Declan

I purchased 3 lights recently. All 3 were motion sensitive, 2 for separate bathrooms and one for an entrance hall way. The latter is a plug in light. The fitting is a European one (2 pin) and it comes with a 3 pin adapter. It’s clear no one tested this as as they are incompatible, there is no way to connect them unless you cut away part of the 3 pin part which receives the other. As I was leaving the next morning for a few weeks I will sort it out later.

Having been insured with them for many years and having an unusual amount of outpatient expenses this year, I thought I would claim some of that outlay back this year.
To my dismay and frustration I discovered buried in the small print lurk a lot of exclusions which contradict the “banner headline claims”.
To be specific : €60 back per consultant visit (subject to excess) turns out not to be what it suggests. The €60 / visit is the max allowed against the excess (which is €200) so it’s only on the fourth visit that you get anything back. So my last consultation was €280 for which I got €0 back.
Similarly I was happy to find I could recuperate some of the costs of my physiotherapy. Well no. To access that you have to find a physiotherapist that does house calls (I don’t know of any in this city) and it can only be within 3 weeks after a hospital discharge.
And so it goes on. After my third phone call to get further information I opted for the callback rather than listen to jingles and ads for 10 minutes. It says that way you don’t lose your place in the queue…2 hours later and I’m still waiting for the call.

Rented a Dacia duster for a 2 week road trip for 3 adults. Car was reliable and sufficient for 3 with luggage. Office staff were polite and efficient at both ends of the trip.
As we were flying out early (4.30 am in airport) we left the car back the evening before departure but didn’t get a reduction on the earlier drop off time as the 24 hour advance notice only applies before we took the car, not before returning it and we incurred 2 taxi trips as a result (1 from rental place to accommodation and another to the airport, they phoned for the first taxi).
Otherwise the company and car all worked as planned so would happily use them again.
Thanks

Super helpful and patient (as he had to deal with a confirmed Luddite). He also had a sense of humour which always helps. Tks

Simple procedure to take out policy.

Booked 3 flights last November for trip this August. Got an email 1/4/21 that flight was cancelled. Tried to get a refund using their website but it didn’t work despite using several different browsers,computers,locations all with no success.
Phoned them, first customer service person wasn’t very helpful, phoned back having failed again to get their website to do anything. This time got a a much more sympathetic c s person (Alexandra) who offered to process my refund request which I agreed to, she explained the time scale could take up to 28 days.
Two days later I received a full refund. I’m impressed

I booked a house in Jan 2020 for 3 nights in Namibia in August. I have used Airbnb a number of times over the last 6/7 years so know the routine. I was surprised when they unexpectedly took the full amount immediately as I am used to paying a deposit initially and the rest a few weeks in advance of arriving but I let that go.
After Namibia closed its doors to travellers and our flights were cancelled I waited until Airbnb’s window for cancellations included our booked period and started completing the “paperwork” to get our full refund. The hosts of the property were very helpful and agreed we should get the full refund but the Airbnb site thought otherwise.
Despite proceeding slowly and carefully I was constantly finding myself on a page for a partial refund, then on a page for a voucher (which I didn’t want) and finally was certain I was on the page for full refund under Covid 19 terms, I hit the enter button and was immediately congratulated on successfully getting a voucher and not a refund.
As Airbnb don’t know about telephones or email, you are obliged to communicate with them solely through their site, which I duly embarked on. After a week of pointless messaging where they ignored what I was saying to them, repeated nonsense and switched teams dealing with my complaint so I had to start over. I couldn’t work out if I was just talking to bots or real people and at one point did laugh when they offered me a choice of bxxxxt excuses from which I could choose my favourite.
I decided I couldn’t take their alternative reality and the ageing process was accelerating for me so I decided to go else where for a solution.
I checked out taking them to our small claims court (which I’m sure they are well familiar with) and if they tried to dodge that bullet by saying their finance dept is in the UK, I looked at using the EU small claims court which looked a good option but instead went with using what’s called a chargeback policy with my credit card company.
They ask for proof that you have tried to resolve the issue to a reasonable extent (for which I copied them with screen shots of our messaging), a copy of the receipt of monies paid and then they took over.
It appears that dealing with MasterCard isn’t as easy as dealing with an annoying customer as a few weeks later I got the full €430.20 credited to my card account. Happy days. So now all you good pissed off customers of Airbnb know how to get them to do the “impossible”.
I’m still waiting for congratulations from Airbnb for showing them how to achieve the impossible in their finance dept (but I’m not holding my breath) !
ps avoid using Apple tech if possible when booking, buried in their small print it says they don’t like it.

I bought 2 items of underwear from them last Sept. 1 arrived months later and no sign of the other item. After another few weeks of silence and no delivery, I wrote to them asking where my purchases were. I got a series of e-mails from them using every excuse in the book but no satisfactory answer as to when to expect delivery.
I then asked for a refund for the goods and the shipping costs, again the excuse book came out.
Eventually I got a refund of €1.50 for shipping (no idea how they arrived at that figure), an admission that the other item was out of stock and were discontinued and a credit note for €4.60 (again no explanation where that figure came from).
Needless to say I didn’t avail of the credit note as I will never buy anything from them again.
Shockingly bad customer service from a company that obviously decides if they don’t have a product they will just keep you money anyway, say nothing and hope you go away. I have gone away. Forever.

I used to be a good and regular customer in their Cork shop. After the despicable manner in which they treated their staff when they closed their store here, I refuse to buy anything from them again.