Montpellier are *******!

We booked Montpellier de Tulbagh for our wedding in late November 2019 and immediately paid a R10 000.00 deposit (non refundable) to secure the venue (at the time we had no idea blanket ‘no refund’ policies weren’t legal or Consumer Protection Act compliant).

In the New Year, we began wedding planning with the venue and found the service delivery to be less than stellar (two weeks to receive a response to emails, not answering phone calls, rude staff etc), we also found the venue came with many hidden costs. There were terrible reviews online regarding the accommodation on the farm (the accommodation we had been shown was in the manor house and we had been told the accommodation all had the same standard of style and cleanliness). All of our guests would be compelled to spend the weekend here (as per Montpellier de Tulbagh). This, coupled with the global covid-19 outbreak led us to cancel the service agreement with Montpellier de Tulbagh in writing (with MORE than nine months notice).

The response we received from Montpellier de Tulbagh was that there will be no refund.

Now, armed with the knowledge that blanket No-Refund policies were not CPA compliant, we drafted a letter stating this to them – to make Montpellier de Tulbagh aware that their actions were not legal and that we had recourse for legal action – however, they were not interested. They responded by saying that if we tried to seek any legal counsel or put any reviews online they would sue us for Crimen Injuria and that any further contact would need to be through their attorney.

Following this, we tried to make contact with their attorney, Henriette Pretorius, numerous times through email (as instructed), however, we never once received a response - we also tried calling numerous times and were never able to reach their attorney (who shared a landline with the local coffee shop). On one occasion we managed to get through to their attorney who rudely shouted, “...you are not my client and I have nothing to say to you.”, before slamming the phone down on us.

During all of this, Montpellier de Tulbagh were able to secure a new booking for our intended wedding date and therefore incurred no loss at all, they in fact gained R10 000 for absolutely nothing! Still at this point, they were refusing to refund us.

We knew that further attempts at communication would prove futile so we sought out the assistance of the NCC and Tourism Ombud, however, that exercise yielded nothing. We then decided to take Montpellier de Tulbagh to the Small Claims Court. In Small Claims Court, we were successful and had our judgment granted, Montpellier de Tulbagh was then advised to pay us the deposit amount of R10 000, plus interest and costs incurred.

To this day, we are still waiting for the payment and have made so many attempts to communicate with Montpellier de Tulbagh, which have been ignored. We are being ignored because the owner/s of Montpellier de Tulbagh clearly think they are above the law and can do exactly as they please. We would like to warn all couples looking for a wedding venue to look carefully and make sure they are not being duped by the ************ owner/s of Montpellier de Tulbagh. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!