Booking online - human error will not be tolerated
On Wednesday 26th July I made a mistake and booked the wrong date for the start of a long tour of Scotland. I realised my mistake on Friday after the Club offices closed and was unable to speak to anyone until Monday morning when my stay at Strathclyde Country Park was due to begin. The agent I spoke to said that I couldn't move my booking to the date I needed at the end of August and that I would lose my £20 deposit. I was invited to book again at the full rate of £37 for one night so with the £20 lost deposit I was effectively being invited to pay £57 for one night + an additional £2.50 for I know not what. I declined so assumed the loss of my deposit to be sufficient - not so, having checked my credit card statement I find that the Caravan Club has £17.50 pending on my credit card statement which I assume to be the balance for the remainder of the stay I had cancelled on Monday morning.
I have lost trust in this organisation which is no longer a Club for me but a money making outfit offering at best average facilities at a premium.
The follow-up email I sent on Monday has not even been auto acknowledged. The Contact Us at the bottom of the page does not give a phone number or an email address but the totally inadequate chat bot which serves no purpose - in person chat was not working when I tried earlier today. The amend function does not work on online bookings - even budget airlines allow a 24 hour period in which you can make amends. Why are there no moderators to monitor negative feedback.
I will now spend the money I would have spent with CAMC with other sites offering far greater transparency and increasingly better value for money.
Comments
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Don't you have a cooling off period for internet purchases which should cover your booking. As such the club would obliged to allow a cancelation and provide a full refund.
Colin
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As I understand it the 14 day cooling off period refers to goods and the 14 days starts the day after you receive the goods.
Services such as leisure industry bookings are not included. The last sentence in my screenshot gives very wise advice.
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Whilst I agree with the 'always check the terms' advice, what's becoming very apparent is that loyal Club members are being caught out by the Club's recent 'realignment other providers'.
for some, who would have just continued to use the Club (in good faith) as they've always done, it's probably a change too far and the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.it seems quite a few are getting caught and find it hard to believe this is the new way the Club operates. Perhaps they missed all the 'booking fanfare' and are just booking in the way 'they've always done'.
It will be a shock to some of these folk.
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Could many ussues about booking be resolved if the club was contactable over the weekend? Not necessarily 24/7.
Errors such as the OP can and are occasionally made but the ability to correct is missing with this system.
The club operates in a leisure industry which is generally 24/7 but prefers to operate the 9-5 M-F system. That worked fine when they were no financial penalties but its very different since the introduction of deposits.
Were there enough shout outs about the new T&C's? I can't comment, no longer a club member and I do read and join in CT.
The out of hours non contactability was always an issue on ferries booked through the club and has long been an issue.
If the club want to take deposits and impose new T,&C's there should be a method to detail swiftly with errors, we are all human!, that arise. It needs to be fit for purpose. We were members from 2007 and I was astonished to find there was no out of office hours contact. But accepted it as it was a club, run for members. This still seems to be the case these days. To me, the least the new booking system should include is amendments - from what I read it isn't easy and requires human intervention.
Mind you IT is not, under any circumstances, one of the clubs strong points. Everything thing points in favour of the club. Not the members.....
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I would copy and paste your comments onto the CAMC page of trip advisor. You will almost certainly get a responce asking you to contact direct via an email link. If this route doesn't help I would ring the call centre again and ask to speak with a supervisor. I must say I have found the club understanding when I have had to make ammendments for medical reasons however you do have to stand your ground.
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Forgot to add this :-
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.caravanclub.co.uk?utm_medium=trustbox&utm_source=MicroStar
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In the booking t&cs it states that if there is an "error" (my words) you must inform them immediately. If there are no means to do this until the next office opening hours and you are able to make contact then it might be reasonable for the club to reconsider their response? I hope you can try again and receive a better outcome.
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Para 3 [not numbered] of Clause 3 Booking and Paying for your Arrangements states:
Our booking process allows you to check and amend any errors before submitting your booking request to us. Please take the time to read and check your booking at each stage of the booking process. Please notify us of any errors in pricing or changes to your details that impact on your confirmed booking as soon as you become aware of them. You may amend your personal and booking details online. We cannot be held responsible if a change in your details means we can no longer accommodate you or your outfit at a Club site.
