All systems...not so go

I needed to book cross-country flights the other day, and since I always loved flying Virgin Atlantic, I thought I’d give Virgin America a chance. For one thing, they’re about the only carrier that seems to feature non-stop flights; all the others want you to pay extra for the privilege of changing planes in Dallas, Chicago or New York.

Well, it did not begin well, because the Virgin America flight booking site has about the kludgiest user interface I’ve come across in an industry that expects you to shell out several hundred dollars at a whack. I’m flying out of SFO and into Washington DC, which has two airports. The airline’s site did not sort them out, and it marched you through a mindless commitment to an outward flight (including all passenger information) before it would show you the return flights.

It was ghastly—especially when it came to choosing seats. What would it have cost them in design and engineering input to give you some more interactive options?

Well, I soldiered through, getting more and more anxious because it wasn’t clear to me what I was actually committing to. And when I got to the point where I clicked the button saying, “Yes, I’m going to give you $900+, go ahead”—it just froze. No confirmation screen, no confirmation email, even though it had that information. (And we’ll return to that later.)

So I called their customer service line to find out if they’d made the reservation or not. According to Avery, they hadn’t—he couldn’t find me anywhere in their system, so we had to begin all over. And it took him more than 20 minutes to sort through the options, actually make the booking and then take my money.

Two things: He helped me pick my seats, confirmed that they were “express seats”, but did not include the “express” fees in the original quote. He had to come back (having already been given my credit card details) to tell me they cost extra, and so would I approve the extra charge. (I knew that because that info, at least, had been on their site; I just assumed that he did, too, and that the price he told me included those fees.) Why would that not have appeared in the price he first gave me, which included all the sixteen kinds of taxes?

Also, between the time that I thought I’d pulled the trigger and Avery’s final booking, the fare had increased several hundred dollars. I thought that was a kind of sleazy way to operate, and unworthy of a Richard Branson company. Come on—that’s the way United works.

Well, but I’m confirmed, I have a confirmation code and it arrived by email.

As did three prompts from Virgin America pointing out that I hadn’t completed my attempted booking, and urging me to do so. The first on Friday afternoon, right after I got the confirmation email.

The second about twelve hours later:

And the third twelve hours after that.

The subject lines were different, but the body text was the same. They all wanted me to go back online, into their maze of an application and continue the self-torture.

Now, I understand that they came from a different computer system than the confirmation email from my transaction with Avery. But still.

I also wonder how did it not retain any of my passenger info, when it clearly had my email address and the details of the flights I had chosen?

Someone really needs to run some usability tests and rethink the workflows. And get some feedback from real humans—people who aren’t engineers or who have been living in a web-deprived world and have no notion of what 21^st Century user experience should be like.