Alpharooms cancel my Groupon voucher reservation

lfc84

ferf1223 wrote: »

What happened to your friend?!

Has the Groupon injustice proven to be too much for him?

I hope that he can find his way through this...

What's it got to do with you?

I will be rebooking but not with alpharooms. What's your problem with that?

Oh, and try and keep on topic.

delgado_2

The wording of the groupon offer allows a purchaser to use a groupon per transaction (which to a reader would imply "hotel booking transaction) and it allows you to book any hotel on any date. It seems to me that Alpharooms have belatedly realised that many canny readers of moneysavingexpert can read this as being one groupon per transaction for any hotel for any one date, and thus you can make seperate bookings for each single day hotel booking.

Alpharooms and Groupon need to come clean and recognise that their badly worded promotional advertisement has resulted in a lot of aggrieved new customers. If they do not then the whole promotion scheme which is designed to attract new customers will clearly have failed, as too many people will tell others not to touch Alpharooms and Groupon with the proverbial bargepole.

I too have had a booking cancelled by Alpharooms for the same reason as highlighted elsewhere in this post. But as the promotion did not say "only one groupon per person making the booking" and instead said "groupon per transaction", and used the terms "any hotel" and "any date", I fail to see any valid reason why Alpharooms can legitimately cancel my booking or the bookings of other forum posters.

But what makes it worse is the fact that the cancellation was only advised to me by Alpharooms today and not immediately after the booking was made on 8th April. Why does it take one week for this to happen?

Even worse, Alpharooms had previously emailed me on 8th April confirming both bookings and issuing accommodation vouchers. Has it not occurred to Alpharooms that a 6 day delay can mean that a person may also have in the meantime booked shuttle transport from the airport to the booked hotel that they Alpharooms has now belatedly cancelled? - thus causing even more inconvenience to a very p....sed off new customer.

On the basic legal principal of offer and acceptance, as Alpharooms have accepted my offer including submitted coupon codes, then simple contract law tells me that they have no valid legal basis to renege on that acceptance especially when it can only be because they did not check the voucher codes before issuing the confirmations and accommodation vouchers. Have they forgotten that they have a "duty of care" to honour?

It also does not seem appropriate and is certainly very unprofessional for them to be attempting to cancel two bookings 6 days after they issued confirmations and accommodation vouchers. Surely they should have all the necessary checks in place so that they advise a cancellation before they issue any confirmation and accommodation voucher.

It seems to me that the absence of any such checking system indicates that there was no original restriction on Groupon coupons being used one per each separate booked day of hotel stay, and that Alpharooms have belateldy realised how much this is going to cost them and are now illegally cancelling customers bookings without any valid reason and just to save them from losing too much money on their promotion.

Consistent with some other forum threads, a hotel that I originally wanted to use the coupons for (due to its specific location) was available on the day that I purchased the coupons and yet just one day later it mysteriously disappeared from the Alpharooms website. Thus, the only way I could then use the coupons was for two different date bookings at another hotel in another city in another country. So to all intents and purposes Alpharooms dictated how I used the coupons to fix a problem that they created.

Can MARTIN please have a quiet word in their ears. After all, we purchased coupons based on his email promotion of this con trick by Alpharooms.

I think both Alpharooms and Groupon owe all disgruntled cancelled bookers a big apology and Alpharooms should be making the necessary effort to not only jointly set up a system with Groupon such that we are all refunded without any quibble or delay but also compensated for the inconvenience that has been caused to us by a badly thought out and executed promotion.

Finally, someone should explain to Alpharooms that the cost to them is the same whether a person uses two coupons for one night at each of two different hotels or the same two coupons for two seperately booked nights at the same hotel. So all Alpharooms achieve with their cancellation is an angry customer who will tell everyone not to use them, and all for no overall cost benefit - that does not make good business sense.

delgado_2

According to the Groupon FAQ:

"The Fine Print says “1 Groupon per person, multiple may be purchased as gifts.” Can I buy myself some Groupons as gifts to myself and use more than one for myself?

No. If the Fine Print states "1 Groupon per person", you can only redeem one yourself".

However, for the Alpharooms promo, the Fine Print did not state "1 Groupon per person' so based on Groupon's own FAQ a reader can only reach the conclusion that he is allowed redeem more than one coupon for himself.

Further, instead it stated "1 Groupon per transaction" - in other words, and following the FAQ logic, "1 Groupon can be redeemed per hotel room booking transaction".

Most importantly, the Fine Print did not prohibit anyone from making more than one hotel room booking transaction or more than one transaction at the same at the same hotel or several seperate hotel room booking transactions at one hotel for each of several consecutive days.

Indeed, I suggest that it expressly allowed such multiple transactions to take place as the Fine Print used the terms "any hotel" and "any date".

Yes, Alpharooms/Groupon may have made an error in how they worded the promotion, but that is their responsibility and they should honor the deal, warts and all.

sajhaji

I have also had the same problem and 4 of my vouchers got cancelled, what frustrates me is that Alpharooms systems should not have been able to complete this boooking.

We successfully completed our booking, got the vouchers emailed, I also spoke to customer servcies on the phone just to confirm that all my 5 bookings were ok and I was positively told that its all ok.

And then to get an email a 3 days before my travel to the US, I discover that my bookings have been cancelled !!!

Surely, they can honour all the bookings based on the fact that they did not have a system in place to prevent this problem in the first place.

lfc84

you can ask groupon for a cancellation of the voucher within 7 working days of purchase.

i note also that alpharooms are cancelling reservations just after 7 calendar days....many will think the deadline has passed for groupon voucher refunds.

thus decreasing the possibility of voucher refund and maximising inconvenience

payless

a side issue :- booking 3 rooms on separate orders , does this mean willing to vacant room at 10am... and go back at 2pm ?

apt

The deadline is 7 working days so you can still cancel.

ferf1223

delgado wrote: »

According to the Groupon FAQ:

"The Fine Print says “1 Groupon per person, multiple may be purchased as gifts.”

...

Further, instead it stated "1 Groupon per transaction" - in other words, and following the FAQ logic, "1 Groupon can be redeemed per hotel room booking transaction".

That doesn't follow....

1 Groupon per transaction, may buy multiple as gifts.

vs

1 Groupon per person, multiple may be purchased as gifts

So...

Those terms relate to the buying of the Groupon - not the using of the Groupon...

delgado wrote: »

Most importantly, the Fine Print did not prohibit anyone from making more than one hotel room booking transaction or more than one transaction at the same at the same hotel or several seperate hotel room booking transactions at one hotel for each of several consecutive days.

If you can only buy one, you can only use one...and it would not follow that you could buy 3 and give 3 away and that person could use all 3.

lfc84

I think delgado's post is a bit confusing. Just to reiterate what I wrote in post #1:

In respect of buying the Groupon voucher...

The "fine print" stated:

"1 Groupon per transaction, may buy multiple as gifts. "

It does not say one per customer.

What gives ferf1223 the idea that you could only buy one and use one?

ferf1223

maybe the 'may buy multiples as gifts' part? If they state that you can buy multiples as gifts (for other people - plural in both cases), is it not pretty clear that you can only buy one to use yourself?
But then again, I'm not looking for a loophole...and I understand the point of companies offering Groupons to the public - it's not to give loads of stuff away for free, it's to give people an incentive to use them - not to screw them.