Cancellations
Well I have to say that the club seems to be turning into nothing more than a one-sided money making machine.
A month ago we booked a site for today for 8 nights, and were forced to make an instant £50 deposit to secure the pitch.
At 0855 Friday, the site rings me to tell me they are not opening this weekend (due to the weather - fair comment and understandable), but rather than just cancel the first two nights, they will cancel the full 8 nights "so you get your deposit back".
Well, over 24 hours later - and still no sign of my deposit re-appearing in my account. Guess it's going to be AT LEAST another 48 hours, because God forbid the club opens their offices at weekend!
Comments
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I think from other reports, you might be waiting around 14 days plus for your refund. Apparently it takes seconds to take your money, but a lot longer to get anything you might be due back into your account.
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Surely the staff at the site suggested their actions with your best interests at heart? Your deposit is secure and will be refunded although it might take a day or two. I assume you could rebook the site if you knew for certain that they would be open for the last 6 days of your previous booking?
Whilst HQ staff don't work at weekends probably more than half of the total Club staff do but on the campsites. Unfortunately suggesting that HQ should be open at weekends is likely to mean an increase in costs which no doubt will be passed on to us members?
David
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In fairness, they could have just cancelled the first 2 nights, leaving you to cancel the rest yourself and losing your deposit.
We recently had to cancel 3 excursions on a tui holiday; although we got an immediate acknowledgement that we'd get a refund, it took 5 days to appear in our account.
Patience is a virtue! (One of my old dad's favourite sayings!)
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It always seems to take days for refunds from any organisation to go back on my card. 5 days seems about average.
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Quite possibly, but the site staff should have the ability to issue that refund immediately - like they can if I cancel days at the end of a stay.
Quite why it is thought OK for the club (or any other organisation) to hang on to peoples money for several days when it should be refunded straight away, is beyond me. Probably just down to the usual British attitude of can't be arsed to complain and make things happen properly.
If I send money from my account to one of my other accounts, or somebody else's account - it arrives instantly, not 5 days later. Why should a large organisation be any different, other than they can make money out of retaining the amount longer?
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Why would I have lost my deposit? Chances are when the site does reopen, I'll be going anyway - that was the idea of booking in the first place????
As for patience - your Dad was obviously happy for other people to hang onto things that don't belong to them? If the refund is owed, it should have been made straight away by the site staff, not passed on to head orifice.
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Looking at some of the posts on Trust Pilot there may have been confusion about this. In fact I think the weather will have put the whole system to the test and the club will now need to improve their reactions and responses?
Regarding money in accounts it can sit around overnight out of banking hours or on non banking days, it will be classified as "pending. " But yes, you will see it's there and will go through when banking opens.
Hope it all works out, I expect it has affected a lot of people.
Other than that I can't answer for the club but I would imagine this has been a steep learning curve!
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As posted a lot of businesses do take a few days for money to be refunded, only last month we were in Asda and for some reason were charged twice for our shopping. We rang the store straight away when we noticed and they were quite nice about it but it would be refunded within five days, it took three. May have been quicker/straight away if we could have gone in but it was on a day trip.
Many do have in the T&C that refunds may take up to a set time perhaps the club should do the same?
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Looking at Trust Pilot there seem to be two types of reply to MEMBERS needing to cancel because of snow. In a couple of cases members have been given a voucher to the equivalent of the deposit. In another case the Club seems to have said that because the member wasnt in the orange warning area they couldnt have a refund of any sort. If the site was not in the orange area it must be safe to travel, the site was open, and the operator didnt have snow where they were!! The member was appealing.
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I meant that you'd have lost your deposit if you'd decided to cancel the other 6 days yourself. If they'd only cancelled the first 2 days and then you decided not to go because of continued poor weather you'd have had to pay the full whack under the new system wouldn't you? If you decide to go, you haven't actually lost anything, have you except maybe a couple of pence interest on a likely rather small amount of money.
I think you're being a bit unreasonable expecting site staff to do that immediately, in fact I doubt they are even able to, and, as said before, it's generally the case that such refunds aren't immediate.
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It does seem a bit variable. Often it is around 3 days to get a refund, sometimes a bit more. However, I have had a couple from Tesco in the last month in relation to home deliveries. Email re refund came within minutes and the refund itself was made to my MasterCard within 24 hours. So clearly it is possible. Although neither was across a weekend.
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+1👍🏻, a bugbear of mine is-I buy something on line Saturday morning & I watch it disappear from my account in front of my eyes. If I get refunded on a Saturday it’s usually weds+ before it appears in my account. It’s crazy that banks can take money in a heartbeat but struggle to give it back. . .Those pesky/lazy computing systems🙄
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If I reject a substitution on a Tesco online shop, the deliverer notes it on their equipment and its back in my account within hours. Often only talking small amounts of money. That's done on the doorstep as I receive the delivery.
Should I have cause to complain about quality of an item, its happened twice since we started online deliveries in the pandemic, its been with 48 hours maximum.
Clearly it depends on your systems and IT competence.
Any return of online shopping has been back in my account within hours of the sellers receipt of the item.
Maybe I'm lucky?
Processing refunds in the OP instance should be no different to making a booking. If they can take a deposit on non HQ working days the correct info input by any member of staff for a refund should immediately be returned.......
It is nothing to do with banks keeping the money as far as I know. If I transfer money my bank tells me for the recipient
Sorry tried to edit to say bank says transfers need to be before 2pm for it to show in recipient account. Whole post has gone mad on spacing and cursor jumping.
Such is this system I can't just discard my edit.....
Bakers 2, this is a problem at your end, might I suggest you don't do paragraphs, just continuous typing, with full stops of course.
