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 21st Century user experience should be like.
