A Space Age airline with a Dark Ages reservation system.

Update at the bottom with a statement from Virgin America.

We reported on Virgin America's technical difficulties back in November, after a switch to a new reservation system left some users out on the tarmac. Customers encountered weird glitches when they tried to view their accounts or book a flight, and the customer service line was overwhelmed with inquiries. At the time, the problems had been ongoing for a month. And we thought that was bad. Virgin America customers are still running into glitches three months later.

PandoDaily's Paul Carr wrote about it. Random other people with blogs wrote about it. Even though Virgin Atlantic America (see disambiguation) told Mr. Carr the service would be fixed by mid-February (first week in December was what they told us), customers are still complaining of errors.

"The cool music in your airline restrooms and purple lighting are no compensation for poor management," writes S. Neil Vineberg, a San Francisco marketer who claimed in February that he has not been receiving confirmations by email and is told wait times are 58 minutes to 1 hour and 14 minutes when he calls customer service.

Ironically, yesterday saw the announcement of Virgin Digital Help, a new personal tech support service in the U.S. under the Virgin umbrella brand for "web and email issues, computers, smartphones, viruses– anything digital." Prices range from $30 per fix to $15 per month.

"We love our digital lifestyles, but sometimes the stress of dealing with technology that is confusing or failure-prone is just too much," says a press release. "That’s why Virgin... announced a new service, Virgin Digital Help, to support the growing number of US consumers who feel overwhelmed by the ‘digital stress’ associated with their increasingly complex digital lifestyles."

Perhaps Virgin Digital Help can help the next time you try to book a flight and getting booted out halfway through the process. Tell them you're experiencing some acute digital stress.

UPDATE, 6:00 p.m.: Virgin America sent this statement:

We are a U.S. owned and operated airline and Virgin Group is a minority investor -- so we have no direct affiliation with the newly launched digital help company (or with Virgin Atlantic).

Although the majority of issues are now resolved and our website is operating at normal capacity, as you note, a sub-set of users continued to experience web issues related to our reservations switch into February, mainly related to issues with Elevate account logins. We currently have an average 5 minute hold time on our main reservations number. As you may recall, during the reservations switch in the fall we waived all change fees and offered 5000 Elevate points (the equivalent of a free flight) by way of further apology to those guests most affected. In addition, we continued to reach out on an individual basis to guests with refunds, credit files and point credits depending on the issues experienced.

She notes further that "reservations systems switches are a one-time occurrence for most airlines, involving the knife-edge migration of millions of records during live operations. For past examples, see: http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/cutover-nightmare-the-challenge-of-it-transitions-343571/ Most recently, United initiated a similar switch this month, see: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/05/uk-united-idUSLNE82401120120305."

(virginamerica.com)

The Virgin America rep sounded contrite. The airline switched reservation systems on October 28, Abby Lunardini told Betabeat, which essentially meant changing the entire site's backend, and some though not all patrons have had errors because of it: trouble changing seats, canceling flights and accessing flight history, mostly. The change and subsequent trouble have backed up the airline's call centers severely. "We've been working through the issues and made some fixes this past week and over the weekend," she said. "We're really very apologetic because it's definitely not our typical service. We're hoping we're going to have the last web errors resolved by first week in December."

In the meantime, customers must contact Virgin by calling the customer service line, where wait times average 27 minutes, or through Twitter. Virgin added 30 percent call center staff before the change, and an additional 45 percent since then, the rep said. Wait times are usually 30 seconds, she said.

Virgin also increased its airport staff 10 to 20 percent prior to the change, she said.

"As an airline that prides itself on our guest service, we never like to see guests inconvenienced for any reason and we are trying to do right by them as we resolve these issues," Virgin said in a statement." Virgin will waive all change/cancel fees for customers having issues. Virgin's VIP "Elevate" members flying during this period, about 56,000 so far, have received an apology from Virgin's CEO and a free flight credited to their accounts. "We hope to have the chance to welcome our loyal flyers back in the weeks ahead and better show them the award-winning service we are typically known for."

Way to make flying suck less, Virgin. But seriously—the hipster airline is going through the same transition pains Jet Blue and WestJet saw in June of 2010. Most irked customers had to append their complaints with a disclaimer along the lines of "usually Virgin is the best but this is insanely frustrating." However, the airline has lost at least a few customers. "Dismayed by the recent uptick in complaints towards@VirginAmerica," tweeted Outbrain's Josh Guttman. "They were my lone salvation in air travel and now all hope seems lost."

A quick search on Twitter showed other customers complaining about being unable to get into their accounts or make reservations, going back weeks.

"I called them but I was on hold for like, 20 minutes, so I just hung up," Mr. Gross said. "I don't like to complain about travel on Twitter because I feel like too many people do it, but I don't know how to get in touch with Virgin America."

So far, Virgin hasn't responded to Mr. Gross.

"Due to our recent switch to a new reservations platform, we're experiencing issues with our website and longer than usual hold times at our Call Center.  Some guests may encounter errors while making flight changes and completing other processes online," Virgin America advises on its website.

The change happened on October 28, reports The Wall Street Journal, and Virgin's customer service call centers have been severely backed up since then.

We reached out to Virgin America and will update with a response.

]]> Virgin America has been positioning itself as the nerd's choice of airlines, but a recent website redesign is seriously damaging its techie cred.Percolate co-founder James Gross, a Virgin America fan, found himself locked out of the site last week: Virgin America had forgotten his user name. He was able to log in using his account number, he told Betabeat, but none of his flight history was visible and his credits were gone.

A quick search on Twitter showed other customers complaining about being unable to get into their accounts or make reservations, going back weeks.

"I called them but I was on hold for like, 20 minutes, so I just hung up," Mr. Gross said. "I don't like to complain about travel on Twitter because I feel like too many people do it, but I don't know how to get in touch with Virgin America."

So far, Virgin hasn't responded to Mr. Gross.

"Due to our recent switch to a new reservations platform, we're experiencing issues with our website and longer than usual hold times at our Call Center.  Some guests may encounter errors while making flight changes and completing other processes online," Virgin America advises on its website.

The change happened on October 28, reports The Wall Street Journal, and Virgin's customer service call centers have been severely backed up since then.

We reached out to Virgin America and will update with a response.

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