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Leaving aside the refund of deposit aspect, if closing the site at short notice because of snow, it begs the question of what they do with those already on site.
As I have posted on several occasions before, all that CAMC needed to do was change the cancellation period from a ridiculously short 72 hours to a more sensible 7-10 days or such longer period as they thought appropriate, retaining members card details on file with a penalty charge being applied if cancelling within that period. It would have enabled the 'no deposit' USP, of which they were so proud.
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I suppose the time taken to pay money back isn’t that different to paying it out. Sometimes, although I have paid for the item the sum sits in pending transactions for several days, (including CAMC deposits) before being debited. This is particularly the case over weekends. From the point of view of the recipient, I assume their account won’t show a credit until mine is actually debited. The money just sits in limbo in the banking system.
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One of the worst for this is my experience is HMRC.
Some in my family were due overpaid tax and unless you ring them up to get things moving it might take a long time. We rang them up and they said that it would take up 14 days, though it took five, but they said if we hadn't rang them it would have been picked up and refunded at the start of the new tax year which was then over seven months away!
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From reading on here about people and their refunds from the Club that they seem to be actioned by the financial team. You can imagine after a bout of bad weather with site closures, especially at weekends, that there could be a fair number to process so I suppose delays are inevitable. I suppose the difference between a supermarket refunding immediately on the doorstep and the Club is the sheer size of the refund. Probably on average about £2 for a supermarket and probably £30 plus for the Club. Because of the size of refunds the Club might feel it needs some audit mechanism in place which will cause a small delay. I doubt that it will be explained to us?
David
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Our experience with refunds in general is as B2, often on the same day, even within hours, but we do not pay anyone with a debit card unless there is no alternative.
99.99999% of our purchases are by credit card. Should there be a problem then the money is not missing from our funds for a lengthy period.
Transferring money to others directly is normally by faster payment, and mostly seems to happen instantly, even in the middle of the night.
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H14LSB
I'm sorry if you do not like the comments I am about to make but I think that you seem to be making a fuss and are angry unnecessarily. If you paid your deposit by credit card the normal comments from any firm/organisation is that a refund could take 3 to 5 working days to be shown in your account. That is standard procedure but sometimes the refund is shown earlier. (I don't know but assume this would be the same for a debit card refund.)
Again I'm sorry if you don't like the following comment. Your last paragraph seems unnecessarily vitriolic and over the top. I don't want to be rude but were you really so desperate for your money to be shown to have been refunded the same day?
It seems to be a matter of some great concern and perhaps principle to you but surely the money will be returned within the next few days. If so, what's the problem? If not, then I think you have a right to take this up with Club HQ.
You may say (quite correctly) that this has nothing to do with me but presumably you posted to vent for feelings and would expect to receive comments from others. Your second sentence also implies you do not like having to pay a deposit, considering that you have been "forced" into doing so. This is just the way things are now with both clubs and commercial sites.
Will you be posting to tell others how long it took for the money to be shown as having been refunded to your account.? I think that will be interesting to some who have responded to your post.
Her's hoping that you will be able to get to the site within the next day or so and that you have an enjoyable and stress-free time. Best wishes.
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I'm not sure I understand how your first two sentences match up Kj?
You say refunds are generally done very promptly, so the money wouldn't be missing from your account for long periods would it?
I can see that for very large purchases credit cards are preferable, but for day to day spending there's surely little advantage over a debit card?
Hopefully the OP will come back to let us know when the refund did appear in his account, tomorrow with a bit of luck!
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"Leaving aside the refund of deposit aspect, if closing the site at short notice because of snow, it begs the question of what they do with those already on site."
I'm guessing the site meant not opening for new arrivals to prevent unecessary travelling, which seems sensible to me. It would be interesting to know which site this is.
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Moulesy
The only thing I use my debit card for is the very occasional withdrawal of cash from an ATM. Like Kj I would avoid paying by debit card online as it gives direct access to my bank account should somebody along the payment route decide to do something against the law! Depending on the type of credit card you have they often give benefits in terms of points which can be used for all sorts of things. When we used to tour in Europe we would use Tesco ClubCard points to pay for the tunnel. We have just had £50 worth of vouchers for using our Partnership Card so another reason for not using a debit card. If a member pays a deposit online with a credit card, unless their payment date is looming, the charge and credit will usually be on the same bill so little cause to worry over a delay of a few days?
David
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Yes, I agree about paying on line, but I meant day to day spending, the weekly food shop, fuelling the car etc. Can't really see any advantage of a credit card over a debit card for that sort of thing, given the low interest rate on savings/current accounts.
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I'm afraid that by holding members card details the club would not only be breaking GDPR regulations but also PCI DSS which regulates the card payment industry. The fines would be huge and so would the fraud risk. The club is actually protecting us members by not holding our credit card details.
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We’ve discussed the holding of card details before and concluded it's perfectly OK providing the cardholder gives permission and the regs are complied with. After all, Amazon, PayPal and numerous other organisations are able to do it.
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The last time we stopped at Grantown on Spey affiliated site they recorded a deposit of 1p and held on to the card details. If you were a no show they would debit it for one nights charge. If you arrived, you were charged for the cost of your stay and the details Deleted User.
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Did not make it clear I suppose.......we use pretty much only credit cards, but like B2 we usually get prompt refunds, when required.
Big advantage over debit card is no need to keep track of daily spending, only a few credit card DDs to pay each month, money stays in the savings account if not required.
Rates have improved in the last few months. Not keeping up with inflation of course, but 3%+ is better than nothing.
The credit cards we have, like some debit cards, give various rewards and cashback.
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