Boasting up to 67% off the normal green fees when compared to booking directly with the course, from the outside ‘TeeOffTimes.co.uk’ seems like a great services for golfers up and down the country, but not all is as it seems. Read on to hear my experience
TeeOffTimes App
I’ve been banging onto my golfing friends about how good the TeeOffTimes app is – Give it your location, tell it when you want to play and bingo, it produces a list of courses in your area, complete with discounts ranging from 10% to 67%. Pretty nifty. So I decided to put my money where my mouth is and register with the company and book a tee time for one of my local courses using the app instead of ringing them directly like I would do normally. The booking went through without a glitch and everything seemed great.
Teeing Off
Upon arriving at the course (Mersey Valley Golf Club) the club shop had no record of our tee reservation. To make matters worse the TeeOffTimes app said I saved 32% by making the booking, when in fact the tee time was during the courses twilight hours meaning I had paid 33% more by booking via the TeeOffTimes app. False advertising is an understatement.
When consulting the course staff about the confusion and overpayment they explained that TeeOffTimes were very difficult to work with. They make little attempt to contact the course when a booking is made and aparently the system for the clubs to claim the green fees back is very slow and convoluted.
Being a small business owner and a decent human being, I am always reluctant to use any app or offer if it means that the business at the end of the line is losing money or being unfairly treated. In my opinion golf should be a accessible and sustainable sport for everyone involved, including clubs and players.
Contacting TeeOffTimes
I attempted to contact the TeeOffTimes admin to explain my predicament and offer them chance to rectify the situation.
My email was sent on 3rd November and I am yet to receive any form of acknowledgement or reply.
UPDATE! See the bottom of this post for more info…
In Conclusion
The app is a great tool for finding courses when you are in unfamiliar areas, but the process of booking seems a bit flawed due to breakdowns in communication.
A quick google shows there are plenty of other tee reservation sites out there. One suggestion recommended in another disgruntled TeeOffTimes user review is: http://www.teetimes.co.uk/.
If you have any experiences, good or bad, with similar service providers, please feel free to leave your comments below.
UPDATE
Since publishing this post I”ve received a phone call from a TeeOffTimes rep, explaining their stance on the situation. Apparently the club had failed to let TeeOffTimes know that they had an offer was in place, hence the apparent inflation of the app’s green fees. Fair enough I guess.
The rep also went on to explain that it was the clubs fault that they had failed to register my tee time booking as their system is fully automated, so the club will have been informed about my reservation but for some reasons they have not managed to put my booking into their tee reservation system. Either way, it seems that the TeeOffTimes system requires all parties to be on the same page, which clearly wasn’t happening in my case.
…Maybe I will purchase another tee time using the same app with a different golf club and see how that one pans out.