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're a bit naive if you think what she showed us here, is the actual emails that she sent them

Thinking back on working in customer service, I remember one call that did make me cry.

I hadn't cried when people had told me I was useless, told me they'd get me fired if I didn't do what they said, or told me they would come in and hit me.

Those calls got me very stressed but I didn't cry.

I remember the one call that did make me cry.

A woman rang in about her friend. She said that her friend had signed up to a joint account for something with us with her husband. They had now broken up and the woman in the couple, wanted to get off the account.

I told the friend that the woman would need to ring in to us herself, and I would talk to her about her account.

Ther friend said "but she has already gone in once and been told that they won't take her off the account".

That didn't sound right to me, because we wouldn't just say to someone "no you can't ever get off a joint account"

I asked a few more questions and she said that the woman was told that she couldn't come off the joint account because the account was in debt.

I said oh, and explained it. I said "OK so all she needs to do is just pay the balance of the debt that she owes, and then when the balance is back at zero, she can then remove herself from the joint account. It just won't allow her to remove herself while their account is in debt.".

That was company procedure.
It makes sense right?

The woman who rang in went into a rant. She started screaming at me. She said

"my friend has just found the strength to leave her abusive partner. And she wants to get off this account with him!

You won't let her! You are facilitating abusive men! You are an abuser yourself! I'm going to go to the radio and tell them how your company allows abusive men to abuse women, and you want women to be abused!!!! YOU'RE A DISGUSTING ABUSER YOURSELF. IM going to go to the radio, give womens rights organisations your name. YOU'RE DISGUSTING "

I wasn't taking that from her. I'd taken lots of abuse over the phone, but I wasn't going to be told that I want women to be abused.

I said "Excuse me, Im not facilitating abusive men. I'm trying to help you to tell her what she can do".

She did, after ranting for ages, eventually say to me "OK well not you personally".

She ranted on for ages. At the time we werent allowed to hang up on people unless they swore at us. When she hung up I did cry.

Completely agree with your view.

Banking complaints sounds a Completely different world. Bet you're glad you're out of that!

Why? Her overall messages on this thread considering the pile on she'd experienced were generally not rude or aggressive.

You sound like you could be projecting your past experiences into this scenario - no one has been shouting down the phone at anyone. You're comparing apples with oranges.

If you actually read the thread, after OP had gotten her result, several of us had moved on and were talking about what it was like to work in customer services.

So my point was in regard to that conversation.

I never said that the OP made phone calls.

I have read the thread. All of it.

You've stated upthread that you don't think what OP has uploaded here are the actual emails sent. And you've stated that another poster is naive for thinking they are.

That indicates you're approaching this scenario from a not very good angle.

So it has gone past just chatting about customer service stories.

Mate we get it. You hate customers and you hate managers

Op didn't get what she paid for. She's entitled to a partial refund. That's perfectly fair.

It's perfectly okay for someone to complain they haven't got what they paid for. If you work in customer service and can't deal with that then it's clearly not the job for you. If you have to pretend to escalate to a manager to give a partial refund on something then again that's a you problem.

Perhaps OP spoke to someone senior, or perhaps she spoke to a junior colleague who's fucking fed up of having to mop up angry colleagues mess

Op has given no indication she acted like this, and whilst it's not in anyway an acceptable way to speak to someone if what this woman said is true then you can understand why someone might react that way

The problem would be in your company not allowing you to hang up when someone is being abusive, and not having a procedure in place to deal with women who are victims of financial abuse. These are situations that should be escalated to people with more power, and again your managers shouldn't just tell you to pretend to escalate. So many companies offer shit customer service and leave junior employees to deal with the anger and frustration of customers