What are you supposed to do if you own a company and you have customers who really give you the business?
Well, that’s a tough one and it depends on what kind of person you are.
And this story from Reddit’s “Pro Revenge” page is a little bit different from most of the tales there because this person was so impressed by somebody else’s revenge, that they had to share the tale.
The person who wrote it started out by explaining that they own an escape room company…
I can’t get a refund on my Escape Room? Ok let me reschedule then…
“I own an escape room company in a town which borders a pretty touristy area and is very close to an airport.
As such we tend to get a lot of bookings from people all over the UK who are visiting the area for the weekend or international people coming to do an escape room on the way to the airport.
We only take online bookings and don’t take walk ins, therefore the site is only really manned whenever we have bookings.
They explained more about the business.
As such, our cancellation policy is that we only allow refunds if the cancellation is more than 24 hours before the scheduled start time. If it is 2-24 hours before the start time, we can only reschedule the booking.
Now, it’s worth mentioning that for the majority of cases (weekdays) we are pretty relaxed with our policy as long as it doesn’t cause any big issues and try our best to accommodate a group as usually I am the one hosting them so there’s not any additional expenses on our part (i.e. staff wages/loss of income from other potential customers).
And there’s one day in particular where the cancellation policy is important.
However the only day where this policy is really relevant is on Saturday where we are almost always entirely booked from morning to night and have staff members working for us.
So any cancelled slots would most likely have been filled by other customers, and we are of course still paying our staff for that time. Although I must say, we have only ever had to enforce this policy a couple of times as we are usually accommodate a group in some shape or form.
A customer decided to call and cancel…
So I get a call earlier today from a gentleman with a thick Scottish accent that was scheduled to come in with his group in around 2 and a half hours from the time of the call.
The group said that they would be unable to make their booking as they were running late with some other activities or something like that, and asked to reschedule the booking for a later slot. I checked our schedule but didn’t have any slots left for today in any of our rooms. He then asked for a refund as they would be returning back to Glasgow tonight and didn’t know when they would be next down here.
I told him our policy and that our system only allows reschedules instead of refunds due to the time frame and explained that given it’s a Saturday we can’t refund so close to the time as staff has been arranged, slot would have been booked etc etc.
Rescheduling wouldn’t have worked for them as they wouldn’t be in the area anytime soon.
So it was time to reschedule…
After a short pause, he asked if we had any free slots to schedule for next month. I checked the system and offered to move the booking to the same time on 16th November, to which he said “yeah I think that works”
I changed the time on the system and informed him he would get an email confirming the new time slot.
And that’s when the escape room owner got blindsided.
He replied: “Great, so the booking is more than 24 hours away now right?”
Me: “Yes it’s booked in for 4 weeks time from today.”
Him: “Right so, the booking is more than 24 hours away, I won’t be able to make it, can I have a refund?”
I paused for a second trying to process what had just happened in my head and realised that he had found a loophole in the system!
Didn’t see that one coming!
TECHNICALLY, his booking was more than 24 hours away so he is TECHNICALLY entitled to a refund.
I started laughing and congratulated him on beating the system as I processed his refund.”
Now let’s see how Reddit users reacted.
One person saluted the individual who wrote the story.
Another Reddit user said this reminds them of a certain movie…
One person nailed it right on the head.
This individual said they saw this coming.
And one Reddit user said this person is a good-spirited, rare breed!
This one was pretty impressive, don’t you think?
You know that’s the truth!