overbooking-recovery

---
name: overbooking-recovery
description: Works out what you actually owe a guest whose booking you cannot honour, using the same reasonable care and skill test and remedy ladder the Consumer Rights Act 2015 applies to any other service, rather than treating a double-booked table as a goodwill-only problem with no floor under it. It also screens for a disability angle, since turning away a guest who needs a specific accessible table is a different duty. Use the moment a confirmed booking cannot be honoured as booked.
---

# The table you don't have, without breaking the booking you promised

Taking a booking is itself a service. Treats "we can't seat you as booked" the same way the law treats any service shortfall, with one extra check for a disability-linked need.

## What it does

1. **Tests whether taking and holding the booking was performed with reasonable care and skill.** Section 49(1) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats a confirmed booking as a service the venue agreed to perform. A kitchen running late differs from a booking system that double-allocated the same table.
2. **Offers to perform the booking after all, first.** Section 55(1): repeat performance requires the trader "to perform the service again... in conformity with the contract," within "a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience" under section 55(2)(a). For a booking, that means seating the party shortly after, or on another date, offered before anything else.
3. **Moves to price reduction only where repeat performance fails.** Section 55(3): impossible once the party has left to eat elsewhere. Section 56(3)(b) reaches the same outcome where a repeat offer itself breached the reasonable-time rule. Section 56(1)-(2) allow the reduction to be "the full amount" already paid.
4. **Screens for a disability-linked reason the table mattered.** Section 20(3) of the Equality Act 2010 requires "such steps as it is reasonable to have to take" to avoid a substantial disadvantage. A table lost for step-free access or a hearing loop is not interchangeable, and routes to accessibility-request-handling rather than a generic remedy here.
5. **Records what was offered and accepted.** A repeated pattern across a venue is itself evidence of a reasonable-care-and-skill problem worth fixing at the source.

## Then it checks

1. Every incident records whether a seating offer was made before any price reduction was discussed.
2. Any impossibility or breach reason is recorded, not assumed.
3. Any disability-linked table loss is flagged and routed, not resolved here.
4. Any refund follows the same 14-day, same-method, no-fee rules as any other refund.
5. The log distinguishes a one-off delay from a booking-allocation failure.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only. Never invent a fact, a number or a quote. Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never treat an overbooking as pure goodwill with no floor; test it against the reasonable care and skill standard first.
- Never resolve a disability-linked table loss here; route it onward.
- Never apply a refund fee or pay outside the 14-day window.
- A working decision and incident record for the owner or manager to apply; not legal advice.

## Built from
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, ss.49, 55 and 56, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/49 (and /55, /56), read 4 Nov 2026: steps 1 to 3.
- Equality Act 2010, section 20, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/20, read 4 Nov 2026: step 4.

# overbooking-recovery

## You are given
A booking record: booking date and time, party size, any stated accessibility requirement at the time of booking, and what happened (double-allocated table, kitchen delay beyond a stated window, or other named cause). Claude's decision already made: whether a repeat-performance offer was possible, what was offered, whether it was accepted, and whether a price reduction applies and its amount. Whether the lost table was linked to a disability need the guest had stated.

## Produce
Write into a `./overbooking-recovery-output/` folder:

1. `incidents.csv` with columns: `incident_id`, `booking_date`, `booking_time`, `party_size`, `cause`, `accessibility_need_stated`, `repeat_performance_offered`, `repeat_performance_detail`, `repeat_performance_accepted`, `price_reduction_amount`, `refund_deadline_date`, `refund_method`, `routed_to_accessibility_skill`. `cause` is exactly one of `double_allocation`, `kitchen_delay`, `staffing`, `other`. `accessibility_need_stated` and `repeat_performance_offered`, `repeat_performance_accepted`, `routed_to_accessibility_skill` are each `yes` or `no`. `refund_deadline_date` is the agreement date plus 14 days, calculated, never estimated.
2. `remedy-ladder-check.csv` with columns: `incident_id`, `repeat_performance_attempted_first`, `impossibility_or_breach_reason`, `verdict`. `verdict` is `pass` or `price reduction used without recorded reason`.
3. `pattern-report.csv` with columns: `month`, `total_incidents`, `double_allocation_count`, `kitchen_delay_count`, `staffing_count`, `other_count`, `repeat_count_last_3_months`. Counted from `incidents.csv`, never estimated.
4. `gaps.md` - a numbered list of: any incident with `accessibility_need_stated` as `yes` and `routed_to_accessibility_skill` as `no`; any price reduction applied with no recorded reason in `remedy-ladder-check.csv`; any refund missing its 14-day deadline date; any refund method not matching the original payment with no written guest agreement recorded; and any month where `double_allocation_count` exceeds two, flagged as a possible booking-system fault worth investigating.

## Rules
- Codex calculates deadlines, counts incidents, and cross-checks the remedy ladder. It never decides whether an accessibility need existed, never sets a price reduction amount, and never drafts anything to send to the guest.
- Any incident with a stated accessibility need is always flagged for `accessibility-request-handling`, regardless of what remedy was otherwise offered here.
- Never apply a fee to a refund, and never set a refund deadline beyond the agreement date plus 14 calendar days.
- Pattern counts are exact tallies from the incident log, never estimates or rounded figures.
- Use British English, GBP and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working decision and incident record prepared for the owner or manager to apply; it is not legal advice.

## Return
The absolute path of each file written and the row count of each CSV. The number of incidents by cause. The number where repeat performance was offered and accepted, offered and refused, or not possible, with the reason recorded for each. The number of accessibility-linked incidents and whether each was routed correctly. The current month's incident count against the prior three months. The `gaps.md` item count, stated in full.