Paid for treatments at spa in advance but now spa has announced it's closing

CharlotteML

-This Sunday (Sept 1st) I had a massage at a local spa, which I paid for as a 'course' (a buy four get one free kind of deal)- effectively paying £220 for five massages but only actually getting one done at the time (the others were credited to my account at the spa, so I could use them to pay for future massages).
-This was paid for in the spa itself with a Barclaycard VISA credit card.
-Problem is, this Wednesday (Sept 4th) the owner of the spa announced on their website that he was shutting the spa down with immediate effect.
-Owner also said he will be informing everyone with booking deposits and gift vouchers about how to be reimbursed once he's organised it with his team, and expects this to happen next week. (There was no mention of courses/treatments paid for in advance- the 'booking deposits' refers to an extra £10 deposit they make everyone pay when they book a treatment there)

-Right now I'm willing to wait and see if I will be able to get a refund for the rest of my 'course' directly from them. But in case that doesn't happen, would the original payment for the five massages be claimable using Section 75, even though I was given the one massage at the time that I paid for it? If so is there anything I should do now to make the process easier later? And how long should I wait before going down the Section 75 route? (I.e, do I need to wait until they've officially gone into administration? And how do I find out when that happens?)

Thanks!

lammy82

My instinct would be that you could claim for the massages you aren't getting, but according to this page you can claim the full £220 (and the example on the page is coincidentally £220 as well although it's for ten boat trips instead of five massages).

You do need to give the retailer a chance to put things right, and there's no time limit before making a Section 75 claim. I think that about a month should be enough to say whether the spa owner is serious about refunding.