Been ripped off by Red Letter Days?
If you’ve been ripped off by Red Letter Days because of the recent events, visit The Red Letter Days Ripoff Forum.
As I seem to get quite a flow of Google searches relating to Red Letter Days, I thought I’d link to this forum. The purpose of it is to allow customers and suppliers to discuss how they successfully made a claim and got a refund or managed to use their voucher. It’s been started by a disgruntled Red Letter Days voucher holder who never got to take advantage of the event he’d booked because of RLD’s incompetence at managing its own money.
See previous posts here, here and here for my thoughts on snotty Rachel’s failed business.
Edit: Oh yeah forgot to say, if you go post/comment, keep it useful and polite. Flaming RLD for being run by a bunch of slapheads is fun, but not very constructive so keep the Rachel slander here, close to my heart, rather than on Red Letter Days Rip Off!
Cheers for the link to the forum, I am so annoyed at RLD as my girlfriend got me a voucher for a birthday after she’d been saving for ages.
I have used RLD’s for years – but not any more – I have just had enough. My girlfriend bought me a voucher and I only had 2 months to book my experience. It expired by only a few days and RLD’s response was: “tough! thanks for you money, thanks for your hard-earned cash, thanks for for your years of customer loyalty, thanks for paying over inflated prices, now F*** off!”
RLD’s are good at hiding behind a clause and small print (expiry date) but very poor at customer relations.
After all, does the cash we pay them have an expiry date? No!
They should start and take more notice of their customers’ needs or someone else will come along and take their business from them.
– here’s an idea
RLD – rival company (orange alphabet):
- lets get all the disgruntled customers together and start our own rival company and take RLD down! – With over 100 people involved I am sure we could produce a fantastic company (taking advantage of viral marketing, over 100 enthusiastic brains, a heck of a lot of media coverage – as it is something which would go down in business and ‘people power’ history.
anyone interested? – we could compile a list of skils from all the people involved – e.g. marketing, PR, media, web design, advertising etc
lets do it!
Re. the rival company idea. I do believe it’s already been done. See http://www.directexperiences.co.uk
Good luck
Stewart
Re. the rival company. Yes it has been done and it’s been going on from the year after Red Letter Days launched. But still their number one. What are you going to do.. take their name and along with it their power to convince the Santuary in London and the likes of such companies that you would not discourage their name. Trust me the amount of happy customer far out ways you guys.
Might I add that any company would go bust if they performed in such a way as you are suggesting, the uplift on experiances is mainlly controlled by the venues and their prices ( but I’m sure that an ”enthusiastic brain” such as your could have worked that out by simply noticing that not all prices are increased yearly.
In short if it’s that easy then why aren’t you famous and rich (….assuming that you are not as you have too much time to babble and complain)
Hi
I have justed posted my experience on: http://www.myfeedbackonyourbusiness.com, make sense to put it somewhere others will see it. People Power!
Jon
i work at rld and you guys are a bunch of loosers!!!!!!!!!!!! you actually know zilch!!!
Dear dear Kallie,
Thank you for confirming my impression that RLD will hire anything with a pulse as customer service.
Very grownup and mature response on your part, I’m impressed.
Much love,
Vero
Well, I’ve tried ringing the number listed on their website for the past few days, but the phone just gets cut-off after selecting between option 1, 2 or 3 (it doesn’t matter which you choose).
I want to redeem my gift, but the dates listed only go up to the end of August (and I’m looking for first week in Sept).
Not at all impressed…..
Have just had a similiar experience with Red Letter Days. Their product information is extremely confusing & who ever heard of a seven-month expiry date? Total rip off. Am thinking of approaching the papers with this company.
I`ve been had by the short expiry thing too. Bought a gift for my father-in-law to say thanks for helping me fitting our bathroom. He was slow to book, and found out it had expired. Expired!!!!! Since when do you pay a company for something and 7 months later if you haven`t redeemed anything they keep every single penny. All we have to show for it is a nice red box, that probably cost pence to make, to show for it.
Their policy should be something like this;
You book the experience which has an expiry date, if you miss this date, they send you a voucher for the value of the money paid. They could take a small admin fee of the original price paid, to make it fair to them I suppose.
I am about to write a letter of complaint to RLD, for all the good it will do! I am determined to take this all the way though, Watchdog, consumer direct, office of fair trading, etc etc etc. They probably make a huge amount this way for providing no product. I reckon they`d probably go out of business if the OFT told them they couldn`t do it, thats how much of a ripoff it all is. They litterally survive on the cash that people are unknowingly donating to them!
Hi Andy Oliver, I have a similar problem to yourself voucher expired 20 days ago. Have you managed to get anywhere with them? I have also sent them a letter but I guess it will get filed in the bin along with yours.
I have had the same experience as above 2 weeks expired and nothing to show for it.
I will also be taking it as far as possible.
Interesting reading below;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/consumer_affairs/article6726263.ece
A.
Unfortunately the forum at the top of this site no longer seems to be going.
I’ve had the same problem with 2 expired vouchers, not even the smallest of concessions made by RLD. However, as a lawyer, I’m 95% certain that any county court would find the terms set out regarding expiry to constitute an unfair contract.
And they’ve just swindled another one! I got ust the same response from customer service (Hah!) “Sorry, there’s nothing they can do about it”. This is outrageous. She did says that they’ve changed their policy to have a ten month expiry. Even so, any other purchase from any other company would be guaranteed of merchanable quality for a year.
It was a gift when I left work and I’m now going back to the original purchaser of the gift to ask them to reclaim the payment on their credit card because the service was not provided.
Jules the lawyer, how did you get on?
RLD, offered hotel and theater…hotel was other side of London…we had to pay that part ourselves in order to be local..tried to book same for this year and yes you guessed it ticket expired and no refund offered or voucher …basically tough luck…never using them again.. customer service stinks…
Just was given a RLD by my friends at work.
However I did not want to go to any event but thought I get something for my mother.
I found that all the products were 3 times more expensive then what is available from regular retailers.
Proof -simply copy name and google it!
this website is simply designed with maximum funding towards marketing and not geared at end user satifaction. its a real Dragons Den gem! Stay Away!
Same sort of story again, got given a voucher in May for my birthday, didn’t realise there was such a short expiry date (October!). Their terms and conditions say you have at least 10 months from date of purchase, apparently not. Have sent them an email, not hopeful based on these previous experiences.