I tried to book a hotel stay.
Their response was that they were not taking booking due to COVID19 (I was OK with that)
Checked direct with the hotel some weeks later that the hotel was up and running and taking bookings and tried again
They told me they could not process my request as the hotel had sent them the following notification
"Currently the hotel is still closed and all the staff on Furloughed. We are planning the best date to re-open our hotel to make sure we are following all the health & safety guideline for our customers and staff."
I checked again with the hotel, who told me that was not the case and that they had, in fact, told them they were open. I again contacted Activity Superstore, asking them to check with the hotel, as they were indeed open. They refused.
However, they stated
"Of course there is other locations you can book at right away but as this is the location you wish to attend then I ask you to be patient until they are excepting our bookings. "
I asked for a list of the other locations.
Their next tactic was to ask for the region I wanted to attend, so I said the whole of the UK.
I wanted to be able to view from all available hotels to decide where to spend my coucher, but that was not to be.
They responded
"As I have stated below, please specificity one region as we do not hold in house availability and I will check this for you."
I responded very clearly
"Given that you refuse to take a booking for the hotel of my choice, or even contact them, I would like to consider my options
Giving a single location is not helpful to me as I want to consider the whole of the UK.
I believe that there is no term in my contract that states that I have to specify a particular region.
You state you have a list of hotels that have told you they are accepting bookings, the only reason I can see for not providing that is to disadvantage voucher holders."
However, at this point, it was clear that they had again changed the terms, rather than tell me what hotels were open for bookings, not they wanted to check individual availability, here is what they said
"I am sorry to hear that you are disappointed. We do not hold the live availability of our locations which is why we specified for you to let us know a few locations or a smaller area than all of the locations on your voucher I will happily check availability. We started this as we would have to call or email every location which we are not able to do."
I again asked for the list of hotels explaining that I wanted to exercise my right to choose from all locations, at this point they introduced another restriction, that of distance
"Once we have a few places you wish to attend we can assist you with your booking until then we are unfortunately not able to call every single location as there would be quite a few you wouldn't be able to attend anyway due to them being far away. "
Apparently I cannot attend those far away.
I have wrote to ask what is the distance they will allow me to travel.
They have resent my voucher and told me to book again, apparently, I can book anywhere now form any of the hotels on their website. No mention of distance restrictions, so I have booked again, from a hotel as listed as available on their website, the one I originally wanted! I can only think that as they make more money from people not using the voucher that have been paid for they do all that they can to be akward and to discourage bookings
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