Firstly many thanks to Admin for unlocking this thread, I'm grateful.
Megan
Firstly and foremost and whilst this may seem a little odd please accept my best wishes to you on your pregnancy. I hope it all goes well and wishing you all good health and happiness for the future.
After letting the dust settle on this I'll try my best to address some of the points you've raised, without going into minutia of it all again which I hope you'll understand:
Venue – What you've said matches what you told me at the time of our booking. From memory, you weren't happy with the first apartment you'd rented and consequently made a complaint, I believe that the apartment that our booking took place was a replacement that you were provided with.
Heat – I can confirm that the booking did take place during the wave at the start of June, more specifically the 9th June commencing at 16:00. I guess the temperature that day was 30c +.
With the benefit of hindsight which as they say is a wonderful thing, we probably both would have behaved differently, however this all water under the bridge now. Concerning your acute morning sickness, you have my every sympathy having watched my wife go through a very difficult pregnancy.
On reflection I should have been man enough to tell you how I felt at the time, for your part perhaps you could have given me a heads up that morning that you weren't feeling at the top of your game. You needn't have disclosed the reason why, I suppose you could have simply said something along the lines of I'm not feeling 100% today and don't want this to impact upon our time together, offering alternatives such as re-scheduling, cancelling or letting me proceed but armed with this information. At least in this hypothetical scenario if I'd still gone ahead I would have far less, if any cause for complaint.
Trying to put myself in your shoes, I admit that this is a double edged sword for you because you would probably be concerned that I might drop a negative on you for cancelling a confirmed booking. However if you'd contacted me first thing, it would have given most of the day to make alternative arrangements which I could have easily have achieved via a London Agency for example. I'd like to think that I have quite a forgiving nature as I'm far from perfect, and I can assure you I wouldn't have neg'd you in this scenario but I guess you'll have to take me at my word. Playing Devil's advocate even if I did write up a negative if I'd cancelled, I've no idea which if either is worse, i.e. is it more preferable to have a negative for a cancellation or for a sub-par booking? For me, I'd hazard a guess that it would be the former but I don't know as I'm not an SP. Anyway this is all a moot point.
For the record and because I think someone queried if I was aware that you were pregnant, I wasn't, nor was this disclosed to me either preceding or during the booking.
So dealing with your two kind offers of restitution which I'm happy to take at face value:
Offer of a free 1 hour booking – Respectfully and please don't take this the wrong way but I just don't think that this would be very sensible under the circumstances and I hope that you'll respect my position. Personally I have no desire to attend a booking with any SP who's pregnant and irrespective of this, I don't suppose that either of us would be comfortable meeting again. I've moved on and hold no ill feeling about what happened and would prefer to draw a line under this.
Offer of a partial refund –I'll leave this entirely at your discretion and conscious but if you feel that any sort of refund is due, can I politely suggest that you make a donation to a well-recognised charity of your choosing in a sum that you think reasonable, please remember to gift aid the donation if you're able to. Forgive what follows as it’s a little impertinent but to avoid there being any doubt about the genuine nature of your intentions, dare I suggest that you obtain some form of receipt and to somehow try and post it on the thread for one and all to see? Perhaps email this evidence to Admin and see if he would be kind enough to do this for you. Sorry for the additional work load Admin!
Booking length – We're both adults and in the spirit of trying to deal with this in a positive and constructive manner I'll take what you've said as a genuine query. You appear to question why anyone would book an SP that they've never met before for an extended booking. I do understand that on its face this might seem strange and whilst I don't feel that I should have to justify my choice, particularly as you were happy to accept this request unconditionally, personally it comes down to the fact that I'm usually a one pop guy and I've found over the years that I tend to need 2 hours to get this done. Sorry if this goes against the grain but that's just the way I am I'm afraid.
All the very best for the future.
