To whom it may concern,
Company responses to bad reviews on sites such as Trust Pilot are typically sympathetic and full of apologies. This response will be entirely different. I do hope that anyone reading this review will understand that it really has taken an intolerable customer for me to respond in such a combative way.
If I felt that we were in any way to blame, I would apologise unreservedly and we would find a way to make it up to the customer.
The lady above, Misha Monaghan of taxi app company Karhoo, was irrational, unreasonable and incredibly rude from the moment she contacted us. Here is a summary of our correspondence with Karhoo:
-- We confirmed availability at the time requested and informed the customer, requesting payment to confirm the booking.
-- We reminded the customer that we cannot book a venue (and confirm the booking) without receiving payment.
-- Payment was not received until days later, during which time a third party had booked the sports hall we intended to use.
-- We immediately found an alternative venue and emailed the customer.
-- 24 hours later, the customer confirmed that they were happy to proceed at the new venue. Upon my attempt to book said venue it had also been booked up by a third party.
It important to note here that while this was a very rare and unfortunate occurrence, and I did apologise for the inconvenience, the availability of facilities is completely out of our control. Our venue sourcing service is free of charge and something that sets us apart from other providers. However, we cannot and do not guarantee availability at any of the facilities we use because we do not own them. Our role is to call and try to book facilities as soon as possible once payment has been made - and this is exactly what we did in this instance.
Most importantly, at no point did we confirm a booking with Misha or anyone at Karhoo. As standard, we are unable to confirm a booking until we have received payment and booked the venue.
-- Next, we offered the customer a full refund but they instead asked us to try to book the same venues for the following week. This is in contrary to Ms Monaghan’s statement which infers that they had to request a refund at the end of our correspondence.
-- Over the next two days, we attempted to book the venues. However, both centres operate a new policy (brought in by new management) which means one-off corporate bookings can only be made 1-6 days in advance. Local residents can book further ahead of time.
-- At this point, Ms Monaghan was becoming ever more impatient, insulting and coarse despite my best efforts to find an alternative. I patiently and politely explained that we could not book the two venues in question until 6 days in advance. I actually went to the trouble of getting up at midnight to attempt to book the venue online once it was technically 6 days in advance. Unfortunately the systems at the centre do not allow this.
-- In the end, neither of the two centres that Ms Monaghan was willing to book at had availability. I contacted the customer at 7am with the frustrating news.
-- In response I received another insulting and obnoxious email, with no appreciation for the fact that venue availability is out of our control in spite of me making this clear several times.
-- Ms Monaghan was also offered the chance to book any venue herself directly and we would have accommodated
At this point, I processed an immediate refund and did indeed ask Ms Monaghan to not contact us again, as quoted.
Our reviews and regular repeat bookings speak for themselves. We remained professional and did our utmost to appease Ms Monaghan throughout. I would urge Ms Monaghan to focus on acting in a more professional way and, more importantly, to interact with other people without the appalling attitude shown to us. Perhaps spending more time on this would go some way to improving the decidedly dreadful reviews of your company, Karhoo.
