Hi Carol, We are sorry that this situation has resulted in you having such a negative view of our business. I apologise that you feel that we have not shown any empathy towards your situation and did not listen to what you were saying. While on the phone we apologised frequently that this was a our company policy, as the only information we had been given was that you had received it in march and you felt that the extension fee was unfair due to your colleagues having purchased the voucher as a gift in early December 2018. Meaning that it was now three months out of date but you had not known the purchase date meaning that the 12 month validity period in your eyes must have run from March, as you would not have seen the terms and conditions that your ex-colleagues would have seen when purchasing. To which we agreed was understandable that there was some confusion around this and this was not your fault so to speak but unfortunately this is our company policy that had been created by the owner a number of years ago (the person you spoke to never stated that they were the owner). Your response to this was to contact trading standards. It wasn't until ten minutes into the conversation that you had disclosed to us that you had delayed your redemption of the voucher due to personal circumstances affecting the second attendee. Once this had been pointed out I frequently tried to explain that this of course would mean that we would extend the voucher for you free of charge, but you had unfortunately become increasingly irate throughout the conversation and so kept shouting over us while we tried to explain this to you. We frequently asked you to kindly lower your voice and to remain calm so that we could put this point across to you and offer this service free of charge but unfortunately this was to no avail. We did end the call as the situation was not being dealt with rationally and regardless of the situation we felt there was no need for you to be aggressive or raising your voice to us over the phone. We had taken down your phone number and planned to call you later this afternoon, once you had been given the opportunity to calm down so that we could explain that we wanted to extend you voucher free of charge due to the circumstances your fellow attendee had been dealing with over the past year. Once again we apologise that you felt that we came across as inflexible and unable to listen and showed no signs of empathy. This is not something we have ever been criticised of and we hope that our comments above show that we were in fact trying to listen and be flexible with your request to extend your voucher.