Center Parcs

[BeardyButton]

I loath poor customer service - and by that I don’t mean bowing and scraping etc, but the feeling that the company is there to make money first and foremost even at the expense of customers.

So about a month ago I tried booking online. For some reason it wouldn’t work. So I rang them. Agreed to pay c. 1500 for three nights. Real treat for myself, mother, my son and two cousins.

Now admittedly I presumed they’d take payment and that was that. I CANNOT remember it being explained that they would take part payment and then I would have to go online to make another payment. I did see on my account they’d only taken 400 euro. But I thought they d just take the remainder later. I thought this was odd, but hey ho.

Yesterday - I got an email saying the booking had been cancelled for non payment and they wouldn’t be returning the 400 euro.

I rang expecting them to say ‘there’s a mistake, just pay now and all good’. But no! that’s their policy and they wouldn’t be honouring booking and they wouldn’t return the 400. I had to have strenuous words and be passed to a manager (all the time explaining that I was not frustrated with the person I was talking to, but I disagreed forcefully with the policy).

I was told they ‘might’ be able to transfer the funds to book again. But lo and behold… the new booking rate was 50 euro more expensive. And you know in a 1500 euro booking, that’s not a lot… but it’s the principle. Manager finally ‘dealt’ with me. Agreed to refund 400 euro.

So my AIBU….

My son is desperately looking forward to this. We’ve had zero holidays together like this (COVID, work stress, etc). He adores his cousins. And I ve been getting him excited about the trip…. Do I rebook? Pay the extra 50 euro and just swallow the frustration? Or… not rebook because this just seems like a company that doesn’t care about its customers?

YABU - not centre parcs. It was their policy. They had every right to cancel. You should rebook and pay the 50.

YANBU - seems a dodgy way of making as much money as they can. You shouldn’t rebook on principle.

Ya! I think maybe the fact I haven’t gone on holiday in about 15 yrs doesn’t help. Didn’t understand that this was standard practice.

I totally understand I should have been more on my emails. I do still think this was questionable. But I do appreciate the hive mind on this.

From your OP:

I did see on my account they’d only taken 400 euro. But I thought they'd just take the remainder later. I thought this was odd, but hey ho.

Do you think it's 'Good' customer service for a company to attempt to take '€1100' from your account whenever they like, with no payment plan or dates set up?

This isn't one of those boring comments about 'privilege' but a payment model based on hoping the customer has that amount in their account at some point between booking and arrival would be massively problematic.

You have to have an online account to book activities etc, at what point were you planning to create one? Or did you genuinely not plan on doing that? Appreciate some people don't like the activities which is fair enough.

Strange! I agreed to pay for the trip. No one explained their deposit model to me. I’m careful with my money - while I had agreed (in my mind) to pay in full at time of purchase, I noticed they didn’t take in full and made sure there was enough money for them to take.

Maybe the whole thing comes down to - no one explained this to me if offered me the choice to split of take in full. The sales person did not tell me about this policy.

It's absolutely standard to pay a deposit for a holiday and then the remainder. That is the normal.

Therefore the person doing the booking didn't realise that they had to explain something that to them is obvious.

But to you it was not known and you haven't booked many holidays so didn't know it was normal.

Which is why it was absolutely vital that you read, properly, the booking confirmed with the relevant information.

Lesson learnt, you need to read the confirmation email every single time

If you didn’t notice that a grand was still in your account, you can probably afford the €50 extra.

This type of moaning is a symptom of what’s wrong with society in general - you didn’t bother to abide by the terms and conditions of your booking (because you didn’t bother to read them either on the website, the booking confirmation or any further communications from them) but somehow it’s Centerparcs who are at fault.