RESOLVED
Toronto, September 5, 2002
To Whom It May Concern,
The purpose of this memo is to formally place a complaint about
one of your members for false advertising and misrepresentation,
should this directed to a few other places as well, please let
me know.
The member in question is La Conciergerie.com. It displays
their association with ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents)
quite prominently giving customers like me confidence that this
is a legitimate site where claims must be trusted.
I visited their site and bought 4 tickets to the Moulin Rouge
in Paris for my family vacation. The site was making the claim
that it had the best prices on the Internet (in bold letters).
This claim was unqualified e.g. not accompanied by any explanation
or disclaimers. Since then I found the site www.moulinrouge.fr
which offers substantially lower prices. la Conciergerie was $165
US for each ticket labeled Cancan Dinner and Show while the other
site is 125 Euros for the exact same thing.
As you may expect, my first reaction was to write to La Conciergerie
asking for a refund for the difference to honor their claim of
best prices. Their reply was unsatisfactory to me giving all the
details on why they needed to make a huge profit margin, quite
self-centered. I replied back that this was not satisfactory and
if the claim was best service then they should not say 'best prices'
but 'best service'. They proceeded to change their site, which
now reads 'best service'. Unfortunately for me and many others,
we have been had by false advertising. Can you please help me.
I have written to ASTA and intend to find other appropriate places
in the U.K. which deal with such issues as misrepresentation,
false advertising and other fraudulent approaches.
Jean Noelting
We note Mr Noelting writes, that the company has changed the entry
on its website. So they do appear to respond to consumer comment
and opinion.But there remains the issue of a refund for the excess
that Mr Noelting paid.
Conciergerie should complete the process of correction by issuing
a refund of the excess.
update on 16 September 2002
" Since I wrote you my e-mail,
I have continued to correspond with La Conciergerie and we have
reached a settlement.
In the future they will qualify their claim so that this does not
happen again. Thank you...Jean Noelting"
