The Corner Suite: A PR Fiasco

Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Vancouverites,

I take to my blog because 140 characters on Twitter is not enough.

I'm sure that many of you are aware that The Corner Suite Bistro has abruptly closed their doors.

I recently purchased a gift certificate for the restaurant for my parents for Christmas. Upon hearing of their closure (and apparently full voice mail inbox), I decided to call Visa, to get them to remove the charge.

After speaking with Visa, and telling them that I heard the information via Twitter, I was told that in order to get the charge waived, we must attempt to contact them directly by whatever means - phone, email, Facebook, Twitter (the Visa guy actually said that - I laughed inside) to see if they will refund us the money.

If after a reasonable amount of time you do not hear back from The Corner Suite, contact Visa again and they will launch an investigation to have the charges removed.

Hope you are all able to get your money back!

7 comments:

Lisa said...

It was definitely abrupt and poorly handled, but having dealt with Visa disputes in the past, I have very little faith in Visa's ability to get anybody's money back. :(

Katherine said...

I hope you are able to get your money back. I'm quite sad about their closure. I was literally looking at their menu last night planning an upcoming visit.

Unknown said...

I've had good luck with refunds from Visa. Their refund policy is quite reasonable and you should qualify: the business you engaged with failed to deliver the service. If by chance your gift certificate is from a group-buy site (eg, GroupOn) they'll refund you.

Livie said...

wow brutal. i never visited the corner suite so it's no loss to me but I really hope you get your money back.

Melissa said...

The whole thing is so silly.

I really really hope you get your money back. I have the "owner's" email if you want it. I won a gift card through Karm and I was emailing the owner about trying to get it and it was honestly such a pain. I never ended up getting it.

If you want his email to get ahold of him let me know.

Melissa

Chris (@lyteforce) said...

I never made it to the Corner Suite - guess I never will. I do hope you get your money back though. A buddy of mine got me a $25 GC to a coffee shop just down the way for Christmas in '09, only to find that it went belly-up just before New Years Eve '09. He never got his money back from his CC and I didn't end up with any coffee.

Unknown said...

I purchased a gift certificate on the 20th of Dec, and presto, they go out of business. Unfortunately we purchased it with Debit so we have no means of getting our money back.

I don't doubt we're not the only who purchased gift certificates around Xmas time. Seems the perfect time to pull Bbankruptcy right after everyone gives you a bunch of cash.