Beware of price increase after booking!
Looking for a motorhome for a local festival.
Found this company locally and went ahead booking a pick up on the Wednesday and returning Monday.
We read all the T&C’s, ticked the ‘festival’ box (which only states a larger damage security deposit would be required) and paid our deposit.
The next day we get a phone call from the owner claiming he’d been on holiday so hadn’t updated his website.
He insisted that we’d have to pay for an extra day hire claiming we wouldn’t get it returned in time on the Monday. I explained we planned to leave the festival Sunday night so would definitely have it back for Monday morning, but he was adamant we’d have to pay for an extra day.
In addition he claimed that he didn’t realise it was the festival that weekend. Now he knows he want to increase the price of the hire overall.
The extra charges totaled over £300!
There is nowhere on the website that state minimum hire days over that weekend, and nowhere states that there are extra hire charges for a festival (only damage deposit increases). There’s a ‘festival’ tick box so this is the place to detail extra costs if it were the case.
We can’t help but feel that the owner was just trying to pull a fast one and see if anyone would agree to the increased charges.
Increased charges for a particular weekend are fine but please be upfront about it at the time of booking and put it on your website.
Incidentally their website still hasn’t been updated with extra costs and if I attempted to hire it again now (almost one week in) it’s still coming up at the lower price. I therefore have no doubt that the next person booking will get put in a situation where extra charges are added after booking. Does this happen with people who then get into a situation where they can’t get anything else due to availability so just proceed?
We have now agreed to cancel our booking and had the deposit refunded and have gone out of county for the hire (and are paying much less), but such a shame that we couldn’t keep the money in county with a local business.
Had this been a good experience this would likely have been a recurring booking








