Taking Red Letter Days to court....

System

I don't see why the expiry date is unfair? 11 months seems perfectly reasonable to redeem a deal. If I buy an anytime return from Manchester to London I have one month to use the ticket to get home. I could not take Virgin trains to court if I tried to use the ticket after two months as the T's and C's clearly state it has to be used in a month.

Groupon vouchers are also only valid for certain days e.g. if you buy a restaurant deal you only have till a set date to claim the deal. I don't see these as unfair either

I hope the OP reports back on how they get on.

Azari

goater78 wrote: »

I don't see why the expiry date is unfair? 11 months seems perfectly reasonable to redeem a deal. If I buy an anytime return from Manchester to London I have one month to use the ticket to get home. I could not take Virgin trains to court if I tried to use the ticket after two months as the T's and C's clearly state it has to be used in a month.

Groupon vouchers are also only valid for certain days e.g. if you buy a restaurant deal you only have till a set date to claim the deal. I don't see these as unfair either

I hope the OP reports back on how they get on.

You may be right but I think Zedicus has brought up a very important point.

If the money has gone to the people hosting the actual activity it may well be deemed fair because (as with your train example) they have to juggle capacity and it would be difficult to do that a backlog of vouchers going back years.

If the money is kept by Red Letter Days, and particularly if the expiry date is not extremely prominent, then it's no more that legalised theft and OP will almost certainly win.

That may well be why the company caved in the last time they were threatened with court.

System

Azari wrote: »

You may be right but I think Zedicus has brought up a very important point.

If the money has gone to the people hosting the actual activity it may well be deemed fair because (as with your train example) they have to juggle capacity and it would be difficult to do that a backlog of vouchers going back years.

If the money is kept by Red Letter Days, and particularly if the expiry date is not extremely prominent, then it's no more that legalised theft and OP will almost certainly win.

That may well be why the company caved in the last time they were threatened with court.

It depends how red letter days work as a company. If they only have a set number for one of the experience days then they could argue that they couldn't sell anymore days of the experience because the quota had all been taken. Therefore it wouldn't be fair on RLD to lose out on the money because of a consumer not reading the T's & C's. Its all speculation though as nobody knows how they operate.

magenta22

If it was a couple of weeks or even a month after the expiry date of the voucher I would agree but the point is that the OP tried to book the experience 11 MONTHS after the expiry date.

Did the OP buy it themselves? if they did, it would have said on the website that the voucher would be valid for a certain amount of time. If they didn't, why are they complaining - they didn't pay for it in the first place.

The goods have been provided, as in the voucher has been sent with details on how to and when to book by. It's not their fault that the OP shoved it under a pile of papers and forgot about it, although how someone can forget that they have an experience day.

Having an expiry date for the voucher is not unreasonable because it may be something that is a limited time offer, they can't have people making bookings saying I have a voucher from 10 years ago now can they.

The voucher HAS the expiry date CLEARLY marked on it.
It is also on the website I just checked, it says that the gift is left unbooked and the receipient has at least 10 months to book it.

It doesn't really matter who pockets the money,they provide ample time to book your experience, I know when I got my voucher I wanted to do it as soon as possible so booked it as soon as possible. It's down to you to book it and not down to them to remind you.

arcon5

Another question for you.....

referring back to my concert ticket example on page 4, if you miss the concert on night 1 (for this example lets assume the ticket seller makes 50% profit on each ticket they sell), based on the logic your applying, you would have the right to a) book a ticket for the next night at a 50% discount which covers their losses or b) claim a refund less their proovable losses (which as said above are 50% of the cost of the ticket, perhaps plus an admin fee).

do you think this is fair?

magenta22

arcon5 wrote: »

Another question for you.....

referring back to my concert ticket example on page 4, if you miss the concert on night 1 (for this example lets assume the ticket seller makes 50% profit on each ticket they sell), based on the logic your applying, you would have the right to a) book a ticket for the next night at a 50% discount which covers their losses or b) claim a refund less their proovable losses (which as said above are 50% of the cost of the ticket, perhaps plus an admin fee).

do you think this is fair?