If that amendment facility is not available for the entire time that the booking system is accepting bookings then CAMC could arguably be in breach of their own terms if a customer is unable to correct his error.
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LLM, You can indeed correct errors as you go through the booking process right up until you have paid the deposit but the OP completed the booking with a date error in it, therefore he/she had made a commitment to honour the terms inside of 21 days. The moral is to check the booking is correct before you make the deposit payment. Its not that difficult to do because you are presented with the details multiple times during the process right up untill the payment screen. You can even edit your booking detail in the basket! Really there aren't any excuses for getting it wrong.
peedee
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I am happy to take your word for it peedee and what you say is reflected in the clause. However, it also clearly says You may amend your personal and booking details online which strongly suggest that once you have completed your booking you can still make changes online.
For me it's difficult to be certain as I have never attempted to make a booking and probably never will, and obviously never had cause to try to make an amendment. Additionally, the way the terms have been written is some of the worst legal drafting I have ever read, and that is being very kind.
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Not at all. The only mistake is the OP's in choosing the wrong date. This has nothing to do with the booking system, the system cannot know if your dates that you input are really the ones you want. It can only work with what is given. PD is fully justified.
Always double (in my case triple and get someone else to) check the dates.
Also where is the club advising not to make multiple booking? Apologies if I'm wrong but I have missed that.
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However, it also clearly says You may amend your personal and booking details online which strongly suggest that once you have completed your booking you can still make changes online.
Logicaly, I think it only applies to dates if you do so more than 21 days before arrival. Whether you can change other details like party details I have no idea.
peedee
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Also where is the club advising not to make multiple booking? Apologies if I'm wrong but I have missed that
It has been mentioned numerous times on here and I have personally been advised by call center staff on different occasions and for different reasons not to use multiple site bookings as it leads to "problems " amending and cancelling individual bookings.
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Possibly, but a set of terms should be crystal clear there should be no room for assumption such as "I think it only applies to dates if you do so more than 21 days before arrival". The reader should never be placed in that position. As I have said the drafting is really bad.
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The terms are made quite clear in an email that you usually get within minutes of having made your payment. It details your booking and states the following:
• If you decide to cancel or amend any nights of your stay, or remove guests from your stay within 21 full days before your arrival date a cancellation charge will be applied. The charge will be the loss of some or all of the original deposit you paid, for example:
o If you cancel your whole stay, you’ll lose the whole deposit paid for that stay
o If you cancel some of the nights of a stay, you’ll lose the deposit amount for each of the nights cancelled (the deposit value for each night is prorated using the value that each cancelled night represents of the total price of that stay. For example, if you cancel the first night of a three night stay and the first night represents 40% of the total price of the stay, then you will lose 40% of the deposit paid and retain the remaining 60%). The charge for removing guests within 21 days of arrival is calculated the same way.
o If you move or ‘shift’ your dates (cancel some nights and add additional nights), you will lose the deposit for each night cancelled from your original stay, and you may be required to pay a new deposit for each new night addedPrior to the 21 days you can change what you like to your booking.
Attached to the email you also get a three page letter with details of your booking and yet again another reminder of the amendment/cancellations conditions and the requirement to check "Before you Go" etc,
I personally don't think the Club could do much more to make it clearer.
peedee
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Well it may have been mentioned numerous times by us posters in here but nothing official posted by the club as you suggested? Also the person you spoke to may not have official backing I would think, just their view or advice nothing official.
But really no matter how sophisticated and easy to use a booking system it can never cope with someone not checking their dates
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It's supposed to be a members club and it achieves nothing other than a few extra pounds in the "not for profit" club accounts to penalise a member in this way for a one off error, it only succeeds in sowing the seeds of discontent. If the situation had been dealt with in a more sympathetic manner just imagine the good will this would have generated. I'm sure the OP would have had great pleasure in relaying what could have been a more amicable response instead of which there will no doubt be tales of anger and dissapontment to be passed on.
