Salsa class booked without permission - what are our rights?

AndrewDE

My wife booked a one-on-one salsa class and paid £140 upfront. The business appears to be well established, running for 20+ years. It has mostly good reviews on TrustPilot although quite a lot appear to have been incentivised reviews (and there are a few negative reviews that match our experience).

My wife was unable to use the portal for booking the classes so emailed and asked for their Saturday availability. 

Without consulting further, they booked her in for 2pm that Saturday.

She received an email saying she'd been booked in. She replied to this immediately saying she'd not agreed to this date and time and that had been booked in without her permission or direction. This email turned out to be from a 'do not reply' automated email address. It obviously didn't display this way in her inbox, it just showed as being from the company - although she may have seen this if she'd gone in and examined the email address. In any case, I don't believe they received these replies.

The owner/manager spoke to my wife on the phone and was immediately hostile, incredibly rude - patronising, misogynistic language - hanging up on her several times. I spoke to him later at length. He tried to explain 'man to man' about how 'we understand how women are' and that obviously I'm going to defend 'my woman' but that she needs to accept that she was at fault. I suggested that I wasn't interested in attributing blame but that he should accept responsibility for the situation, that it was his initial mistake that led to it. He said he didn't believe the 'customer is king' way of thinking. We were unable to resolve anything. We no longer want any dealings with him and want a full refund. The only thing he would offer was to split the cost of paying the teacher for the 'missed' session and then booking a new date in at full price.

I'm trying to be fair. This was a deeply unpleasant experience but what are our rights? What can we do? I'm very open to reality checks. There is no manager to take this to, he is the manager. He had booked the teacher and they had travelled to be there so I do believe the owner to be genuinely out of pocket. She didn't pay via credit card so that's not an option.

Any advice appreciated.

theoretica

If all she did was send an email, how did they take payment?

lisyloo

How come the session was missed?
They made a booking and then you missed it without confirming cancellation? (Except to send an email to a no reply address).

you have the option of the small claims court but I personally would not expect 100% refund of the cancellation was not confirmed/agreed with anyone.

just my opinion

AndrewDE

theoretica said:

If all she did was send an email, how did they take payment?

She had paid for upfront for a session but hadn't settled on a date.

AndrewDE

lisyloo said:

How come the session was missed?
They made a booking and then you missed it without confirming cancellation? (Except to send an email to a no reply address).

you have the option of the small claims court but I personally would not expect 100% refund of the cancellation was not confirmed/agreed with anyone.

just my opinion

The session was missed because it was booked without her permission on a date that she was not available. She had only made a general enquiry as to the Saturday availability.

Sandtree

What exactly did her email say? When was the booking made, not clear if we are talking Monday for Saturday or Saturday morning for that afternoon?
What does your contract say about cancelling classes?
What did she do when she didn't receive any confirmation that it had been cancelled?

You say you don't want to apportion blame but you want him to be the one that takes all the consequences... in other words you are blaming him. 

lisyloo

AndrewDE said:

lisyloo said:

How come the session was missed?
They made a booking and then you missed it without confirming cancellation? (Except to send an email to a no reply address).

you have the option of the small claims court but I personally would not expect 100% refund of the cancellation was not confirmed/agreed with anyone.

just my opinion

The session was missed because it was booked without her permission on a date that she was not available. She had only made a general enquiry as to the Saturday availability.

But she received an email so knew about the booking, but didn’t pick up the phone to correct it?
do they have a phone number? Did she try?
Im only asking the questions a judge would ask.
why didn’t she ensure she communicated that the booking was not acceptable?

firing off an email is not the same as ensuring the communication has been received which is important when costs are incurred.
the initial error is theirs, the subsequent one is hers (or that’s how it seems to me).

i don’t think it’s possible to know what a court would rule.
the 50% of costs seems a reasonable offer to me.
maybe the teacher is nicer than the person you’ve spoken to?

your choices are take the offer or take your chances in court knowing your wife didn’t make efforts to ensure they knew you were not available.

if there are other factors you haven’t mentioned (like she called 10 times and they didn’t answer the phone) then that might change things, but as it stands she made little effort to curtail their costs.

Diamandis

It does sound like both parties are at fault to be fair, without seeing your wife's initial message it may have been unclear she wasn't looking to book and she responded to a donotreply email to cancel. Both splitting the instructors cost maybe isn't as unreasonable as you're viewing it depending on how much that will cost. 

lisyloo

Diamandis said:

It does sound like both parties are at fault to be fair, without seeing your wife's initial message it may have been unclear she wasn't looking to book and she responded to a donotreply email to cancel. Both splitting the instructors cost maybe isn't as unreasonable as you're viewing it depending on how much that will cost. 

the problem is that is conditional upon booking a full price lesson which I suspect they don’t now want (although the teacher may be different).

pinkshoes

I don't see how the OP is at fault:

• OP paid for a session.
• OP emailed asking for available dates to choose from
• The business booked the OP into a session without even asking if the OP was free.
• The OP emailed back when they saw the booking saying they were not available.

The OP wasn't to know it was a "no reply" email address, and if it didn't ping back with a "no reply" message then they would not know.

The business is entirely to blame and due to their bad attitude I can see why the OP wants a full refund.

I would write to the business detailing the above, and asking as previously requested for availability of sessions so you can book one. Say you look forward to hearing back from them. 

If you do NOT hear back from them, then I would send a Letter Before Action asking for a FULL refund within 14 days. If they don't pay, take them to court. 

Ergates

pinkshoes said:

I don't see how the OP is at fault:

• OP paid for a session.
• OP emailed asking for available dates to choose from
• The business booked the OP into a session without even asking if the OP was free.
• The OP emailed back when they saw the booking saying they were not available.

The OP wasn't to know it was a "no reply" email address, and if it didn't ping back with a "no reply" message then they would not know.

The business is entirely to blame and due to their bad attitude I can see why the OP wants a full refund.

I would write to the business detailing the above, and asking as previously requested for availability of sessions so you can book one. Say you look forward to hearing back from them. 

If you do NOT hear back from them, then I would send a Letter Before Action asking for a FULL refund within 14 days. If they don't pay, take them to court. 

What we don't know is how the OP's wife worded the enquiry - was the business to blame for misinterpreting the email, or was the email ambiguously worded.

We also don't know what the confirmation email looked like - how clear was it that it was from a do-no-reply address and was there any other contact information provided in the email.