Unless I am mis-reading your point.

If you buy a concert ticket for a night and you miss it, that is not the fault of the vendor of the ticket or the artist. Unless it was cancelled for some reason you would not be entitled to a replacement or to re-book it for a later date.

Same as it's not RLD's fault the OP 'forgot' about the voucher. They sent it, OP's responsibilty to book it within the time frame.

ThumbRemote

magenta22 wrote: »

If it was a couple of weeks or even a month after the expiry date of the voucher I would agree but the point is that the OP tried to book the experience 11 MONTHS after the expiry date.

magenta22 wrote: »

Same as it's not RLD's fault the OP 'forgot' about the voucher. They sent it, OP's responsibilty to book it within the time frame.

Are you deliberately misunderstanding the basis behind the court case?

The OP is not suggesting that it is in any way RLDs fault they didn't book. Nor is the time period after the expiry date relevant.

The OP suggests the existence of the time frame itself is the issue. They believe it is an unfair term as it gives a significant imbalance in the parties rights.

Only if the judge rules that the time frame is valid do your comments have any validity.

ThumbRemote

arcon5 wrote: »

Another question for you.....

referring back to my concert ticket example on page 4, if you miss the concert on night 1 (for this example lets assume the ticket seller makes 50% profit on each ticket they sell), based on the logic your applying, you would have the right to a) book a ticket for the next night at a 50% discount which covers their losses or b) claim a refund less their proovable losses (which as said above are 50% of the cost of the ticket, perhaps plus an admin fee).

do you think this is fair?

Your analogy is fundamentally incorrect as the purchaser of a RLD voucher has not booked anything. They have paid for the right to book something at a later date.

The analogy only works if you had paid for admission to the concert series, but had to select the specific concert at a later date. You missed the promoters deadline for selecting your specific concert - even though the concert series is still running and there are still seats available - they pocket your money and you get nothing.

The OP is challenging the existence of the promoters deadline, which to extend your analogy appears to bear no relationship to the dates of the series of concerts.

texranger

Zedicus wrote: »

One thing that no one has brought up but which would be very important to a judge in determining whether the clause relating to expiry is fair is: who gets to keep the money that has been lost to the purchasers? If that money goes to the experience providers the a judge is very likely to say that an expiry date is perfectly fair as they need to plan availability. If, (as I suspect is much more likely), the money is simply trousered by RLD then I would be extremely surprised if it was not considered unfair. That may explain why, in the other case mentioned and linked to earlier, they capitulated rather than risk court.

what would happen is like every single business in the world. the experience provider will supply RLD with lets say 30 places at X amount to be used by X date, so RLD will pay the experience provider X amount for the 30 places. they RLD will advertise for Y amount to be used by X date. so X date is placed on the voichers and then someone comes along 11 months after X date oh i found this voucher it should have been used by X date can i redeem this. how can you redeem this after the experioence provider only allowed RLD to have these at this price until X date.

magenta22

ThumbRemote wrote: »

Are you deliberately misunderstanding the basis behind the court case?

The OP is not suggesting that it is in any way RLDs fault they didn't book. Nor is the time period after the expiry date relevant.

The OP suggests the existence of the time frame itself is the issue. They believe it is an unfair term as it gives a significant imbalance in the parties rights.

Only if the judge rules that the time frame is valid do your comments have any validity.

Well yes, clearly I am as are other people here are then.
I don't think that there is an issue and the OP is just nissed off because they didn't book it in time and think that gives them the right to complain about it in this way. basically, too bad.

As I said, I have both purchased and received an experience day voucher and I didn't have ANY problem with there being an expiry date, I didn't even stop to think why should there be one.

As you have posed the question - I put it to you then why shouldn't there be an expiry date?

You go to a shop, purchase something - you have so many days to return it - should that be open ended too? There has to be terms - return policy or expiry date.

I'm sorry, but it clearly states on the website AND the voucher that there is an expiry date and it must be booked by that date.

We're not talking a couple of weeks after the expiry date that the OP tried to book, we are talking almost a year after.