Go Ape refusing refund

Before you go off at people for not knowing what terms mean, you may want to consider Googling "neurodiverse" and "neurodivergent" and using those correctly.

You're contradicting yourself again.

Your OP said "my son felt rushed and was worried saying they’re closing, so we hurried as much as we could"

Then you said you tried to complete level 4 so you could do level 3.

Which is it? Were you hurrying and rushing because they rushed you and you thought it was closing imminently and your son was anxious or were you trying to get round the whole course before closing despite having been clearly told there wasn't time?

Your story just doesn't add up, you give different versions of things and that's why you're getting a hard time here from people.

I'm autistic and I'm the first one to get mad about genuine disability discrimination. But what you are describing just isn't that. You are taking absolutely no responsibility for reading the information about the activity and managing your own children's expectations and pushing all of that on to the instructors. As parents of autistic kids, we can't leave that to people who don't know our kids like we do.

Would you like to take the time to Google and educate yourself on my disability if I shared it here?

No, thought not.

You cannot expect everyone to be an expert in autism. I have a hidden disability myself and never assume people comprehend how it affects me and what “adjustments” I might need. I spell them out if they’re needed. Clearly.

If I went on GA (which actually my disability would not allow me to, however..) and said on the booking I have X, I would not assume they understand the nuances.

I would say I have X, so this, this and this can be a problem so if you can possibly do this, it would be appreciated.

This makes more sense from the ND-aware side of things. I personally wouldn't expect a refund for that slip up, as I can see why and how it's happened, but I would be emailing with a clear explanation of why that approach is a poor one for neurodivergent people, the reasons why and what would be better. I don't personally think it's a severe enough mistake to warrant more than telling them why that was problematic for an autistic child.

When you say a refund-do you mean that you have asked them for all the money back?

I don't think they will do that because you did have most of the experience. Why don't you ask them for a refund of 30%. They might agree to that and then you can put it behind you.

Why were they crying?

I don’t know what stimming is but presuming it has to do with neuro diversity.

I must admit I'm a bit confused with the timings - but to be honest I would let it go OP. Chalk it up to a bad experience and don't go again.

You've spent a lot of time emailing - and they won't budge my the looks of it. I think you're expending far too much time and energy on this.

I've lost count of the amount of things I've paid for which have just not worked out but it's not healthy to fixate on this so much.

I can tie myself up in knots about situations that don't go well but there's a lot to be said for letting things go and moving on.

The man hours you've spent on this and the hours GoApe have spent will equate to your refund and more!

But what do you want? The entire staff to stay later for you?

OP, with respect I don't think people think that advocating for your autistic child is anything but the right thing to do, it's just it's not really clear how this was a problem from a disability accommodation point of view. It isn't guaranteed anywhere that the course will run in an exact, regimented way working through levels, rather that there are four available and you get a slot to go on them. As an autistic person myself, it's not a reasonable accommodation to expect public attractions and experiences to always run exactly how I expect. That's something I have to deal with on my side, exceptional circumstances excluded.

But it’s not 18.30 finish on the course is it? You said there’s time to take the harnesses off and collect the certificates after the activity.

That aside, the email you say they sent you sounds like it was written by an emotional child. I don’t think you often seen a professional response saying the writer feels “terrible”. Or actually, feels anything at all. Really bizarre.

Your emails are very confusing, and your fixation on the two hours is not helping.

You've booked for 1 hour in the trees. Ignore that you were waiting around for 20 minutes for the safety briefing - your one hour starts when your belay is attached to the course - they write the time on the wristband.

Also ignore that you didn't get to do all 4 loops - that's irrelevant, as you'd only manage that if keeping to an average time of 15 mins per loop. If you get stuck behind a scared kid who is moving slowly, or yours is the scared kid, then it won't be possible. Again, the key thing is 1 hour in the trees, not doing all the loops.

What I'd ask GA is to clarify their policy on starting a loop within the 1 hour timeslot, if it's not possible to finish it before the hour is up? As they should have perhaps said "sorry, not enough time to go round loop 3 but you can do loop 1 again".

You enjoyed 50 minutes of activity (I think, the timings throughout thisthread are confusing). Asking for a full refund is unreasonable. You could argue you lost 16% of the activity time, so would like £xx refund (16% x cost of activity) or voucher for 20% off (a voucher should be higher value than a refund because you are spending again) if you would be willing to book again.

So you were told you could do either 3 or 4 with the remaining time available. You chose to do 4 and not 3, then decided to race the clock and see if (contrary to instructions) you could do both, and then got mad you couldn't do both even though you were told you wouldn't be able to do both! 🙄

I don't think they set expectations as well as they could have done and by the sound of it they aren't entirely blameless at Go Ape, they should appropriately and proportionately compensate for the things they didn't get right. But you are not helping yourself with how you're coming across either.