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Ncrowd hotel voucher.
smith79
Posts: 6 Forumite
Morning all! Newbie here so I hope I'm posting this in the correct section.
Ok. So the story goes like this... Back in August this year I purchased a voucher from Ncrowd for a "2 night Blackpool ILLUMINATIONS BREAK" The deal was for 2 people, 2 nights including breakfast and evening meal with a bottle of wine on both nights for £79. Good price I thought. The voucher could be redeemed between 1st September to 22nd December 2015 excluding 14-27 November.
I emailed the hotel to book for the weekend of 4-5 December, requesting a cot in the room for our 7 month old. A few days passed and I'd not had confirmation so I emailed again. This time I got a response back quickly confirming my booking, and that I should have had an email from them with a reference as the subject. I didn't receive this so I emailed them again asking if they could re-send it. I got a reply back from them on 21/8/15 saying "Your booking is confirmed as an Ncrowd package, please bring a copy of your voucher on arrival. Thanks."
I saved the voucher onto my phone and thought nothing more of this until the week before we were due to set off, my other half asked her (very large) group of facebook acquaintances what they could recommend for us to do for 2 days in Blackpool with a 7 month old.
One of the 1st replies was 'check what will be open as the illuminations have finished now so off season starts again' bearing in mind this was sold to me as an Illuminations Break, as per the title of the deal I was a little pee'd off and thought to myself "I'll be complaining to Ncrowd when we get back about that!!
Aaaaanyhoo.. fast forward to Fri 4/12/15 and we pack the car up with more stuff than we used to take for a week for the two of us (kids ehh?!) and make our way from East Yorkshire to Blackpool.
When we arrive 3 hours later at Alfie's hotel, we are greeted by someone who looked like a cleaner or caretaker, who asked us to wait in the dining room. 15 or so minutes later another man greeted us and asked for our booking name... he then dropped the bombshell,
Ohh Smith... yours was an Ncrowd wasn't it? You know your voucher isn't valid don't you?
Us: NO! Why not?
Him: Yeah, they went bust and aren't paying out, they owe us 12 grand, you should see the paperwork I've got to fill out to claim it back!!
Us: Oh no... where does that leave us with our booking?
Him: What we're doing is, cos there's loads more like you, offering the same deal that Ncrowd were, so you still get dinner and wine, but you'll need to pay us the £79, which I appreciate you've already paid, but that's the situation.
Us: We'll need to think about this... can we have a few minutes privacy to discuss.
Him: Yes sure.
We do not have pots of money, and £79 is a significant sum to us, so I was reluctant. At the same time this weekend away was a birthday gift for my other half and I didn't want to write the weekend off.
He returned a minute or so later with a letter from the receivers handling Ncrowd's affairs to 'prove' he wasn't making it up
Him: We've lost a lot of money from this, they owe us 12 grand, we've phoned everyone who has one of these booked to tell them and some have just cancelled the stay, quite a few have paid us the £79 there's a couple here tonight who did that...
Us: You didn't email me to let me know.
Him: Yeah there was another I couldn't get hold of cos I had a digit wrong in the number.
Us: We need a few minutes to discuss this, we'll just go to the car where it's warm and see you in a minute.
Him: yeah I understand, It's a lot and you've already paid out once.
We drove away and found a last minute booking on a website for a hotel a couple of miles away.
1. I'm furious that the hotel made no effort to let me know my voucher would not be accepted until the point we were stood in front of them. If this isn't slandering, I'm of the opinion that this was a deliberate tactic, in the hope that we would just pay up.
2. Given the time frame (voucher bought in Aug, booking confirmed in Aug, should they not have already been paid for my voucher? On the Ncrowd, or Boom Street, (as it became) website my voucher was displayed with the status "redeemed" when I saved it to my phone dated Oct 15.
3. Who was my contract with? Ncrowd delivered me, albeit electronically, the voucher they said they would. The hotel confirmed my booking and were aware it was a voucher deal, it is they who refuse the service. I'm very very sorry for them, and the no doubt countless other businesses who have lost or are owed money by Ncrowd, but that isn't my problem.
4. Can they get away with calling it an Illuminations break when the illuminations (the main attraction for us) had finished weeks prior to our booked dates.
The weekend wasn't a total-loss as we did find a cheap night in a lovely hotel, but of course had to pay, and had to feed ourselves which ate into the spending money somewhat.
Apologies if this is a discombobulated read, but I'm still reeling from the conduct and lack of customer care from Alfie's.
Any advice on a route to take to try and reclaim my £79 will be gratefully received.
Ok. So the story goes like this... Back in August this year I purchased a voucher from Ncrowd for a "2 night Blackpool ILLUMINATIONS BREAK" The deal was for 2 people, 2 nights including breakfast and evening meal with a bottle of wine on both nights for £79. Good price I thought. The voucher could be redeemed between 1st September to 22nd December 2015 excluding 14-27 November.
