You are likely here because you want to know what this Wowcher £99 “Mystery Holiday” is real or a scam. Let me share my story (so far), so you can make your own mind up.
TL;DR – It’s a scam you are going to be squeezed for more money and aren’t going to the location you were promised without spending much more. My advice, avoid, and find flights / hotels yourself.
My partner and I wanted to take a short break, over a weekend, but didn’t know where to go. While looking around, we found Wowcher was doing this £99 “Mystery Holiday” deal. After a very quick Google we decided to take the jump and buy it, using a credit card of course. Worst case, I raise a chargeback, best case we go away somewhere random for £99 each!
So let’s get stuck into this, you have to buy two vouchers at £99 each, and pay their “admin” fees on top. Making the total price of just shy of £208. You are promised with the headlines of going to New York or the Maldives, it should be pretty clear that the chances of going to these places are incredibly slim, you are most likely going on a random city break for three days to a European City. Still sounds alright though, you get randomly assigned a location and given flights and a three star hotel for less than a meal and a night on the town.
Once purchased, you are issued your voucher codes which you need to redeem on a third party site. You are warned that you can not refund your purchase once you have redeemed your voucher. This is normal, it will stop people from using a voucher, not liking the destination and refunding. No problems so far! After clicking through, you are told to enter your departure date and airport region (they do put an extra £40pp if you pick an airport other than London!).
Then it’s the big reveal! They tell you where you are going! If you don’t like it, they also gave three other options which had an uplift of £20pp. These locations were Morocco, Spain and Albania. We opted to stay with our randomly selected choice; Gdansk, Poland.
You then get a nice follow up email telling you to wait 10 working days for someone to contact you.
A few days went by and I got a phone call, it was 7:30pm (1930hrs) on a Sunday from Weekender Breaks. The agent was telling me that my holiday was all ready and I just had to pay £69pp extra per person to go! When questioned this, he said that the flights and hotels were expensive on the day I wanted to go so I had to pay extra. I was rather firm, and declined his offer and told I wasn’t paying anything extra. He rattled on about how my selected dates were “preferred dates” (spoiler, it doesn’t mention this) and they could send me out mid week for a cheaper cost (an extra £39pp). I also declined this as I wanted the dates which I booked on the platform.
After about 10 minutes of going backwards and forwards, the agent tried saying all this was in their Ts&Cs, which I happened to have open. I asked him what line they were on as I couldn’t see any additional charges mentioned. He failed to tell me as there was no mention of any additional charges (apart from if I wanted to change the dates from my selected date or fly from an airport other than London). Going around in circles I told the agent, Samrat, to email me some options, which he did.
Still not wanting to pay any additional costs, I emailed back saying:
At this point, I had figured out what Weekender Breaks were doing. They were simply going onto their system, entering your destination and charging you if the price came above £99. This is certainly not what was advertised. Samrat phoned me back up, after sending that email at about 9pm (2100hrs) on a Sunday evening. They declined to waive the price, blaming me for picking expensive dates. It should be noted here, that when you select dates, some of them are marked as “Sold Out”, so certainly track how many people are selecting each date.
After going around in circles, again, for another half an hour, it was clear I wasn’t going to get what I paid for. Samrat told me that I agreed to these terms and that no refund would be given. The terms he was looking at were certainly different to the ones which were on Wowcher which I read in detail. I asked Samrat to provide me some further options, which he did via email.
Out of the new options, I was given another location in Poland (different to the location I was offered). To their credit, they did provide midweek dates at no additional costs, with an option to go on my selected dates for an additional £19pp.
Now I was left with several options:
- Call Samrat back up requesting my original destination and dates without any additional costs. However, I had done this several times and Samrat was likely had no control over this and wouldn’t budge.
- Refuse and do a Credit Card chargeback. It would be an easy win, but has it’s own hassle.
- Pay the £19pp and have a good time, regardless of feeling a little salty.
After a quick Google of the hotel room and flights (both very easy to find!), I could have saved myself about £20 by doing this by myself. Please remember transfers and all the other luxuries of a “package holiday” are not included. All that Samrat done was book flights and a hotel.
Option three was ultimately chosen and locked in with a very legally binding email with Samrat on the phone instructing me to send the message “I confirm this holiday”. He sat on the phone till this email was received and the additional money sent.
Now, I am not the type of person to leave it like that. Surely Wowcher must know they are selling a “voucher” for something that their 3rd party (Weekender Breaks) isn’t providing,.
Yeah, Wowcher couldn’t care less. They tell you to complain to Weekender Breaks, while signing off their own emails from Weekender Breaks. I suspect the support staff are exactly the same.
If you are this far down, I suspect you have closed down your Wowcher tab, and are going to look elsewhere. I would recommend throwing a dart at a map, and finding your own flights / accommodation!