Go Ape refusing refund

You’re just coming across as grabby to me sorry 🤷‍♀️

I agree you might feel aggrieved if you didn’t get one hour in the trees, but it’s very clear that the two hours is for hold ups their end etc and not that it’s a two hour slot for you. Them allowing two hours is not the same as you get two hours.

It’s like when you get a hospital appointment and the letter says ‘allow three hours for this appointment.’ Doesn’t mean your appointment is going to be three hours.

Focus your complaint on the fact you didn’t get one hour actually doing the activity. You’ll get nowhere if you keep saying “it’s a two hour slot.”

The website makes it clear that you have 1 hour in the treetops. You had longer than that so they've been more than fair offering you another slot rather than a refund. Your main argument seems to be that you were unable to complete all the stages, but clearly some people will not complete the whole course. Do you think someone with a disability should be given more time?

Did you and the manager really refer to “myself” in the emails? Myself is not interchangeable with me, it is not a more formal or professional way of saying “me”. It’s not “myself and my kids” and “myself and the team”, it’s “me and my kids” and “me and the team”. All of this myself/yourself instead of me/you is a madness that needs to stop.

I do think it’s the only relevant point - because it’s up to go ape to fit a full hour into the 2 hour window. It would be reasonable of them to move the family on or say they can’t start another course if they’d had their one hour. But not reasonable if they hadn’t.

The company are basically saying “yes you were done before 6.30, but you had your full time in the trees so sorry, that’s the only thing we promise”. And OP needs to say “no we didn’t get an hour actually”. Not “but you weren’t closed yet and we were asked to leave before the end of our 2 hour slot”.

It’s just one of those things. So instead of being able to whizz round three or four times, you might be stuck just doing two.

Just a thought (I don't work for go ape) I've been once but that was over 10 years ago

you said you'd been befor so they might have assumed you were confident/could go at an adverage pace,

but if the "adverage"times to complete the course are something like:
Stage 1 -10min
3 min queue/change over time
Stage 2 _10min
3 min queue/change over time
Stage 3 - 20 min
3 min queue/change over time
Stage 4 -10 min
(So added up to 59 min)

But if you took
Stage 1 -15min
6 min queue/change over time
Stage 2 _15min
6 min queue/change over time

(You would only have 18 min left on the hour for the last stage)

Based on the slower speed it would be expected you'll not have time to do 3 and 4 in under an hour)

If you'd taken another 15 min for stage 4 that would be 57 min on the course
I think you said yourself were quicker on the last one -(sorry not clear how long you actually had on the course so only guessing at times)

I went to Go Ape and didn't like the experience and they offered me a straight refund - I actually asked for gift voucher to gift to my daughter as it wasn't their fault I didn't like it and thought it would be unfair - they gifted me two vouchers so my daughter could take someone else with her - which I thought was very generous. I found their customer service excellent

Our Go Ape has a one hour policy and it’s really infuriating when stuck behind someone who stops moving and needs help, because then everyone just misses out.

Not the only thing - it is also relevant that the rushing them was not even necessary, given they ended up leaving 30 minutes before closing time, which is exceptionally poor customer service when they have been made specifically aware of the customers’s special needs and advertise to the world that they are able to cater for people with such needs.

Well It would have been generous if they offered you a full refund but I don't think you can really expect it. You had quite a while there. Maybe it would be better if they specified a maximum amount of time you can take.

Yes, like I said, the only thing that matters is how long they had in the treetops compared to one hour.

They were cheated if they had 20 minutes left of their hour in the treetops and it was still actually another 30 minutes until the official closing time.

Yes, exactly this. The ONLY relevant thing to mention in your complaint is how much activity “treetop” time you got compared to the expected hour. I can’t tell from your various messagings on timings how long you actually had on the activity, but if you had less than an hour that’s all you need to highlight. Especially as they seem to think you had 90 mins.

And I strongly agree with the post below too:

You didn’t book a 2 hour slot though- you booked an arrival time. If you’re going to get anywhere with them you need to drop the fixation with the 2 hour slot.

The two hour thing is “your one hour activity will take place within this two hour window”. Not “you should expect to be on site for a 2 hour window and if you were there for less, you’ve been cheated”.

I'm confused what the relevance of your child's autism is here. I think you would need to explain his specific issue to go ape as autism presents in many different ways. DH and I and two of our DC have autism but I cant think what special treatment we would need at Go Ape. So if there is something particular then you do need to explain that not expect them to be mind readers

Agree with most others - it boils down to whether you had 40 mins or the full hour in the trees. The 2 hour slot is irrelevant. If you didn’t get the full hour, I think the 10% is a bit stingy but personally I couldn’t get worked up about it since they have genuinely apologised.

It's how most activities work. There will be a time when they will accept no more people. If the activity ends at 18:00 they're not going to let someone start it at 17:50 when it takes at least 15 mins to complete. The day is probably meant to look like 16:30-17:00 prep and safety briefing, 17:00-1800 on the course, 18:00-1830 whatever needs to be done on the way out. Their mistake was taking until 17:10 to let them start the course when they stop letting people start courses before 17:50.

We don't know how long it took them to do the first 2 courses. If they were fast/efficient they might have let them do all 4 courses even if it meant overrunning slightly. But if the pace was slow, that wasn't going to be possible. Staff want to get closed up and go home.

So do I.

There may have been a delay in getting through the safety procedures (I’m not sure if OP is right about this though - these always seem to take quite a long time!).

The original post very much admitted that she and her children were running slowly through the course as well as this original delay.

I think Op had got fixated on the idea of a “2 hour slot” which doesn’t really seem to have been the case.

You explained the issue phenomenally badly at the start. Why not just say you paid for a one hour session in the trees and only got 45 minutes, were unnecessarily rushed so that you left nearly 30 minutes before the site was supposed to close, which was the same amount of time before your 2-hour time slot ran out, and you were made to wait an unacceptably long time for the safety briefing? Then it would be easier to understand why you want your money back, or at least a partial refund (although after going on about the nice bits of the experience, it comes across as a bit odd you don’t want to go back and give it another chance?).

We were told despite having 30 mins left of our slot and 20 mins of treetop time we couldn’t do level 3 as it was now shut!

They probably estimated that you would take longer than that to complete level 3 based on how long you had taken to complete the other levels.

However, if you really only had 40 minutes of treetop time instead of 60 minutes, I think they should give you a discount of more than 10% on a future visit.
I don't see why you should get a full refund though because you did have the experience.

If they were closing of course you are being unreasonable. You had your fair time and didn’t get everything done. Briefings and harnesses always take a while. When I go to our local indoor ski place I don’t ask for a refund because my kids are better than me so I don’t do as much as them