Wipeout NZ
Wipeout NZ, operated by Waterworld Limited, was one of the most disappointing customer service experiences I have ever had.
On 31 May, I booked and paid for a session on 6 July to celebrate my son's birthday. I received confirmation of the booking by both email and SMS, so naturally I believed everything was organised.
On the morning of 6 July, we called the Auckland swimming pool where Wipe Out was due to hold the event. We simply wanted to ask whether we could bring candles for the birthday cake.
To our complete surprise, the pool administrator informed us that Wipe Out was not running any events that day because the session had been moved to mid-July.
I honestly thought it was a joke.
I had a confirmed booking, I had paid for the event, and I had received no email, text message, or phone call advising that it had been cancelled or rescheduled. We called swimming pool again, but received exactly the same information. I went online and checked Wipeout website. The swimming pool administrator was correct.
Finding this out on the day of my son's birthday was incredibly upsetting.
Wipe Out does not provide a phone number for customers, so I had no option but to send a message instead. I immediately started searching for another venue while contacting all of our guests to tell them that, within the next hour, the birthday party would be taking place somewhere completely different.
The entire situation was extremely stressful and could have been avoided with a simple email or text message from Wipe out prior to the event.
Afterwards, I discovered that Kelvin William Travers is the director of Waterworld Limited. Initially, I assumed he might not have been aware of what had happened. Given the disruption to my son's birthday celebration, I expected at least an apology, an explanation and some acknowledgement of the inconvenience caused.
I therefore sent a signature-required letter to the director's registered address at 118 College Place, Poike, Tauranga 3112. The letter was personally signed for on delivery.
I never received any response from Kelvin Travers. There was no apology, no explanation and no acknowledgement of the disappointment caused to my family and our guests.
While trying to understand how a business could treat its customers this way, I researched the director's business history using publicly available records and liquidators' reports.
I found that Mr Travers has previously been a director of a number of companies that later entered liquidation, including:
• Gravity Trampoline Limited, where the liquidators reported that the company's bank account was overdrawn by approximately NZ$85,000, with creditor claims including approximately NZ$122,688.58 owed to Inland Revenue only.
• Department of Adventure Limited, which entered liquidation with unpaid Inland Revenue liabilities reported by the liquidators.
• Marine Equipment Limited, which also entered liquidation with unpaid Inland Revenue obligations reported.
Mr Travers has been a director of numerous companies over the years, with only Waterworld Limited (trading as Wipe Out) and College Place Holdings Limited currently remaining active.
Fortunately, I did receive a refund for my cancelled booking. However, the complete lack of communication before the cancellation, followed by the complete lack of response after I formally raised my concerns, left me with no confidence in how this business is managed.
As for Wipe Out, my advice is simple: do not rely solely on your booking confirmation. Have a plan B to avoid stressful situation. Kelvin Travers does not even acknowledge wrongdoings after receiving a letter with complaint. Seeing multiple liquidations and serious issues reported by the liquidators, raised serious concerns for me about the way these businesses were managed.