Budget airline Virgin Blue has apologised for an email sent to its loyalty reward members, which congratulated them for an upgrade to “gold” class status, but was promptly cancelled just hours afterwards.
Virgin Velocity members were given an email on Friday afternoon saying they had been upgraded for free, but soon received this reply:
“Oops! Due to an error you’ve received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
Virgin apologised for the error on Twitter, saying it was still investigating the nature of the malfunction.
“We’re truly sorry for the confusion caused by the Gold status email & working on figuring out what went wrong. Thanks for your understanding,” @Virginblue said.
“We can confirm Friday’s email send was the result of a processing error. Of course, we are very sorry for any disappointment caused and are relieved that many of our members realised it must have been an error even before we sent out the correction notice,” spokesperson Colin Lippiatt said in a statement.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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