C’est la vie – but not happy about it!

Am feeling very grumpy today I keep getting stupid emails from the events office at work inviting me to lots of jolly excursions over the next couple of months but I really wish they’d bugger off as I’m not very happy with them at all!

A couple of months ago an email came round promoting a weekend jaunt to Paris. The deal was that you travel on Eurostar to Paris on the Friday morning, have most of friday, all saturday and most of sunday in Paris and then get the Eurostar back on Sunday evening, all this for a bargin price of £145. Great, I thought, a nice weekend break for myself and darling boyf before the hecticness that is the festive season starts in earnest

I happily paid the £50 deposit and then started planning what we would do and see in ‘gai paris’. However, about a month ago we got an email saying that, owing to the fire in the Eurostar tunnel at the beginning of september, we would now be travelling by ferry from Dover! Huh!!! They only advertisised this trip AFTER the fire and sold it as a Eurostar trip… Also when they took the deposits they impressed upon us that this was ‘non-refundable’ as it was being used to secure the Eurostar tickets yet I’m now being told that Eurostar aren’t taking any bookings…! My cheque has deffo been cashed so where the blinkin’ heck has my 50 quid gone if its not bought me 2 rail tickets! Seems like there is something dodgy here…

So anyway, I emailed the events office asking for more details. Don’t get me wrong – its not that I’ve got an aversion to ferrys or anything like that, but even I know that the journey down to Dover, over the channel and then from Calais to Paris is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than just hopping on the train in London and alighting in the middle of the french capital… How long are we actually supposed to get in Paris now? Timing-wise it looked like we’d get to the hotel early friday evening and have to leave mid-afternoon on sunday, so our trip had shrunk from 3 days/2 nights to 2 nights/1 day!!! Not so good value now!

I therefore asked that, if we decided not to go anymore, could we have our deposit back – seeing as it had been taken to secure the Eurostar tickets and the fact that we weren’t going on that anymore should ‘negate’ the non-refundable situation…? After not hearing anything for over a week a generic email went round apologising and saying that due to the amount of complaints received they had decided to cancel the trip. Fair enough, it wasn’t good value anymore anyway so what did they expect, but the bit that really pee’d me off was the final par that said we were not actually entitled to our deposit back as alternative transport had been offered… eh?… That would be like me advertising to sell, say, an 8-bedroom mansion, taking a deposit of £100,000 for it and then saying “Oh, actually I don’t own that mansion but I can sell you a 3-bed semi, however if you decide you don’t want the semi, you can’t have your desposit back as I did offer you another property!”

The reasoning apparently was that the deposit had been used to secure the hotel instead – NOT what it said in the contract guys!!! Luckily, thanks to the stirling work of our events officer, we have been promised our deposits back… but that was 3 weeks ago and so far – no money!!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way blaming our events office… I’m blaming the actions of the company that was organising the trip in the first place – seem like a bunch of cowboys to me!

So anyway, back to my original statement, while I’m STILL waiting to get my 50 quid back I would really appreciate NOT hearing from the bloody events office about the great trips they have planned for the next couple of months… Grrrrr… Talk about rubbing salt in the wound!