A pensioner I know bought an item on WOWCHER - or so she thought.

After six weeks of waiting for delivery, she contacted WOWCHER and after 37-hours SUPPOSEDLY in a queue on WhatsApp, she received the following response:

"Unfortunately this voucher was not redeemed in time and therefore no delivery was arranged. If the voucher is not redeemed, eventually it will expire and it will no longer be able to be used.

"Details of how to redeem were provided prior to purchase, on the voucher itself when it was emailed out to you and could also have been accessed at any time via your account. No refund can be applied for an expired voucher."

AND SO IT WENT ON.
I took over for her. They denied responsibility; denied her email address matched the one they had; demanded proof of payment, denied it was possible to make a refund and refused to acknowledge the Consumer Rights Act 2015 applied to them.

After 69 exchanges via WhatsApp, seven emails, the help of the wonderful Martin Lewis's "Resolver" - and my [absolutely genuine] threat of the Small Claims Court [quoting] a claims reference number - they finally paid it back into her account - after insisting several times they had refunded her - when they manifestly had not.

Now, I'm neither saying WOWCHER is a wonderful ethical trader rivalling John Lewis and Richer Sounds nor a real nasty, exploitative, rip-off, scum rogue trader. I'm not qualified in these matters and people should make their own minds up on these things.

Nor is there any suggestion that WOWCHER is capitalising on the fact that most ordinary working folks drawn to their apparent "To Good to be True" deals.

Especially when people [although, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer] are choosing between eat and heat, don't have the experience in disputes nor the necessary knowledge of consumer rights legislation.
Nor do most have the preparedness to take traders to court for less than twenty-quid - or in the case of some complainants, hundreds and hundreds of pounds - and more.

Instead, I'll leave that judgement to the customers [some would suggest "victims"] that have left reviews at the following sites listed below - and there are plenty, plenty more!

Please feel very free to share this as you see fit, to protect others:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/**************/

Yeah ask yourself why? Because they get THAT MANY COMPLAINTS phone lines probably couldn't handle it! Infuriating! Never again!

I purchased a wowcher (2NT / FAMILY OF FOUR / MON-SUN: An Eastbourne getaway with breakfast) and unfortunately couldn't use it due to coronavirus, the hotel kindly refunded the full amount. However, Wowcher issued it as a credit rather than refunding to original payment method which unfortunately expired as I didn't find any other deal to be able to use the amount.
I contacted the customer care requesting refund and this is what I got:

Kumar - 3:54 PM Hi
Hi, about Expired - refund for Seafront Eastbourne Stay which expired on 1 Jan 2021, I am disappointed and disheartened that I lost the money as it wasn't a Campaign Credit but actual hard earned money. And would like it back please
Anybody there?

Harris - 3:55 PM I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.

Kumar - 3:56 PM sure

Harris - 3:57 PM Sorry for the inconvenience But expired credit cannot be re instated

Kumar - 3:58 PM well, this is really disappointing as I said this was actual money and not just campaign
Please could you tell me the process for escalation and raising it as complaint?

Harris - 3:58 PM I do agree with you But as per our policies

Kumar - 3:58 PM I don't care about policies as its looting the customer

Harris - 3:58 PM The expired credit cannot be re instated

Kumar - 3:58 PM and would like to take it to court if needed to be
Please log it as complaint

Harris - 3:59 PM You can email us at cs-dealhelp.co.uk
So that our concern team will assist you further '
Thank you for chatting. Good-bye.

***** Moral of story - no matter what DO NOT accept the refund of hard earned monies as credit as you will never get the value back... choice is yours...