I bought a groupon Voucher to a holiday resort in Fiji. It cost A$1,299. The instructions on the voucher were to book the resort through a website called "www.yourtraveldeal.com.Au". It says on this site that there's 3 easy steps to booking this deal... What a joke!
First of all they ask for a registration code. I got a voucher number from Groupon. But no registration code to login to Your Travel Deal. I needed to contact them to see how to get this registration number. On their contact page they have a 1300 number for Australia and a fax number (no local number and no email address). I live in Hong Kong, so it wasn't possible for me to call this number from overseas and I have no idea who owns a fax machine these days? I had to get my mum in Australia to call their 1300 number to get this registration code. She said that she waited in a phone queue for around 20 minutes before someone finally answered and she got the code.
I then used the code to proceed with making my booking. The second "easy" step is to check the resort's availability. I bought the voucher in Sept and wanted to make the booking for mid Jan. I put in my dates and then went to put in the number of people in the booking... But then confronted another problem... The website would not allow me to put in the number of people -neither by dropping down a number or typing the number in. The site wouldn't let me proceed any further because I hadn't put in the number of people... Which was impossible to do.
Again I needed to contact this company who are near on impossible to reach to explain my problem with their site. Again... My mum needed to call them... Again needed to wait in phone queues and this time she asked for a local number so that I could call them myself.
I called You Travel Deal to explain the problem of not being able to drop down or enter the number of people in the site. She told me that for a $10 fee she could help me book over the phone. My argument with her was that I would very much like to book the deal online, but their website would not allow it, so there should be alternative options available at no additional cost. She told me that it was probably a problem with my computer rather than their site. She suggested I try another computer.
I took this advice and tried making the booking on a friend's computer. Again... I encountered the same problem with entering the number of people in the booking. These 3 easy steps were beginning to get really aggravating.
I was aware that I had to book online by the 28th Sept as stipulated in the fine print on the voucher. I call them again on the 28th to ask for an email address to explain the ordeal that I had experienced. I knew that for a $10 fee I could book over the phone but this company had annoyed me so much that I didn't want to give them any more of my money. I email on the 28th and on the 5th October I received an email back from a lady named Debra from a different email address. Debra's email was from a company called "Rewards Corp". She told me that she would help me book over email given that I was based overseas. I was very busy at work at the time of receiving the email and it took me a week to reply to Debra. When I replied she forwarded my email which included the dates that I wanted to book the accommodation to her boss. His email address was from "Star Deals". His email to me basically stated that the deal was open until the 7th October and after this date the deal had expired and I wasn't able to make the booking and that they were essentially going to take my money and give me nothing in return. This was the first that I had heard that the deal was going to expire on the 7th October. I was furious. I had already wasted so much of my time going back and forth... Waiting in phone queues... Wasting time trying to book on their faulty website... Emailing to explain my problems with booking... And then finally to be told that the deal had expired and they're weren't going to do anything to help me.
It was very confusing as to who I needed to contact to deal with this issue. There were now four companies who I had correspondence with. 1. Groupon 2. Your Travel Deal 3. Rewards Corp 4. Star Deals. Each one of them that I contacted tried to push the blame to another one of the partners in this group and told me that I'd need to contact them to follow up with my complaint. I didn't even know who had taken my money and who was to take responsibility for handling my complaint. They were all extremely difficult to contact.
I figured that given that I'd bought the voucher from Groupon that it was them that I should hold responsible. I was on hold for 50 minutes before being able to speak to a real person. The girl who I spoke to sounded like she was 12 years old and was clearly had no ideal about how to deal with my complaint so I asked to speak to her manager. She put me on hold and the phone seemed to go dead. I kept holding and about 10 minutes later the same young girl came back on the call. "Ohh yeah sorry, there's nothing we can do. The deal has expired." she said in a whiny voice. I say in return, "so you're willing to take $1,299 of my money, give me a hell of time trying to make the booking, email saying that you're going to help, then pass me to a moron who makes up some story of the extended booking expiration date, keep me waiting to speak to you for an hour and now tell me there's nothing you're going to do to help me"."yeah, sorry about that, there's nothing we can do." she says.
I've since emailed the Groupon Support email address multiple times explaining my case and asking them to contact me and I've had absolutely no response.
After taking my money (and no small amount...$1,299), wasting my valuable time and infuriating me with their shocking business practices I've been left now with the arduous task of having to take legal action.
If anyone has had an experience similar to mine and can share some advice on how to tackle this case please speak up.
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