1 star â deeply disappointed by how a serious safeguarding issue was handled
I booked a holiday with Virgin Atlantic Holidays and, despite my own email address being recorded as the primary contact, the booking confirmation was sent to an additional historic email address belonging to my ex-partner.
The email contained passenger names, travel dates and accommodation details. This was particularly serious because children in my care are travelling and the information disclosed effectively revealed where we would be during those dates.
I want to be very clear that the in-store booking experience itself was excellent. Olivia was professional, understanding and took the time to meet our requirements. My complaint is about what happened afterwards and, more importantly, how it was initially handled.
When I first raised the issue, Virgin explained that the additional email address had been associated with previous family holidays. In a later response, I was told that staff âseemed to recallâ that the email address had been confirmed and that, because I was âunderstandably in a hurry to leaveâ, this was perhaps why the additional address had not been identified.
I found that response extremely disappointing. I was never made aware that a second email address was still attached to my customer profile, and I was certainly never asked whether that historic address should receive information about this new booking. The suggestion that my being in a hurry had somehow contributed to the incident felt like responsibility was being shifted onto me rather than the problem being properly acknowledged.
There was also nobody named Alice travelling on the new booking, so I could not understand why an historic email belonging to someone who was not a passenger or involved in the holiday arrangements was being sent our booking information at all.
I escalated the matter to the Area Manager. Following a technical investigation, Virgin then confirmed in writing that they had identified a system error which caused the booking correspondence to be sent to the additional email address. They also confirmed that their technical teams are now working towards a permanent solution and that an additional verification step has been introduced into their booking process.
So, after initially appearing to suggest that the issue may have resulted from me being in a hurry, their own investigation ultimately established that it was a system fault.
This incident has caused genuine safeguarding concerns for my family. I have had to seek advice from my solicitor and consider what steps may be necessary because information about the location of myself and children in my care during specific future dates was disclosed to someone who should not have received it.
Virgin have changed my booking reference, removed the historic email address and offered to change my holiday dates without a change fee. However, the dates we booked are the dates that work for our family, and I do not believe we should have to rearrange our holiday because of a failure in their own system.
What has shocked me most is that, despite now identifying a system fault and acknowledging that changes to their processes are required, the correspondence I have received appears to treat the matter as effectively resolved with an apology and preventative changes going forward.
Those changes may help prevent this happening to someone else, but they do not address what has already happened to my family or the distress and safeguarding concerns it has caused.
I am extremely disappointed by the initial lack of accountability and by how much escalation it took before the underlying system failure was actually identified.
For a company handling passenger details, childrenâs information, travel dates and accommodation details, I would expect data protection and verification procedures to be treated with the utmost importance.
At this stage, I do not feel the seriousness or impact of what happened has been adequately recognised, which is why I cannot give this experience anything other than one star.
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