Hi OzB,
I used my ANZ Rewards Travel Adventures Credit Card (which has since been cancelled) to book a complimentary return flight from MEL-ADE with Virgin Australia.
The first leg of the flight was booked for Friday 29th March at 3:40pm, so I could attend a wedding on the following day (30th March).
However, the flight was cancelled, and I was re-booked for a flight 3 hours later. This flight was also cancelled due to engineering issues.
Although I was one of the first to the service desk to organise an alternate flight, I was told that the remaining flights were overbooked and no seats were available (although they managed to have plenty of seats available for Velocity Gold and Platinum members). They were then able to 'generously' book me on a flight the next morning which included a 2.5 hour stopover in BRI (departing MEL at 7am and arriving at ADE around 2pm), which would have made me arrive in ADE roughly 22 hours after I was meant to and miss the wedding ceremony.
At that stage I decided to inform Virgin that I would not be boarding that flight and arranged a booking with Tigerair, which got me to ADE by 10am the following morning.
Ironically, to top it off, a friend of mine had no issues with getting a similar flight through Jetstar which departed at 4:10pm without delay.
My question is regarding compensation. I'm obviously not entitled to a refund as I didn't pay for the flight, but would there be any means of compensation in this particular case (such as a complimentary flight/velocity points/travel credit)? I've contacted ANZ Travel and they have said Virgin will not compensate (even though they didn't have the full picture of what actually happened). But to me this just seems unjust, and feels like it's a loophole that they can exploit with this offer.
Cheers
Once a flight is cancelled, airlines have their own processes about how they allocate seats on alternate flights. From Virgin's viewpoint, you would have been down the list of priorities, and they did offer you an alternate flight (albeit that it didn't fit with your specific timeline needs).
If I were you, I would push your booking agent (ANZ Travel?) for some type of reimbursement. Good luck.