Go Ape refusing refund

[Stripyseason]

I can’t work out of I’m being unreasonable or fighting like a mama bear here in the right.
took my kids to Go Ape on Sunday as a treat as it’s expensive (£60 for all of us). I’ll pop my original complaint email in as it explains it all thoroughly. Emails have been back and forth since then with them apologising and offering a discounted voucher for us to return and “give it another go”. I’ve said we don’t want to return as the left in tears feeling like they’d been rushed and the last thing they want is to go back! I just want a refund but 12 emails back and forth are going nowhere. They have said they shouldn’t have been rushed but they don’t do refunds and theyd like us to come back with a discount. Do I just leave it and chalk it up to experience? Or do I keep going and if so how? TIA.

Dear customer services,

Im just writing after quite a disappointing experience at X Go Ape today. It was myself and my 2 children, 8 and 11, one of whom has autism. We booked for the only available slot left which was 16:30 and arrived by 16:15 to be in plenty of time.

We had to wait for a while for the safety briefing which was fine, and we got started. We were told we would have the chance to do 4 levels if we wished. We started off great and were enjoying it until we finished level 2 and my son heard some instructors saying we were “over time”. When we went to wait at #3 an instructor said we were running behind with time and as they were closing soon we likely wouldn’t have time to do course 4 if we did 3 so we felt pushed to do 4. This wasn’t helpful as it felt a big step up from course 2 and my son felt rushed and was worried saying they’re closing, so we hurried as much as we could. It ended in a bit of a downer sadly with the kids just feeling like they’d “taken too long” on courses 1&2 despite being told in the safety briefing that we could take as much time as we needed on the levels.

I’m disappointed because we arrived in good time and if the last slot was always going to be rushed I think that should have been made clear at point of booking. We had to miss out a whole level which we had paid for. It was a lot of money as a treat and we all just left
A bit downhearted after a good start.

I’ve been to Go Ape before and had a really
Positive experience so this felt quite disappointing sadly and I’d appreciate a gesture of a refund and to let the very nice staff know that rushing us didn’t feel fair given we had paid for a slot so feel we should have been given the same time as everyone else who booked for earlier.

Many thanks etc

@Stripyseason are they really cutting and pasting the same reply to you each time with the exact same phrasing?

You keep saying it was a lot of money.

Was is 60 pounds for two hours?

That's very good, and very cheap.

Most activities are way more expensive than that?

I just paid 25 pounds for a castle tour that is 30 minutes long

Probably get flamed for this but…

I notice more and more of these posts of people being utterly unreasonable and demanding (often involving wanting all their money back) - and every time the reason ‘oh my child is neurodivergent’.

It’s really great that more places are adapting to help ND children experience things in a way that accommodates their needs - but if every experience isn’t 100% as you’d have liked it to be, it doesn’t mean the provider has failed and you should get all your money back.

The staff were lovely and definitely not teenagers! And doubt minimum wage given their climbing qualifications but I’ll not go into their CPD😂Trained instructors who were lovely as I’ve fed back, but simply didn’t follow due process🤷‍♀️as for the term Karen it’s a derogatory term and one that it simply inflammatory and immature.

Yes but we didn’t get the 2 hours.
might not seem much to you, and i hope you had a nice castle tour for that price, but it’s a lot for me so I save up for special days out every few months and to not get the full time is really disappointing.

Yes and no, repeating the same thing but with extra bits added is as the manager has talked to his staff I guess?

I agree. Treetop Challenge at our Go Ape would cost £117 for three people. In fact, it costs more than £60 for three people to do the Treetop Adventure (the first little kids level), and £87 to do the levels that OP completed. It sounds like she’s had a bargain to me!

I don't think the fact that OP's child is ND is relevant at all. She seems to be complaining about not having the full hour/90 minutes/2 hours/40 mins, and im struggling to see why it's relevant that her DS is neurodivergent. I feel she'd be stamping her feet about a full refund regardless. My DC are neurodivergent too but it doesn't make me grabby and demanding refunds. If something has genuinely been difficult for my DC then I might feed it back to the company in case they're able to make changes for the next family, but that's all. As the parent it's my job to manage their expectations, not the company.

