A group of us stayed at Center Parcs last year - in one of their top of the range chalets, it was excellent and we had a wonderful time. We were told that if we rebooked within a few weeks we would get a discount. So we booked gain for this year and (apparently) got 1/3rd discount - we were well pleased - UNTIL... we arrived at our same class of chalet only to find it an absolute mess, we assumed it was from the previous tenants and that it hadn't been serviced properly, the place was damaged, dirty, dangerous and generally nothing like the standard we were expecting. They DID make several attempts during the course of our stay to put things right but it never reached the standard that we had expected AND it disrupted our holiday. In the end they agreed to give us a £150 reduction on another holiday (we hadn't planned to go back but with this incentive AND the assumed large discount as previously we thought it would be worth another shot). We thought we'd try a different site this time. When we looked at availability we could apparently book the same week, for next year, at a price of £800 (no evidence of the big discount of last time), by the time we'd all agreed that we'd go (a matter of about 3 days to decide between us) the price had increased to £1100 !! - The reason given was that they price their holidays according to how quickly they get booked up - WHAT SORT OF DEAL IS THAT??? IT SHOULD BE A SET AMOUNT or less NOT MORE!! (we are talking a year ahead here !), so their conciliatory £150 discount is nothing of the sort - just a scam to make us book up again. Downright disgusting.
Is this a scam ??
A group of us stayed at Center Parcs last year - in one of their top of the range chalets, it was excellent and we had a wonderful time. We were told that if we rebooked within a few weeks we would get a discount. So we booked gain for this year and (apparently) got 1/3rd discount - we were well pleased - UNTIL... we arrived at our same class of chalet only to find it an absolute mess, we assumed it was from the previous tenants and that it hadn't been serviced properly, the place was damaged, dirty, dangerous and generally nothing like the standard we were expecting. They DID make several attempts during the course of our stay to put things right but it never reached the standard that we had expected AND it disrupted our holiday. In the end they agreed to give us a £150 reduction on another holiday (we hadn't planned to go back but with this incentive AND the assumed large discount as previously we thought it would be worth another shot). We thought we'd try a different site this time. When we looked at availability we could apparently book the same week, for next year, at a price of £800 (no evidence of the big discount of last time), by the time we'd all agreed that we'd go (a matter of about 3 days to decide between us) the price had increased to £1100 !! - The reason given was that they price their holidays according to how quickly they get booked up - WHAT SORT OF DEAL IS THAT??? IT SHOULD BE A SET AMOUNT or less NOT MORE!! (we are talking a year ahead here !), so their conciliatory £150 discount is nothing of the sort - just a scam to make us book up again. Downright disgusting.
Has anyone else had this happen?