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. 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)

i work at rld and you guys are a bunch of loosers!!!!!!!!!!!! you actually know zilch!!!

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…..

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!

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.

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?

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!

Hi, I am so pleased I have found all the above comments.
I too have just experienced this, Did not have a clue that there was an expiry date, had put the Voucher away when I came to book realised!! ( I am a month out of the expiry date. )
What fumes me is that this was purchased for my Daughters 16th Birthday by me(a single parent and my retired parents) which to us cost a lot of money £70.00 for a real special treat in London. I am not playing on the single parent thing before i get comments, i work 12 hours a day on min wage, hence this was 2 days work!

I have done all the polite letters etc and got same response as above, I have told them they have stolen and that I am going to publish on facebook and make damned sure they go bust, also I will go to the papers and anywhere else anyone can suggest!! I am particuarly interested in the comment made by Jules( If you are still on this forum) I would be most interested in how i go about this as i am sure others would be too.

And I love the comment from Vero…..SPOT ON!!! She just prooves the type of money grabbing, theiving, dishonest sharks that they employ….bet she felt soooo stupid after you responded to her simple chavvy basic thicko type comment!!
With kind Thanks
E

My son got a voucher for his 18th from Nan and Grandad and uncles/aunts thought he had a year to book but then realised he only had 9 months so it was out of date when we realised. Person on phone was no help at all told me there was no point in complaining because they wouldn’t do anything I’m not old but whatever happened to customer services!!! I am determined to try and get the money back. Anyone got any ideas? Thanks.

I had a red letter gift and booked a hotel break adding my own money to it to get a full weekend in the Mcure Hotel Bradford North
Due to unforseen circumstances i tried to change the date the hotel refused saying voucher customers were not entitled to change dates as normal customers are
I tried and tried even spoke to a manager and offered to pay an admin fee to change the date but the answer was still a big fat no
I called Red Letter customer support for help and was promised a call back yesterday i never got one of course
So today i emailed them and they responded with the same answer as the hotel
The experience had cost 180.00 including what we added to it and no refund was offered at all i was just told my money was lost and they would be keeping it as per their t&cs
So to sum up they took 180.00 from me for a hotel stay i needed to change the date of that stay im not allowed to do this they keep the money as profit and its just tough on me
They did offer a 20% discount on a new experience but id have to pay out the other 80 so after losing 180.00 of course i am will to do that because i am crazy or are they crazy !!!!!