It is with regret that Boat Brae announced its immediate closure on the 19th of February 2024. Since opening our doors in July 2019, we have seen some wonderful successes and created some wonderful dining experiences. We would like to sincerely thank the staff who, over the years, have shown their dedication and hard work at Boat Brae. We would also like to thank the numerous guests who showed such appreciation for the food, location and team – in particular we would like to thank our regulars, who loyally visited us, making it become a fun, local hub. We would like to wish you all the best for the future.

 

GIFT VOUCHER SITUATION

When we closed on the 19th February, we set an anticipated period of three weeks (21 days) in which to refund valid vouchers. It always was and remains to be our intention of repaying all valid vouchers to the initial buyer but unfortunately, we have encountered a large technical issue outside of our control which we are trying our best to resolve. We sincerely apologise for this inconvenience and kindly ask for your patience in letting us deal with this ordeal.  Please find updates on the situation below, with the most recent at the top. 

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Gift voucher update, 17.04.2024:

Our Stripe account finally managed to link with our bank account in order to access funds and fulfil refunds. While the majority have now been paid, some refunds had been cancelled throughout this situation and we are now we are making our way through over 300 customers to work out who has and who has not been paid. As before, the situation remains that Boat Brae intends to pay back all remaining valid vouchers. Once again, thank you for your patience.

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Gift voucher update, 01.04.2024:
We have been following Stripe’s advice given per email over the last week and a half and none of the suggestions have brought us forward. We have responded again and now await more information.

 

Gift voucher update, 22.3.2024:

On 4th of March 2024 we took advice from our voucher provider on how to refund vouchers directly via our online voucher account. This seemed the simplest and most efficient way to refund the vouchers as we would not need to request bank details and it would occur as a direct refund via the payment provider that had been used at the point of purchase, Stripe.
 

We proceeded to refund half of valid vouchers on that day, 4th of March. This generated an automated email from the voucher provider to the email address of the original buyer stating the refund would appear within 3 – 5 working days.
 

We then refunded the remainder of the voucher in the same manner on the 8th of March 2024. Again, the automated notification email was generated. This was 18 days after our closure and as such within the 21 days we had said we would be in touch regarding valid vouchers.
 

As mentioned above, in order to allow customers to buy vouchers, the voucher provider links to a payment provider which in turn links to our bank account. In this case, the payment provider used is Stripe. As Stripe and our bank account were linked, we believed Stripe would automatically take the necessary funds from the bank account in order to fulfil the refunds.
 

When logging in to our Stripe account on 13th March, however, our Stripe balance was in the minus and only a handful of refunds had been fulfilled, with the remainder listed as pending. 

 

We immediately initiated a support call from Stripe (that was on 13th March) and we were called back on the same day.
 

Upon asking why Stripe had not debited money from the linked bank account in order to fulfil the refunds we were assured that Stripe would be debiting the money from our linked account on the 15th of March and the refunds would then be fulfilled.
 

In order to speed up the situation, we even manually added some funds to the Stripe account so some refunds could be fulfilled. We were assured on the phone call that this incoming fund could be seen on their end. 

 

When we logged in again on Monday 18th of March:

1. Still no funds had been debited from our bank account 

2. The manually added funds had still not arrived in the account

We then initiated an online chat with Stripe (also on 18th March) in which we explained that Stripe is neither debiting funds from our bank account nor letting us add funds. The person on the chat was unable to help and escalated the situation to a specialist team.
 

Since Monday we have had various emails from Stripe specialists who are looking into a) why Stripe has not debited the money directly and b) why we cannot simply add funds manually to our Stripe account in order to allow the refunds to be completed. We have provided all details requested by Stripe and we are now waiting to find out what the problem is and how it will be resolved.
 

We apologise for the inconvenience this situation may have caused. As we are now waiting for more information from Stripe, we cannot say when this situation will be resolved but please be assured that a) we are trying our best to get things sorted out as soon as possible and b) all valid vouchers will be refunded as initially announced.

We aim to keep all those who are impacted updated on a regular basis. All further updates will be provided here on the website only so please continue to check it regularly to ensure you don’t miss further updates.

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