Guest claiming full refund via Small Claims Court

[charles cawley]

The world seems full of bullies and people working the system.

In a previous business when we took over in a state of melt down, we had to go through three employment tribunal cases... we 'won' them all. In one, the face of the claimant clearly betrayed the fact she had already spent the money she thought she was going to extract from us when the verdict came in.

It appears, from the above, that you may have been facing a similar attempt to use the system. The programme on the TV last night featuring some Trip Advisor review pedants was startling and it showed how horrid people can be, if given half a chance.

The only comfort I can give to you is that, once you know the ropes, the second and third time are much less fraught. When running a business in London someone tried a stunt on us and I sent a note simply saying that we found their claims and behaviour as laughable and any court would treat them accordingly. Although unwise, it did the trick and did wonders for company morale but you should always be the 'reasonable' one.

However, there's always the outside chance that you could face an unreasonable decision. On the other hand the courts have seen all this before a thousand times over.

It sounds like a horrid experience for you.

[Essar]

We put a £100 deposit on a very expensive bath for our previous home in Yorkshire (sale price of £1870 reduced from £3200), when we got home we realised it was 10cm to long for the wall it was to go against and phoned and cancelled the order, followed up with an email confirmation. No problem was the reply; "I'll put your deposit back onto your card". Thought no more about it.
4-weeks later received small claims court paperwork demanding full £3200 - and a story about how they lost another potential sale, how the "sale" was now over and the original price reverted, re-stocking cost of £500 for taking it back - it never left its shop position and was still there 10-weeks later on sale for £950!
We checked their ts&cs - nothing about any of this stuff.
Replied to court with a copy of their tc&cs enclosed (on the back of the sales invoice) and re-buffed everything.
Case withdrawn as soon as our defence papers received and we got £100 back on the card the next day.
Some people try bullying tactics, it must work sometimes!

I'd immediately counterclaim for the extra expenses and see what happens, you might be surprised.

[ceilwart26]

Anway just an update on this, in case anyone was interested!

We decided to fight it through the courts as it was simply unjust and agreed to arbitration if the claimants wanted to too. As it happened they did and we agreed through the arbitrators to give them half the cost of the holiday back (instead of the full amount claimed). This avoided going to court, but was still frustrating.

We later learned through another company that they were doing the same thing to them, so beware!

Incidently I did report them to the Guestlink system and later did a search on their details without getting an unfavourable report back from Guestlink, so they will be dumped at the end of the year as a waste of money.

Thanks to everyone for their support and also those who emailed privately,
Jan

[Giddy Goat]

We later learned through another company that they were doing the same thing to them, so beware!

Infuriating Jan, but thanks for letting us know of the outcome and I'm glad you can put the episode behind you now.