Virgin Australia Does April Fools' Right

Like there’s no toilet paper in Australia? Giving is never bad, but why toilet paper?

Well Quinten, some scumbags are hoarding way more than they need so people who actually need it can't get it. Plus let's face it...we live in a world where toilet paper is rarer than gold in some places. TOILET PAPER of all things!

@Quinten - I've seen toilet paper for sale once in 3 weeks. No idea what people are doing with it.

Horrible airline... it's all about building an image that isn't true. Their customer care team is the worst and they can't even do simple things like crediting you for flights on partner airlines without you sending several emails. I just had a very bad experience with Virgin Australia and I was told that their only responsibility is "to transport passengers from point A to point B safely." A disgrace.

...On the other hand, I have never had anything but positive experiences with VA.

Bad luck for you, David? Or...

I'm with you Peter. As David says, I too have had issues getting points and status credits from partner airlines but aside from that, they're pretty faultless. And most discussions on other forums at the moment regarding their handling of this situation, from refunds to status extensions seems to agree theyre doing as good a job as can be done right now.

I will leave the other issues alone. (Not saying they are invalid, just focusing on the positive.)

Well done. They gave back when the did not have to. That should be applauded.

Kleenex matched their donation. That too should be applauded. Well done.

I’m hoping this is indeed an April fools joke. How many VA staff handled the toilet paper without gloves....you don’t have to have symptoms to be COVID+

@M, unless you're wiping your face with the toilet paper or not washing your hands with soap after completing your rituals, I don't think its too much of an issue.

In Australia there is a massive shortage of toilet paper which the Prime Minister has been misleading the public about - consistently blaming 'hoarders'.

The truth is a proportion of toilet rolls used in Australia come from China - you know the place that shut down for nearly 8 weeks.

That not only impacted the toilet roll supply directly (no TRs coming from there for 2 months) but also massively due to nearly $8 billion of plastic imported from China annually. Much of this is plastic packaging material.

One major manufacturer ran out of the special plastic rolls used for the tops of tissue boxes in early February. Their machines will not run without the plastic rolls in place and have optical sensors in various places to ensure that without plastic it shuts down. This machinery is mainly from Switzerland and these controls are hard coded....

So for 7 weeks they stopped production...

Also much of the plastic used for wrapping toilet rolls comes from, you guessed it, China....

So as they were going to also run out of the plastic they decided to produce packs of 12 or 24 rolls not any 2, 4 or 8 packs. For example 3 packs of 4 uses 2x the plastic of 1 pack of 12 rolls.

Living in Sydney, I have not been able to buy toilet rolls since the 3rd weekend in February & have nearly run out. Luckily, that Feb weekend had a special on 12 packs - so I bought 3. Otherwise we'd be having to use newspaper or something else that cannot be flushed away without blocking the sewer.

Major supermarket stores (over 100,000 sq ft ones) having been receiving as few as 18 packs of toilet rolls a day (after staff have taken what they need of course).

@Andrew - Love a good conspiracy theory do you?

It is only down to stupid people hoarding as it is around the world. Of course, if you can reveal your source and backup materials, I might be converted...