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.

[gavs82008]

@Anonymous User 

This is a customer forum you will need to contact Now TV with the email address I supplied. 

Very seldomly will Now TV staff repsond to comments. 

[Anonymous User]

How do I contact now tv?

[gavs82008]

@Anonymous User 

I have already given the email address.........check the final post in page 3 of this thread. 

[Anonymous User]

I don’t get refund options?!!

[Ant42]

When you cancel a sports pass you don't necessarily get a refund automatically. Cancelling a sports pass usually just stops it from auto-renewing for another month when it expires. The pass still stays active until its expiry date.

I don't know if it's any different if you cancel immediately after buying it. Either way, you'll need to ask NowTV what your options are.

[Anonymous User]

I’ve just seen from my Now TV account on nowtv.com that a refund of my £198 subscription for a F1 season pass (April 2) has been made even though I hadn’t asked for one. Having said that I have received no email about this and the money hasn’t actually appeared in my bank account. I wait with bated breath. 

[AlunW]

Nothing for me yet, so I've sent them a complaint via the complaints form...

Let's see what happens...

Alun

[nkorppi]

Where on your account do you see an actual refund. 

I made a complaint and it was closed with "as per recent email, the refund has been processed and we will close complaint". 

No sign of the earlier email and no sign of refund on the account. 

Do they even check the individual accounts? Or they just send generic response to everyone? And assume customers were refunded, without checking? 

[AlunW]

Hi,

I also got this email yesterday - after I sent another complaint...

Thanks for your recent contact with NOW TV

As per our previous email your F1® Season Pass refund has now been processed. We will now be closing your case. Unfortunately, we’ve had to close some of our contact centres because of COVID-19 (Coronavirus), so our customer support is very limited right now. It will take us longer than normal to get back to you if you need further support. You can manage your account at any time by heading to https://account.nowtv.com/ Thanks for choosing NOW TV.

The NOW TV Team

Love the "As per our previous email your F1® Season Pass refund has now been processed" - OK, what email...

So how long do I expect the refund to take?

Cheers

Alun

[Anonymous User]

If you log in to your account online, rather than via the app, and go to 'bills & payments' section and click either March or April, then the refund should appear here. Also need to check your spam inbox, as some of the correspondence to my refund request/complaint appeared in spam and not my main inbox. From receiving the email to advise complaint case was closed and getting money refunded into my bank took 3 days.

[nkorppi]

Nope. No refund in payments for any month.

Even more insulting, the complaint was closed with generic ‘refunds have been processed as per general email’.

Never got email nor refund.

They did not even have the courtesy to check my actual account! They have too many complaints to actually deal with any.

Almost everyone is now refunded, and Still I’m getting nowhere with this. Absolute shambles.

[Ant42]

Is everyone now getting refunded for this or only those who have lodged a complaint?  I've had no email or refund.

When I enquired about it using the online chat way back when that was still working, I was told pretty bluntly that there would be no refund.  They did say that they would provide free week passes for every postponed race, but none of those have been forthcoming either.  I assume they will be sent when the main pass expires.

I'll be happy to keep the pass if enough races go ahead to make the price worthwhile (I think it would have to be a minimum of 13) but I'm beginning to suspect the season won't happen at all this year.

[nkorppi]

Now I got an email saying that the latest news is that the passes will be "extended", not refunded. How can it be so different between different customers?

[gb2000]

I really thought this was all done with. Seems like it's not.

You DO NOT have to accept an extension. That is not what you paid for. If you don't get what you paid for, you are entitled to a refund. They can offer you an extension, and some people might want that, but it is on you to accept that or not - NowTV cannot force you to accept something for which you did not pay.

There's enough evidence now to show your credit card company that you will never get what you paid for - 2 races permanently cancelled, no races even definitely going ahead right now. A section 75 refund is what you need. Contact your bank - it can't take more time than trying to get the refund from NowTV can it?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-your-purchases/

[nkorppi]

Now the money was refunded by NowTV. Needed to be lucky with who processed the complaint this time. 

[Anonymous User]

I don’t get refund options?