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National motorhomes / Unbeatable Hire / Hire Booking centre in Administration


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Hi all,

First post here (long time lurker), but really wanted to alert other people who may be in a similar situation.  I had two motorhomes booked for Glastonbury through National Motorhomes.  I originally made this booking as they had refundable deposits and didn't want to risk the amount of money and not get a campervan pass and in the reverse, I didn't want to pay for a campervan pass and risk not being able to get the motorhomes.  In the end I booked with another company more local to me once my campervan pass was confirmed, but National Motorhomes had a 28 working day clause to turn around their deposit refunds.  Chasing my deposit refund today (29 working days later), I received the following email...

Quote

Dear xxxx


Service announcement
Due to ongoing issues with our merchant card provider, we are unable to process credit card payments nor deposit refunds at this time. Unfortunately due to this situation, Unbeatablehire is filing notice for insolvency.

We are extremely sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

What to do now.
If you have paid a deposit in advance for a booking or paid a refundable deposit that had not been repaid, you can recover your payment(s) as follows.

Credit card payment.
All credit card payments are automatically protected and you have a legal right to a full refund. You should contact your card provider and quote that you wish to claim a refund under Section 75 of the consumer credit act.

Debit card payment.
If you paid via a debit card, you must claim a chargeback.

Chargeback is a mechanism for your card issuer to reclaim money from the retailer’s bank.

This can allow your card issuer to provide you with a refund due to Unbeatablehire Limited filing for insolvency.

How chargeback works
Chargeback claims should be addressed to your debit or credit card issuer, who in turn will put in a request to the merchant card providers bank.

The process for managing chargeback claims is determined by a set of rules from American Express, MasterCard or Visa.
There are no guarantees your issuer will be able to recover the money through chargeback.

Time limit
You should make a claim as soon as possible, as your card issuer usually needs to start the chargeback process within 120 days from when you made the transaction or when you were due to hire the motorhome.

Providing evidence
Your card issuer is required to provide evidence to the retailer’s bank to make a chargeback claim.
The evidence can be summarised in the form of a written letter or email from you or in a written form which the issuer fills in on your behalf following a discussion with you.
When you first contact your card issuer, you should provide the following information:

the name of the company you have paid money to (Unbeatablehire Limited)
the date you paid the money and how you paid it (over the phone or online)
a detailed description of the services you paid for (e.g. motorhome hire) and the hire collection date
what has gone wrong - the company has filed for administration
You should notify your card issuer of the insolvency practitioner (Antony Batty LLC)

Alongside the form, the issuer may need to provide other evidence, and they may contact you after your first discussion with them.

Chargeback is not a legal right, unlike Section 75.

Kind Regards

The companies house website confirms that Unbeatablehire LTD went into admin yesterday.  I'm assuming National Motorhomes was a trading name for unbeatable hire.  The National Motorhomes website is currently down.

As far as I'm concerned, this was booked with a credit card so I will be fine getting my refund, but just really wanted to alert anyone who thought that they had a motorhome booked when this may not now be the case, or anyone who did similar to me with regards to deposit.  I appreciate that administration is not the same as liquidation but this would concern me if I still had a booking intact rather than just waiting on a refund.

Don't want anyone else getting caught out by this, especially if they have not been communicating this to their customers.

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Thanks both.  I've since spoken to the credit card company and they are hopeful that they can arrange a refund for me, potentially up to another month for this when the original refund was requested back in November but I'm just extremely thankful that I'm not having to potentially source 2 motorhomes at this stage.

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I posted the other day in the 'Whats everyones accommodation choices' thread.

We had booked twice before with them and had no problems. What annoyed us was the lack of email to let us know.

We have one booked now but it has cost us £700 more than we had originally booked.

One piece of advice when booking is to contact the company before and ask them exactly where the collection is.

We had to cancel a booking as they wanted us to pick up/drop off to Leighton Buzzard (4 hour round trip extra) after the booking clearly stated a Gatwick airport pick up. Another one said London and it was actually in Edinboro'.

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1 hour ago, Brave Sir Robin said:

Interesting. They are/were also known as Motorholme. Hired from them a couple of times a few years back and they had a good range of vans, and as you say a refundable deposit, but were expensive and made the process really painful.

As opposed to the current lot who make it really easy? 🤪

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Sorry OP is having this hassle. Used them last year for End of The Road. Initially cheap - but then an endless stream of additional costs kept getting added. 
Then took until November to get the deposit back.

theres been plenty of advice on here over the years about being wary who you hire from. Wish I’d listened to them really..

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/8/2020 at 2:47 PM, Brave Sir Robin said:

Interesting. They are/were also known as Motorholme. Hired from them a couple of times a few years back and they had a good range of vans, and as you say a refundable deposit, but were expensive and made the process really painful.

I remember making an enquiry with them in 2011. I then did a little research and heard they were a company to avoid so went with a more local company but they have constantly sent e-mails ever since and a lot of them were quite aggressive. 

Hope nobody has lost any money to them. 

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26 minutes ago, gigpusher said:

I remember making an enquiry with them in 2011. I then did a little research and heard they were a company to avoid so went with a more local company but they have constantly sent e-mails ever since and a lot of them were quite aggressive. 

Hope nobody has lost any money to them. 

I seem to have unsubscribed from (or more likely auto-junked) the emails, but they were sending me the odd annoying text until recently.

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15 minutes ago, Brave Sir Robin said:

I seem to have unsubscribed from (or more likely auto-junked) the emails, but they were sending me the odd annoying text until recently.

Yes because they seemed on the scam artist side of things I never unsubscribed just sent it to junk mail but I check my junk mail occasionally and still used to see their e-mails. Not noticed them for a while though so maybe this will put an end to them. 

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