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

I think you are the one who doesn't understand. Is your reading comprehension usually this poor?

Think this is going round in circles here as understandly people can’t read every comment as there are so many! Going to take the sensible advice of asking for a 25% refund, will update when I get a response as appreciate the kindness and genuine help of many of you. Thank you.

I did. But I’ve said this 100 times now in this thread so maybe read it before throwing rude accusations.

What do I not understand? They took 47 minutes to complete 3 courses (while rushing the 3rd course). There was not enough time left to do the last course because it would have taken longer than the 13 minutes they had left. They could have spent those remaining 13 minutes taking their time on the previous course or just sitting on their bums if they wanted, but they were never going to be allowed to do the other course because it was too late.

I think a discount to go again is fair .
We are all autistic and I'd never book something at the end of the day ,or so near to teatime ,as I know it would be a disaster being rushed and hungry.
I'd go again,take the distance book for after lunch one day
They are being more than fair

Discount,not distance

You didn't. You had 13 minutes left. You took more than 15 minutes on the other courses. You would not have completed it within the 1 hour.

Gotta love an AIBU where the poster just wants people to agree with them.

You get 1 hour in the trees, but obviously it takes a certain amount of time to do each section. If you take too long to do 3/4 sections, then you can't fit the other one in, in the time you have available. Expecting a full refund despite this very obvious point is really, really fucking cheeky.

Its a 2 hour slot to allow for all the extras as youve stated so why does the fact it took 20 minutes to do the briefing keep being mentioned when thats what the 2 hours is for. Each stage being approx 15 mins and you had over an hour in the treetops so youve had your moneys worth.

You also keep saying that its expensive but thats not really reasonable, you knew the price when you booked it and were happy to pay that amount. Just because you didnt like the experience doesnt mean the cost is now too expensive.

I think theyve been reasonable.

I think Go Ape should rebrand as “Go Apeshit” judging by this thread.

Hi OP, I posted earlier in the thread encouraging you to ask for a proportionate refund.

However as the thread as evolved I've reconsidered. Go Ape will probably say "you could have spent longer on stage 4 and spent a full hour in the trees. It's on this basis we're not refunding you".

It seems like it was your choice to rush stage 4. You never would have had the time to do stage 3 too in the time remaining but you could have spent longer on stage 4 than you did.

With the other stresses in your life just let this go. If you otherwise enjoyed the experience try Wild Wood or other Go Ape type things that aren't Go Ape...

I absolutely love Go Ape and have always found them incredibly good with my son who has ADHD.

I think it’s fine to speak to companies if you have a concern but I do think in this case a full refund is unjustified

You only got to do 75% of the course so they should refund you 25% plus a little for the inconvenience/time/travel/etc. a 10% discount voucher is an insult. We'd like to show we're sorry by inviting you to add more of your hard earned cash to bolster our profits!

Ask for a 50% refund.

This is one of the best posts I've ever seen 👏

Maybe she's teaching them that if a business makes a mistake that results in the customer losing part of a service they've paid for the onus should be on the business to cover the cost, not the customer.

I do agree with you that often people do kick off when it is unnecessary/inappropriate, my undiagnosed ASD father was terrible for this, but going home and writing an email is not the same as kicking off in front of your children. Discrimination doesn't appear to be the cause in this case either, just staff wanting to get home faster!

You are being very precious and pushy. You knew that extra time might be useful, so you should have booked further in advance to secure an appropriate slot. You used Go Ape's site and their staff, so why should you get away with paying nothing? Are you for real?

Mistakes do happen and the staff I'm sure meant well.

But Go Ape is a profit making company not a charity, and one of the ways it tries to expand its clientele and therefore profit is by advertising how friendly it is for people with hidden disabilities, so that parents of children with hidden disabilities cough up the entry fee. If Go Ape's staff training falls short and means that they are unable to provide an experience in line with that they should be offering proportional refunds.

Obviously you try to teach your children resilience and coping mechanisms for this stuff. Their whole lives feel like a series of coping mechanisms sometimes. But that doesn't mean you should accept an ND tax when somebody is making money off you. That is quite a separate thing. If this were an outdoor pursuit charity or something it would be quite different (but you can guarantee a charity would train its staff better).

I was just reading this thread and thinking "thank god I don't workbin customer service anymore, and I don't have to deal with people like the OP ever again".

An apology is never enough for those kind of people. They will go on and on, sending five page emails.

Someone will very upset at having to deal with you OP

I'd still ask for a full refund.

Some posters are incredible spiteful on this thread. Even if you disagree with the OP I don't understand why some posters have to be so snide and catty. It's pathetic. It's not hard to set out why you disagree with the OP without the sad little comments.
The OP hasn't been rude. She has been confusing but not rude.

She isn't being rude she's behaving suspiciously like somebody who's being dishonest and people are within their right to voice that opinion. People who've been on the other side have also tried to explain how distressing it is when they get a customer like this who is like a dog with a bone, changes their story to fit their narritive and who just can't be appeased no matter what. Honestly nobody gets paid enough for that shit

We have empathy.

Its young people who work in those activity centres.

I know that one of those young people will be crying and upset, having to go through the OPs many aggressive emails.

I've worked in customer service. I've had to comfort colleagues wo had to deal with customers like her.

These places do their best. They are busy.

The manager will be going to whichever poor sod did the introduction and asking them why they told the customer they would definitely be doing all 4 courses. He/she will say "I didn't! I said they had the chance to do 4 courses," and they will be told, "Well next time make sure the customer understands that doesn't mean they are guaranteed to do 4 courses. They've been complaining for nearly a week now because of you."

If you're going to make a complaint that you didn't get the experience you wanted because it started late, then you need to include this information.

As you haven't, and, as per your email, just put, "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" then they're not going to know that it's the driving factor for your complaint.

What they've offered seems fair; because what you've complained about is not that you were kept waiting and therefore lost half an hour of your slot!

Sorry this is on you. You've sent a woolly waffling email not clearly outlining what the issue was and what you want as a response.

For the future, that's how you get what you want. "I paid for a 2 hour slot and we only got 1.5 hours due to your instructor arriving late for the safety briefing. I would appreciate a refund of a quarter of what I paid to make up for this disappointing experience".

We were told we would have the chance to do 4 levels if we wished.

You did have the chance, but you were too slow? They didn’t say anything wrong.