Cyber Monday: Virgin Atlantic Slammed for ‘Golden Ticket’ Game Stalling Out

Virgin Atlantic’s “Golden Ticket” game did not work according to plan on Cyber Monday, and users were not pleased. Before long, social media had filled with complaints about the digital scavenger hunt. At the time of this writing, there are still tickets available.

Virgin Atlantic has had success before with a promotion called The Golden Ticket, or the £1 Golden Ticket. Essentially, the airline offers a few Economy Delight flights for £1, or about $1.29 — plus applicable taxes and surcharges.

The trick is that customers need to find the flights themselves, and they could be anywhere in the wide world. However, Virgin Atlantic helped customers with a few cryptic clues on Twitter to get them started.

This is where users gathered to share their complaints about the game when it stopped working. One person posted a screenshot of an error message from the Virgin Atlantic website, reading: “Sorry, we’re not able to process your request right now. Please try again later.”

Many other users had the same issue, and and before long some had determined theories on how the website might be broken. They felt that this compromised the spirit and the function of the online game.

“I assume the reason [Virgin Atlantic has] gone quiet is because they’ve realised it’s broken,” one person tweeted.

“Hey nothing is loading in June July??? I don’t even get an error message anymore it just keeps me on the Book A Flight page,” added another.

The airline was also silent as users shared the information with each other, allowing more customers to cash in on the savings. In spite of the issues, at least some people had success, including one Twitter user who shared a screenshot of his winning “Golden Ticket.”

The details of the flight were not shown, although the price was. In addition to the £1 ticket price, the customer was charged £139.96 in taxes, fees and surcharges, bringing the total to about $182.31. Still, for an international flight that is a hefty discount.

Some of the deals got users to and from Tel Aviv, Israel, London, England and Paradise, Nevada, among others places. At the time of this writing, Virgin Atlantic has promised that more clues will continue to roll in throughout the day.

This is just one of the big deals available on Cyber Monday, however, it is also just one place where online infrastructure is being tested by the immense load of the holiday.