Its unfortunate as it was obviously a busy day, they were running late for the last safety briefing and still needed to close at 6.30.
I think you need to start again by asking for a refund which compensated the percentage of time lost. I don't know whether harness on, safety briefing and harness off is all going to be in your 2 hours? T&C will tell you.
Write back, use bullet points not paragraphs and don't confuse it by adding emotion. I know your dc's autism makes it difficult, but it is also irrelevant in this situation - the facts to stick to are that they started late, finished early and cut down your time slot.
Apart from that, all you can do is make sure you never book the last of the day slot, which is always going to be the vulnerable one for delays and needing to close on time.

You don’t get TWO HOURS on the course. You got your 90mins on course as you stated in an earlier post. You’re changing the narrative to fit your complaint. They won’t bloody let you back full stop if you carry on.

It's not that it's not much money to me, it's just seems that you got the activity for a very good price.

A lot of similar activities in the UK would cost way more than that.

You don't "get" 2 hours! You have to allow for 2 hours. You get 1 hour on the courses. You get to complete as many courses as you can within that 1 hour.

I'm neurodivergent and have ND kids (one autistic, one AuDHD). I've also worked as an ed psych and in CAMHS with ND kids and families.

Discrimination does happen, sadly. But most of the time, things don't go to plan for one of the following reasons.

1. Families take a ND child to an activity the child can't really cope with, it's overstimulating and they have to leave early.
2. The ND child would usually cope but something else has happened and they're outside their tolerance and can't cope, or are having a bad day.
3. An unintentional mistake or misstep has been made in communication, instructions etc by the staff/business, because mistakes happen.
4. Another child or member of a group/the public accidentally triggers the ND child by doing something that they do not know will be upsetting for them.

OP's issue is probably scenario 3 here.

What she's teaching her ND kids is that if something doesn't turn out the way you want, or someone makes an unintentional mistake, the way you respond to that is by hounding them, shaming them and demanding things for free. It absolutely doesn't teach them anything about dealing with disappointment or how to deal with others getting things wrong. And frankly, that's why I used to see so many kids in my clinic with very poor coping skills and who could not tolerate anything going wrong, ever. It wasn't because they were ND, it was learned behaviour from families who would kick off every time something wasn't exactly to their liking and cry discrimination over small errors.

Advocating for your neurodivergent children does not have to equal being a dick to everyone who doesn't do things perfectly. Life is not perfect and things sometimes not being how we expected or wanted is a fact of life. Parents who try to eliminate every single possible source of upset or disappointment from a child's life do them no favours at all. The rate at which a ND child can cope with that may vary depending on their age, stage and support needs of course, but it is still not helpful to create a bubble in which nobody ever makes a mistake and treads on eggshells (or demands others do) to avoid the child ever experiencing something even slightly negative.

If we believe what op is posting about how long she was on the course, how about we believe where she answered 'yes' when someone asked if she got an hour?

Does sound like the standard reply of ‘we will look into training our staff better’. Sorry you had to go thought that OP - but I don’t think they will refund the whole lot - after all you did do the majority of it. - maybe you should ask for 25% or whatever percentage of the cost you calculated you lost etc. we love go ape - never had an issue with it and we’ve also had the last slot - never felt they’ve made us hurry to finish either.

Are you confused about the timings?

You don't get two hours on the course.

You get one hour in the trees.

The other hour is to get ready and for safety presentations.

I've attached this screenshot from the go Ape page

Perhaps and that’s why we have to be very selective with what we choose and choose activities that allow a carer in for free 🤷‍♀️

We didn’t get that time. Hence my complaint.

How much time are you claiming to have got this morning? So far we've had 90 minutes, 70 minutes, 50 minutes, 47 minutes, 45 minutes, and 40 minutes. Or are you picking a fresh number for a fresh new day?

Yes this is good advice and I’m going to go back and ask for this to be refunded not towards a voucher.

Woman. You did get that time. You just couldn't complete 4 courses within that time because you were too slow. You would have run over your 1 hour limit if you'd attempted the course you didn't do.

go ape have confirmed 47 mins exactly according to our wrist bands. I wasn’t 100% sure on that until they confirmed it and apologised.

Woman?!

I can't tell if you just don't understand or if you're just too stubborn to listen to people explaining it to you. You did not have enough time to complete the last course which is why you could not start the last course.

Nah, they confirmed 90 minutes. Only the extremely gullible believe your 752 changes of story.