Gostargazing Reviews 2

Great website with great advice for a novice star gazer, the free app on my phone is very helpful

Our experience was cancelled at 9:30pm on the day (i.e. less than an hour prior to the start time) with no indoor alternative provided WHATSOEVER. This meant that having travelled 5 hours each way and paid for accommodation, were left heavily out of pocket, had no time to arrange anything else that evening, and frankly wished we'd never bothered at all. The cancellation was due to some dubious story of a random internal power/mechanical issue that was "outside their control". At the time of phoning to inform us, we were promised a refund as well as the option to book at another time. This resolution honestly would have been fine as we are reasonable people and get that these things can happen. However when we tried to actually get the promised refund & alternative date, we were ghosted to the point that we had no choice but to ask for a refund from Virgin Experience Days (VED) themselves. Allan at Dark Sky was in copy throughout all the emails exchanged with VED and only replied to us after Virgin had resolved things by providing us a gift voucher. When Allan did eventually reply, his email to us was arrogant and self-righteous, maintaining that they he had no responsibility to provide any refund at all under 'consumer rights' law and therefore would not do so. Had it not been for service professionalism offered by Virgin Experience Days, the small claims court would have been our next port of call. For anyone reading this review, it's really a case of buyer beware! If you do decide to trust this company, be sure to book through an intermediary, keep a record of everything and know your consumer rights too. Whatever you do, don't book direct and if you must do this, use a credit card, because Companies House records show that Dark Sky Wales is in fact (unsurprisingly) teetering on the brink of insolvency and about to be struck off. I have no doubt that this honest review will elicit the usual arrogant response from Allan (as seems par for the course with other reviews). But at the end of the day Allan, it was in your power to just do the right thing here. Had you made any effort to resolve this in a fair, sensitive and appropriate manner, this review would've talked about how you did your best to put a bad situation right. Sadly it was the opposite and sharing this experience far and wide became non-optional.