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Thanks so much much for your responses. There was another surprising twist in that when I telephoned the club to discuss an alternative booking, a date was proposed but I decided not to proceed. The £17.50 charge on my credit card turned out to be deposit for the booking I decided not to go ahead with. I would love to know how much revenue is being generated this way and clearly they reused my card details? Perhaps it will help mitigate for lost business!
I posted a review for the Club on Trust Pilot where there are many reviews and although the Club responds it is very much a cut and paste, take it or leave it job.
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Looking across the many associated social media sites there clearly is quite a bit of discord between the membership and the new booking system and those novel nuances it throws up. This seems particularly the case for us long term and loyal members.
Surely though, there must be some advantages to introducing the new system, let’s hear about them and then we can weigh up the system as a whole.
What I don’t understand mind is the difficulty making amendments, the ability to do so has always been a hugely valued aspect of our club membership. We now seem to experience lots of spaces available across the sites so, with the exception of some dates and the odd sites, surely amending a booking would be as simply as it has been in past years. Are the vagaries of the new booking system the only stumbling block?3 -
I think changing from a fairly simple system that didn't involve any form of payment to one that requires a deposit and a decision on whether to have the payment for the balance come out automatically or on arrival adds a major complication. In addition to that there seems to be lots of new rules on how amendments are handled which is obviously the basis for this thread. I think there are a number of ways the system could be simplified. You could impose automatic gathering of the balance rather than giving a choice. If you stay with the choice it should be the member that inputs that decision rather than a pre-ticked box. You could allow movement of a day or two either side of the booked dates without complicating by involving more deposit/loss of deposit. Whether what I have suggested is acceptable I don't know but they are a few ideas to work on?
David
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All sound interesting, David however, what was wrong with how it was? What are the advantages of the new? It seemed to work as it was whereas the new not so helpful it seems. Why the change? As said there seems to be lots of space available this season. This morning we heard on TV that the UK industry in general is down 25%+ on pre-pandemic bookings. This situation would allow amendments to be simplified surely.
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AFAIK, The changes were instigated to cure one overriding 'member requirement'....too many pitches booked that were later cancelled (despite being within the 'rules').
purely by chance, while the club was beavering away on a solution via a new booking system (deposited and tighter terms) a nasty little bug was invading our lives and changing our living/holidaying habits...
the problem solved itself and now we have a solution that solves a non existent problem...
Prices have rocketed, inflation has hit us hard, folk are going elsewhere. QED.
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Pandemic aside, I’m not convinced by the ‘overriding member requirement’ bit. It had worked for decades and even if it was a significant issue, which we had been reassured many times it was not then easier much less expensive solutions were discussed. I’m sure there is more too it than that! There must be for it to have been changed
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I don’t think the Club will be working on the same issues of importance that the Members might be. The assumption is that the new booking system and deposits was (imposed) designed to primarily cut down on the number of late cancellations. The more restrictive retention of deposits didn’t have to include charges incurred for slightly altering a booking, but I suspect this is a nice little admin earner for the Club and one it might be reluctant to fore go.
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My view is that block booking was a significant issue, and there have been many occasions when we've been unable to book a week away due to the weekends being booked up. Not a problem if those bookings are genuine.
On one occassion we tried to book Dulverton and had this, but were able to book Lakeside instead. Not an issue, as its just down the road.
On the weekend, it rained heavily. I had to go to the Coop in Dulverton on Saturday, and had a quick look around the site while I was there. Lots of empty pitches. I spoke to the wardens about it who confirmed that the cancellations began coming in on the Thursday before as people started getting accurate forecasts.
Some will say that this was the Clubs USP, and thats their opinion. Mine is that things have improved considerably now that the Club has brought itself into line with the rest of the industry
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My take on this was that bookings, cancelled, amended or non show were not the main significant issue, shorter stay bookings often ‘blocked’ the wished for longer ones. One thing we did see back then was much fuller sites and last minute, on the day, even off the road turnerupers being if not in the main but certainly a norm. All round I’m not convinced it’s any better today although last minute and off roader, short stayers seem to benefiting which sort of defeats the intended along with and consternation being caused for other reasons. Has it all been worth it?
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