F1 Season Pass - Money now refunded!

[gb2000]

I, and many others, have been frustrated by NowTV's refusal to provide full refunds for F1 Season passes. Going onto Live Chat was a frustrating experience to say the least - they point blank refused to give any refunds at all. Then the lockdown in India meant that NowTV's Live Chat went offline - that's where it is based. So it seemed we were destined to have no refunds, ever.

Yesterday, 25 March 2020, that changed, but I will add one caveat - it changed for me, so I don't know if you will have the same results.

I now have my refund.

Note that the case had already been opened in Live Chat, so perhaps some of that has been transferred over, or maybe their 'Executive Team', to which it had been escalated in the chat, is a separate entity (UK based?). Either way, they told me this, by email:

Thank you for your continued patience. I can confirm we have processed a refund of £176 to the payment card. Please allow 3 - 5 working days to receive this. 

As you had used the pass in the first month, we have deducted 1 month from the total cost of the pass. 

We'd like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by the changes to the F1 events. 

That was still not enough for me so I replied with this (apologies for the length!):

That is not acceptable. AT ALL. I do no accept your offer.

I paid for 22 F1 races. I did not at ANY TIME watch an F1 race. 22 F1 races is what you were legally required to provide, and that was not what was provided.

I watched the channel on TWO occasions, for a short time only:

1 - to check to see if the pass was working.
2 - to try to watch a race weekend, only to find out that it had been cancelled.

At no time have you EVER provided me with ANY live F1 coverage, which was the whole point of the F1 Season pass, and the contract into which I entered when I bought this pass.

Please provide me with the addition £22, to which I am legally entitled - a total refund of £198.

I just checked, and you have cancelled the pass completely, so that right now I have no access at all to the month's viewing you say I paid for. Please note that I paid for the season pass on 6 March 2020. It is now 25 March 2020, so that first month should not expire until 6 April 2020. So even for this you have short-changed me - you have given me 19 days of the 31 days you say I've paid for.

Please do not treat your customers like this. The F1 pass was specifically for watching F1 races, with the added 'bonus' of watching other sports (of which there are none). Watching the channel to find that it contained nothing I could watch is the equivalent of buying a product and opening the box, only to find it is broken inside. You cannot withhold the £22 simply because I have 'opened the box to see if it works'. To take another example, someone who ordered a meal would have to taste some of it to find out it tasted bad - the restaurant could not say 'you ate some of that so here's a PARTIAL refund'.

A reminder of what your F1 offer email to me says:

Grab an F1® Season Ticket and save over £100

Get revved up for the new season of high-octane F1® action with the NOW TV
Sky Sports F1® Season Ticket. Watch all 22 race weekends live, across 9
months for a one-off £198 payment* (worth £305.91).

One-off payment / £198 / 9 Month Pass

That's just £9 per race weekend

I still have the email, which I can forward to you, or provide a screen grab if you prefer.

Note that it says "Watch all 22 race weekends live". I have not watched ANY race weekends live. There have been none to watch.

Do not close this case. I do not accept your offer of a partial refund - I want the whole £198 refunded. I know my legal rights.

Please respond to this email with a further offer, this time of £198. If you do not do so, I will pursue you via a section 75 refund on my credit card, which as you probably know will cost you more than £22 just for the chargeback fee.

Today, 26 March 2020, I got this reply:

We have refunded the remaining £22.00 to your card. Please allow 3 - 5 working days to receive this payment. 

Upon checking my account, just to make sure, I saw this:

So right now, as I write, NowTV has given at least one full refund for the F1 season pass. Hopefully this will be a more widespread thing, because we all need it to be refunded.

However, the question does remain: how does anyone now ask for the refund if Live Chat is unavailable? My case had already been escalated before Live Chat went down. I am unsure how you would contact this 'Executive Team' directly. If anyone could add extra information about that, please do so. You'd be helping a lot of people who simply want their money back.

[Saint1976]

What email address did they use to send you your email. Assuming you could reply to it then it must be functional in some way for others to use. 

[gb2000]

The email address they used was:

customerservices

at

nowtv

dot

com

Sorry, I had to post it like that because the system tries to remove email addresses.

[gb2000]

It may be less interactive than Live Chat, but there is a complaints page, which can be used to send your claim for a full refund:

https://help.nowtv.com/complaints/tv

Please post back any response you may get, successful or not.

[Saint1976]

I've already used that page. Given I'm couped up at home with a lot of time on my hands right now I have got a very big bee in my bonnet about this.

I've emailed the head of sky and am now in the process of emailing every listed executive, tech magazines, Watchdog, Which, and anyone else who I think may listen. I'm also bombarding their social media but noticed comments are being deleted. They are simply burying their collective heads in the sand over this and it's p****** me right off! 

Once this is over they won't get another penny from me - ever!

[gb2000]

I used that page too, but I think it may be worth trying again, given that someone, somewhere has now definitely authorised at least one refund (for me). They may have had a change in policy, or they may have just got fed up with me (I was extremely persistent).

It's worth one more go. Use the arguments I gave in the reply above - the emailed F1 offer is important because it is quite specific about what you are buying. Don't worry if you don't have a copy, the key parts of it are shown in my post.

And mention 'it will cost you more if you don't refund me' - the chargeback fee is added to their costs on top of the refund, and they know they don't have a leg to stand on if you go to the bank for a section 75 refund.

You also have the advantage now that you can say 'he got a refund, so should I', which is why I posted the information here.

[Bamboozled]

Thanks gb2000

I have just lodged a complaint and have cut and pasted your excellent and to the point explanation

I have asked for the £198 to be returned and as you suggested added extra points including the Credit Card chargeback AND the fact I asked for a cancellation under the cooling off period. I had had the Pass about 10 days only and was told (wrongly it seems) that I did not qualify

So thanks for the help and will let you know

Cheers

[Anonymous User]

I had very similar issues and was initially refused a refund within 14 day cooling off period. However I persevered and sent my complaint personally to the MD of Now TV - his contact details are widely available from a google search. After 2 weeks of ignored emails, I finally got a full refund and my pass was cancelled as of 30th March. So... keep chasing them for a response, they really have no grounds to keep money for services which they cannot provide and therefore cannot be used by customers as advertised at time of the Season Pass purchase. And via a family friend who works for Formula One Management, I have asked for them to be made aware of how difficult it has been for F1 fans in the UK to get their passes refunded!

[Anonymous User]

Hi, have you got the MD’s email address? I can’t seem to find it

@Anonymous User 

[Anonymous User]

Will have to abide by the rules of the forum and not post a personal email address unfortunately. But if you do an online search for 'jeremy darroch email' , then a number of sites publicly display his BSkyB contact details for you to use.

Now TV is a member of a dispute resolution organisation (CEDR) via CISAS, so it might be worth contacting them as well - [email removed]. 

There is also a highly recommended independent dispute resolution service online called Resolver and they can assist with contacting companies on your behalf when you cannot get a reply from the company directly.

Good luck with your refund request!