National Minibus Hire reviews and complaints

I was quoted the sum of £440 which was £130 deposit and then the rest to be paid to the driver on the day. The day before I had an e-mail advising that the driver required an additional £50 due to the mileage he was doing and that £50 was going to be refunded to my account. Due to the short notice and the fact that I had 14 people travelling I agreed to pay the additional money and await the refund. That was on the 7th Nov and I am still waiting. I have had the excuse that the manager has to sign off all refunds and had a personal crisis that meant he was not in work. He was due to return on the 17th Nov and I was assured he would sign it off then. I am still waiting!

Hi All,
I planned to travel to UK from Macao SAR, China and to spend the Christmas in York with my family and my old parents. I booked at early October a 8 seater from National Minibus Hire to transfer us back to London on 26th Dec. The cost shown on their website was just £355.27 and I was assured by a lady in their calling centre that there would not be any additional cost incurred because of the boxing day. However, a guy from the company told me over the phone a few hours later that they had to raise the price to £430 as the boxing day is a public holiday in UK ! I did not reject this unreasonable offer as I would like my old parents to have a comfortable journey although the change is absolutely unreasonable to me!

Then, on 23rd Oct, I asked for a cancellation and a full refund from them as we decided to cancel the trip to York. The reason is that as according to the doctor, the physical condition of my father is not yet absolute stable after undergoing a percutaneous coronary intervention even though the operation had been taken 8 months ago, and the doctor advised him not to take the long-haul (13 hours) flight to UK and not to stay at UK as the cold weather there might cause his coronary arteries sudden and strong contraction, which might in turn cause heart attack! Therefore, my parent decided to cancel their trip to UK. I told this story to National Minibus Hire and asked them to consider our case as a special one but they said that "Sorry we can not cancel now, as social drivers are put in place for holidays. there will be 50 percent charge.if you would like to cancel as the drivers are booked " according to their T&C.

"Cash and cheques are Accepted -50% charge is on all cancellations but non refundable within 48 hour!" What is not refundable? 50% charge? Cash? Cheques? What is the subject of the sentence? "48 hour" should be changed to "48 hours" . Is this sentence grammatically correct? Is it a lawfully valid T&C?

I strongly believe that National Minibus Hire is not as understandable and merciful as Cathay Pacific airline, the world's 19th largest airline and Cross Country as the latter have done a full refund for us for the reason stated above together with a medical letter even though their tickets were clearly said to be 100% not refundable when booked. In fact, National Minibus Hire even did not ask for any medical proof from me! What they really care is money!

Another complaint is about the bill, the amount shown on the bill is £355.27, not £430! So, how could they make the extra £80 become taxable to the UK government?

Nathan