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The Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Credit Card has a £160 annual card fee, which gives you 1.5 Flying Club Miles per £1 spent, a 15,000 Miles bonus on opening your account and benefits such as companion flights or upgrades after spending £10,000. The £40 rebate takes the annual card fee down to £120 per year for the same benefits.
This week emails have been sent from Virgin Money to card holders, like myself, saying,
“As a Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Credit Card customer, we know that these last few months, you won’t have been able to take advantage of your Flying Club rewards in the same way.So we’re refunding £40 of your annual card fee. There’s nothing you need to do – just look out for your refund landing in your credit card account in the next few days.
It doesn’t stop there
Virgin Atlantic want to make sure that when you can travel again, you’ll still be able to get the absolute most out of all your benefits.
That’s why they’ve:
Extended Flying Club statuses by six months
Stopped Flying Club miles expiring
You’ll soon be flying again
Hopefully, it won’t be long until you can enjoy travelling, making memories and earning rewards all over again. And we’ll be here when you do, ensuring you can simply take off where you left off with your Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Credit Card.
Here’s to brighter days ahead.”
Bottom line
I, for one, am delighted by this refund. Once I’ve paid an annual fee I forget about it, so it feels almost like free money and adds a lot of good will towards the company.
Virgin were one of the first airlines to extend my status too, and whilst BA has finally followed suit, it’s great to see Virgin being proactive here at customer retention and creating goodwill towards the company.
You conveniently forget to mention that Virgin are the slowest of all companies to refund cancelled flights; well over 100 days and counting in most cases.
I’m sure you’ll agree that in context £40 is barely a piss in the ocean Chris?
In fact I’m just writing a piece now abut getting refunds from both BA and Virgin…. both have taken an age, but there’s a bit more to my story.
It would have been a lot better if Virgin allowed pro-rata refunds of the annual fee like Amex do if you cancel your card. As you say, once the annual fee has been paid most people forget about it. So when my annual fee appeared on my latest statement without any prior notice I asked to cancel and for a refund. After ignoring the request for a while Virgin Money finally sent a two line reply that amounted to ‘tough luck, read the T&Cs.’. Hence no goodwill from me for the £40 credit. As soon as I receive the credit I’ll be cancelling my card. My Virgin miles have been converted to wine vouchers and I won’t be flying on Virgin for the foreseeable future.
Yes, I agree with you here Oxonboy. Very annoying when the card fees are a ‘lump sum’ for the year rather than refundable on a pro-rata basis. Sorry to hear they wouldn’t give you a refund for cancelling after the fee had been taken.