Activity Superstore - 'experiences' 3 November 2017 at 6:35PM in Praise, vent & warnings 14 replies 6.7K views

AlanF49

Do NOT even think of using this company.
The only 'experience' you will have is trying to get fulfilment of their obligations.
They do not honour their worthless promises and many of their listed companies, allegedly providing events etc, do not know anything about it - they have never agreed to participate. We are aware of one provider who is taking legal action against them.
We have been unable to find anything suitable within the very short, timescale they stipulate - which in itself, is dubious legally and part of the scam.
Talk to Trading Standards and the Police.

Miranda_Ingram

I was given Steam Train Ride With Cream Tea as a present only to find that none of the 3 railways closest to me could provide this. One railway on the list on the gift box even told me that they had never been contacted by this company and only found out about this offer when people started ringing them up. Their lawyers are writing to Activity Superstore. Another railway said they did not provide cream teas and never had done. Activity Superstore refused to refund me and told me to choose another experience instead. No apologies for false information! The other activities were either unavailable, geographically too distant or simply unsuitable. We're not all into comedy nights out, very limited spa treatments etc. A complete rip-off.

BorisThomson

Welcome to the forum Alan and Miranda. What a bizarre coincidence that you registered and found each other within half an hour of each other, and then logged off within a minute of each other!

Activity Superstore have always struck me as a dodgy company, but signing up as multiple users will make people doubt your authenticity.

stuartJo1989

BorisThomson wrote: »

Welcome to the forum Alan and Miranda. What a bizarre coincidence that you registered and found each other within half an hour of each other, and then logged off within a minute of each other!

Activity Superstore have always struck me as a dodgy company, but signing up as multiple users will make people doubt your authenticity.

That in itself does not suggest that they are both one user.... You have to take such things at face value unless concrete evidence exists!

Besides, two people/posts on a random internet forum won't sway me (or anyone else) to avoid them (but we might research them more).

I think there's only a case for the comma usage in both posts (it seems a bit wayward to me). There aren't many other similarities between each post to suggest that they are the same person.

hollydays

Lots and lots of complaints about “activity superstore” on here.
A mention of BBC Watchdog on the net too.

Eg
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4383655&highlight=activity+superstore

I suggest all consumes start by flagging up the complaint , poor service, on the social media sites of the retailers concerned ie Debenhams etc .

Also there seems to be a lot of spam on here about them- self promotion by digital marketers?

Seem to have very poor customer service

Allegedly sold by

Argos Next Morrison’s
Wh Smith Debenhams Boots
Wyvale garden centres


https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/activity-superstore-c270699.html
Ie
“ to cap it all the manager emily told me that i would have to pay £25 more to re-book. i am furious. the rally rush man told us that this happened all the time and in fact some people travel from scotland only to be told that the booking hasnt been made. this is disgraceful and i am going to go down as many channels as possible in order to claim some recompense for this ridiculous situation. at the moment i have lost my voucher money, 2 late payment fees, have been treated very unfairly, been accused of lying and my boyfriend still has no birthday present from last june. i have been in contact with trading standards who are very interested in this case.”

paulfoel

I got caught by this one - sold to me by Morrisons.

Of course, at the point of purchase you don't even know the restrictions. In fact, you don't even know until you activate the voucher.

Then you find out there are so many restrictions you can't actually attend any of the events (unless you're free on the 3rd tuesday in november)....

I expect they know damn well that the vast majority of these vouchers never get used so they make a nice little sum out of it. That seems to be their business model.

If a low 5% actually use the vouchers then, whereas you might lose on paying the provider versus the cost of the voucher, you've got 95% of them where its 100% profit because they dont get used.

Allinthistogether

My kids bought me one of these as a Christmas present. I didn't redeem it for a long time as none of the offers really appealed. When I did, the site wouldn't accept it and I had a long process of emails and links to sort out what they admitted was a fault at their end.

The 'experience' was for 'Chocaholics' where the company sent me three supposedly upmarket chocolate bars at three monthly intervals.
The first lot were ok, nothing special. The second lot were just Divine Chocolate bars available in any supermarket, and the third and final ones were again nothing at all special. My family can't now remember how much they paid for this, but the experience wasn't worth more than £20 -25 in total and I'm sure they all cost more than that. I notice that this particular experience has now been removed from the website.

In summary, not at all impressed.

oldlordy

They make it easy to purchase but almost impossible to redeem and from what I’ve read a lot of the experiences don’t exist anyway. If you do happen to purchase one for a gift, it’s useless without proof of purchase, you'll need to hand that over as well! They had the cheek to ask me to get a copy of a bank statement if I didn’t have a receipt, how could I possibly go back to my friend and ask for proof of purchase and that’s the trick they use to con people out of money. Incidentally, I’ve read just about everything I can find on line and at no point do the company explain this to either the purchaser or the recipient.
I’ve used 'Buy a gift' and had absolutely no problems at all with redemption.

sheramber

oldlordy wrote: »

They make it easy to purchase but almost impossible to redeem and from what I’ve read a lot of the experiences don’t exist anyway. If you do happen to purchase one for a gift, it’s useless without proof of purchase, you'll need to hand that over as well! They had the cheek to ask me to get a copy of a bank statement if I didn’t have a receipt, how could I possibly go back to my friend and ask for proof of purchase and that’s the trick they use to con people out of money. Incidentally, I’ve read just about everything I can find on line and at no point do the company explain this to either the purchaser or the recipient.
I’ve used 'Buy a gift' and had absolutely no problems at all with redemption.

https://www.activitysuperstore.com/static/faq

Q. My information pack says I need a gift receipt to register, I don’t have this. What can I do?
A. To enable us to process your validation we do need a copy of the original receipt or gift receipt. We can also accept a copy of a bank statement showing the purchase transaction.

JohnCorne

Read the small print *VERY* carefully - the "valid until" date is not the same as the use by date - you may find that your voucher is totally useless!

Jc

manchester_tim

At the risk of being different, my brother in law bought me a Manchester City Stadium Experience through ActivitySuperstore and I was able to redeem it, and use it, without any problem 😁