I emailed the hotel to book for the weekend of 4-5 December, requesting a cot in the room for our 7 month old. A few days passed and I'd not had confirmation so I emailed again. This time I got a response back quickly confirming my booking, and that I should have had an email from them with a reference as the subject. I didn't receive this so I emailed them again asking if they could re-send it. I got a reply back from them on 21/8/15 saying "Your booking is confirmed as an Ncrowd package, please bring a copy of your voucher on arrival. Thanks."
I saved the voucher onto my phone and thought nothing more of this until the week before we were due to set off, my other half asked her (very large) group of facebook acquaintances what they could recommend for us to do for 2 days in Blackpool with a 7 month old.
One of the 1st replies was 'check what will be open as the illuminations have finished now so off season starts again' bearing in mind this was sold to me as an Illuminations Break, as per the title of the deal I was a little pee'd off and thought to myself "I'll be complaining to Ncrowd when we get back about that!!
Aaaaanyhoo.. fast forward to Fri 4/12/15 and we pack the car up with more stuff than we used to take for a week for the two of us (kids ehh?!) and make our way from East Yorkshire to Blackpool.
When we arrive 3 hours later at Alfie's hotel, we are greeted by someone who looked like a cleaner or caretaker, who asked us to wait in the dining room. 15 or so minutes later another man greeted us and asked for our booking name... he then dropped the bombshell,
Ohh Smith... yours was an Ncrowd wasn't it? You know your voucher isn't valid don't you?
Us: NO! Why not?
Him: Yeah, they went bust and aren't paying out, they owe us 12 grand, you should see the paperwork I've got to fill out to claim it back!!
Us: Oh no... where does that leave us with our booking?
Him: What we're doing is, cos there's loads more like you, offering the same deal that Ncrowd were, so you still get dinner and wine, but you'll need to pay us the £79, which I appreciate you've already paid, but that's the situation.
Us: We'll need to think about this... can we have a few minutes privacy to discuss.
Him: Yes sure.
We do not have pots of money, and £79 is a significant sum to us, so I was reluctant. At the same time this weekend away was a birthday gift for my other half and I didn't want to write the weekend off.
He returned a minute or so later with a letter from the receivers handling Ncrowd's affairs to 'prove' he wasn't making it up
Him: We've lost a lot of money from this, they owe us 12 grand, we've phoned everyone who has one of these booked to tell them and some have just cancelled the stay, quite a few have paid us the £79 there's a couple here tonight who did that...
Us: You didn't email me to let me know.
Him: Yeah there was another I couldn't get hold of cos I had a digit wrong in the number.
Us: We need a few minutes to discuss this, we'll just go to the car where it's warm and see you in a minute.
Him: yeah I understand, It's a lot and you've already paid out once.
We drove away and found a last minute booking on a website for a hotel a couple of miles away.
1. I'm furious that the hotel made no effort to let me know my voucher would not be accepted until the point we were stood in front of them. If this isn't slandering, I'm of the opinion that this was a deliberate tactic, in the hope that we would just pay up.
2. Given the time frame (voucher bought in Aug, booking confirmed in Aug, should they not have already been paid for my voucher? On the Ncrowd, or Boom Street, (as it became) website my voucher was displayed with the status "redeemed" when I saved it to my phone dated Oct 15.
3. Who was my contract with? Ncrowd delivered me, albeit electronically, the voucher they said they would. The hotel confirmed my booking and were aware it was a voucher deal, it is they who refuse the service. I'm very very sorry for them, and the no doubt countless other businesses who have lost or are owed money by Ncrowd, but that isn't my problem.
4. Can they get away with calling it an Illuminations break when the illuminations (the main attraction for us) had finished weeks prior to our booked dates.
The weekend wasn't a total-loss as we did find a cheap night in a lovely hotel, but of course had to pay, and had to feed ourselves which ate into the spending money somewhat.
Apologies if this is a discombobulated read, but I'm still reeling from the conduct and lack of customer care from Alfie's.
Any advice on a route to take to try and reclaim my £79 will be gratefully received.
0
Comments
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Your contract was with Ncrowd - they went bust, so you are one of the (many) unsecured creditors. You should make sure the receiver has your details, but the chances of getting anything back will be very very slim.
One of the dangers of booking anything through a 3rd party. Sorry.0 -
Your contract was with Ncrowd - they went bust, so you are one of the (many) unsecured creditors. You should make sure the receiver has your details, but the chances of getting anything back will be very very slim.
One of the dangers of booking anything through a 3rd party. Sorry.
Figured as much. I think I paid with paypal... I wonder if their buyer protection will cover me for services not received.....0
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