for an extra £1500+, suffice to say I declined this offer. James then said I would therefore keep my original premium economy flights with Virgin Atlantic, but my flight will land about an hour before the Jet flight, and into a different terminal. James did say a representative would still be there to meet me, and he seemed to think there was another JY passenger on the same flight as some others had upgraded too.

Could you please let me know the following:

1) Why, when in a previous post it was stated seats were obtained about 15 months prior to departure to get the best price when block booking, can JY now cancel those seats and get new seats with a different airline nearly 4 months before departure?

2) Please can you confirm if there are any other JY travellers on my flight and that a representative will be there to meet me when get to the terminal.

3) Could you let me know how many are now doing the add-on at the end of the tour, and will any of them be on my flight back to the UK as I'm assuming it will leave earlier than the Jet flight, and from a different terminal again.

4) Do you know who the tour guide will be for this holiday yet?

Regards

Caroline

Here are the answers to your questions.

1) The reason the main flights have been changed is so that we can keep all flights with one airline. The additional cost of the upgrade for this customer was just £557 this would have given her business class on all flights with a lie flat bed on the international flights.

2) There is one other customer who is still travelling with Virgin Atlantic and yes there will be a transfer to take them to the hotel to meet the rest of the group.

3) There is currently 6 customers booked on the add on and the difference in the flight times is just one hour but from different terminals so will arrange transfers as required.

4) We haven't been informed who the tour guide is for this holiday but we should be aware of this in the next couple of weeks.

I hope these responses helped.

Kind Regards,

Mildred.