I recently signed up to receive GrabOne deals for NZ via e-mail. There appear to be some good offers, and I'm hoping to take advantage of some of them for an upcoming visit to NZ.

Just wondering if anyone has used the service and how things worked out.

I just saw this post Melnq, realise it is miles too late for your trip, but I have used the restaurant vouchers and find them a great deal.

I'm not familiar with this, how does it work?

Google Grab One New Zealand Ann. There are companies offering deals for restaurants, accommodation etc with quite a big discount. We have bought $ 50.00 restaurant vouchers for $ 25.00. It's similar to Groupon in the US.

nelsonian - that's what i did. quite a few accommodation offers [for places that get bad reviews on TA and booking.com] and for restaurants, but you have to pay up front, which I'm not that keen to do.

but I'll keep an eye on it as the trip gets closer to see if there's something that might be useful.

we don't have anything like Groupon in the UK, so far as I'm aware.

I ended up booking our Milford Cruise and a Lake Wakatipu cruise using GrabOne. As soon as I got the online voucher from GrabOne, I contacted the operator and made a booking. I'd normally wait to see what the weather was up to, but we were on a tight schedule, so it seemed to make sense to go ahead and book to take advantage of a lower price.

There was a minor glitch with the Lake Wakatipu cruise - when we turned up we were told the cruise had been cancelled and they'd been unable to contact us as I'd left no contact info. They pointed next door to another kiosk and told us a different boat was going out in about an hour, we rebooked on it at a slightly higher cost and then GrabOne refunded the price we paid for the original cruise. No drama.

For the Milford cruise we were to meet at the ferry terminal in Milford for the first cruise of the day. Unfortunately, the road was closed the day before and wasn't expected to open until noon the following day. I contacted the Milford operator and they were able to get us on the afternoon cruise and add the bus ride from Te Anau to Milford with just a phone call. Because we'd already booked the cruise with GrabOne, they were able to give us a similar deal on the bus ride with lunch.

GrabOne has some good offers and I was tempted by some of the restaurant deals, but I didn't want to tie us down quite that much and risk losing any payments if we had a change of plans.

being tied down worries me too, Melnq8.

i think it might be something we would consider on a 2nd or third trip!