Allstars Driving Academy Scam?

shei

A few months ago I bought a voucher with a value of about £150 for £59 for a "Two Hour Introduction to drifting session" off the LivingSocial website. After months of trying to get through to the company, Allstars Driving Academy for a booking before my voucher expired I finally managed to confirm with them a day to take the session.

When I arrived there, we found there were about 10 people taking turns for a 3 minute ride in one of the 3 cars. Don't even get me started on the "track" if you could call it that, more like an empty parking lot! All in all I only managed to spend about 10 minutes in a car after 3 hours of waiting around before I was sent home because it was getting too dark to continue. They told me that the session was half completed, so I am assuming that I only had another 10 minutes to go. Not really what I would call a two-hour session at all.

After all of that I was asked, along with a few other customers in the session, to rebook an event. All of their available bookings on their website are on a weekend which I can not do as I must work and this was not specified on the voucher either. The staff at the event could not guarantee a rebooking and was reluctant to offer any refunds whatsoever saying it was up to their boss.

I was so frustrated with their poor service and false advertisement of a 2 hour session that I posted what had happened on their Facebook page and sent them an email asking for another session or compensation. Mysteriously the Facebook post disappeared with no response from the company. So I posted again and this also was deleted. Getting annoyed that they had time to delete my posts, yet could not be bothered to let me know that they were trying to resolve the problem, I posted again and again until I finally got a response from them by email.

The email was from the owner of the company saying that he had been too busy to reply for a few days. He had got his staff to delete my posts and ban me from the page, but couldn't ask his staff to send me a quick reply stating that they were dealing with the problem. Finally he said that since I had decided to 'abuse' their company in public, he is within his right to refuse to provide me with any further services including the rest of the session that i am owed!

I have reported them to LivingSocial but they need a few days to investigate the matter and I doubt they will be able to do much since they're just the middle man.

What is your advice on this matter? How can I get my money back?

Any sort of help would be much appreciated

shei

Oh and they also decided to change the venue stated on the voucher from Wembley to Brands Hatch in Kent which was about twice as far for me

jussie_2

Go to trading standards web page click on Consumer Information.