Virgin Blue booboo sees gold turn to dust

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Australian airline Virgin Blue has been forced to apologise to customers of its loyalty reward program after sending out an email upgrading their membership to 'gold' class, only to cancel it three hours later.

On Friday afternoon, Velocity members nationwide received an email telling them they had been upgraded to a gold membership for free.

But another email arrived within hours, titled 'Friday the 13th Strikes', reneging on the earlier offer.

"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," the email from Virgin Blue read.

On Twitter Velocity members immediately began commenting on the issue. Most reacted humorously to the mistake, but some angry customers said they had been considering buying tickets due to the email with others suggesting it was all part of an advertising trick.

"@VirginBlue worst mistake ever! I was about to purchase confirmed seats due to the (not so) awesome email!" one user said.

One user even tried to turn the tables on Virgin Blue saying "Dear @virginblue please disregard the 100 flight bookings I made. I made a mistake and you don't qualify for my business."

On Saturday morning the @Virginblue account on Twitter posted a second apology message about Friday afternoon's erroneous email.

"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.

Virgin Blue spokesperson Colin Lippiatt said in a statement the company could not confirm how many of its members were affected by the email.

"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," Mr Lippiatt said.

"We can confirm it went to many Velocity members nationally. The exact size of our membership base is commercially sensitive and we do hope you understand that for that reason we cannot release that information."

A spokeswoman for the the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the consumer watchdog was unlikely to take any action against Virgin Blue.

"‘In this case it is unlikely to cause significant consumer detriment and we’d be unlikely to take action particularly as they moved to rectify it quickly," the spokeswoman said.

But consumers who wanted to take the matter further could either complain to the airline or could contact the ACCC's information line on 1300 302 502, she said.

"These things are always looked at on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Normally, Virgin's lounge memberships cost A$369 a year plus a A$199 one-off joining fee, or  A$30 to A$35 a visit for casual flyers.

Lounge access includes internet access, drinks and snacks, a cinema and showers — meaning Virgin potentially faced a huge jump in costs offering the free lounge memberships.

- with Andrew Heasley