I booked the spa escape at the City Riverside branch for a friend and I as a christmas present through lastminute.com. As promised on the website, the vouchers were emailed to us within 48 hours, and once i had them i tried to make an appointment. The lastminute description did explain that you might have to wait up to 8 weeks for weekend appointments, which i thought would be fine as my friends birthday was in early march.

I was given a password and logon for the internet booking system which seemed at first to be working fine. It was even showing appts available for a weekend in feb which i thought was great. However whenever i tried to actually secure the booking an error message appeared, so i had to call customer services.

When i (finally) got through to them i was told that as I had a voucher the Feb dates were not available to me!? The next available appointments we could have were for JUNE 26, 23 WEEKS AWAY! And, i was advised to book them that minute as they would be gone on the next call she took!

I explained that had i known the waiting time for an appointment would be so long i never would have bought the vouchers, and asked for a refund, which she agreed to do. That was a week ago and i still haven't received the promised confirmation email, with refund details on, nor has my card been refunded. I'm hoping if i give it another week they will get it sorted out, however i fear i may end up spending my lunch hours trying to get through to them!

My advice to anyone reading this....DO NOT BOOK VOUCHERS FOR THIS SPA GROUP. The appt availability is attrocious and the customer service is not much better. They should not be selling these vouchers through agents as they clearly cannot cope with demand, or perhaps more likely, it is not cost effective for them to make this offer, which is why even though appts were available sooner, i would have to wait until June