UPDATE: 7/22 Vueling e-mailed me denying my refund request. I will be fighting this with my credit card company.
It’s okay to rant sometimes. And so begins my first ever rant on Here Be Barr’s blog. Why I will never spend another cent on Vueling Airlines.
On Monday night, my girlfriend and I were connecting in Rome for a flight to Madrid on Vueling. We both had early morning flights across the Atlantic to make. After a fairly lengthy check-in process, we spent some time in the airport lounge. About 20 minutes before boarding, we went to the gate listed on the terminal wall and found.. another flight there. This was strange.
Next, my girlfriend overheard somebody saying in Spanish that their flight was cancelled via e-mail. I scanned my cellphone and Vueling sent me a message informing us that our flight was re-scheduled for the next day. Their was never even a notice put up or an announcement. If I did not have internet, it may have taken another hour or so to figure it all out.
We rushed to the Vueling ticketing desk hoping to either find out about an early morning flight the next day or a refund. Instead, we found a colossal line. It stretched, and stretched, and stretched a little bit more. We ended up waiting three hours, to get to the front to speak with an agent. Who was incredibly..useless.
The agent told us, the flight was moved to the next night and their was little he could do. A refund would have to be requested for online since we could not fly with them the next day. We needed to go get our bags from the baggage claim and if we wanted a hotel, we could take a bus waiting outside for it. Why couldn’t a few Vueling reps have just walked around, telling people to check for their new flights online and to go get their bags? Since no refunds were taking place in person, I truly felt like they wasted many people’s valuable time (and three hours of our lives).
After searching for our bags near the carousels we eventually figured out where the buses were supposed to come. Their were about 100-200 other people in the same predicament and when one bus arrived, it was chaos trying to board. I could not believe how unorganized the staff at Vueling were. They had 1 staff member trying to organize hundreds of people onto these buses (see my video below for actual footage). Haven’t they ever had flights cancelled before?
When it became clear that their were far to many people for the amount of buses, we decided to leave. We waited two hours hoping more buses would arrive, but I think we had a better chance of seeing the Pope. We had to go out of pocket to pay for a taxi and find a last minute hotel near the Vatican (and said Pope).
I am still waiting on a refund from Vueling. They refuse to do anything over the phone and only respond by e-mail. It has been four days and still no response from them. That had to have been the most unprofessional and worst behavior I have ever seen from an airport staff.
Have you ever flown Vueling and had a similar situation? Or have you had something like this happen with a different company? Tell me about it below. Be sure to check out my Travel Vlog on this topic.
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