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Does anybody know of a route to complain about an issue with hotels.com? We seem to have come to an impasse in an email attempt, with copy and paste replies from different agents, often about the wrong booking, being the only response received, and customer services simply saying to email in the details.
Briefly, we booked 2 nights at a hotel, cancellable up to 7 days before check-in. Instructions were to contact hotel 72hrs before arrival to confirm check in details. We contacted 96hrs before, hence 3 days after refund deadline, to be told that we had to arrive at 11am to connect with boat transfer to hotel, no other option available. We couldn’t make it by 11am so contacted hotels.com, who advised us to cancel booking to avoid a no show charge, which we did, and then they would ask hotel to refund. The hotel refused, saying was outside of 7 day refund limit.
We feel that the 11am deadline, which was not mentioned when booking, was an unusual and unfair restriction, and that knowing we couldn’t make that, we wouldn’t have booked that hotel had the restriction been notified when booking.
Very disappointed, having has excellent customer service from hotels.com in the past, but can’t seem to find anybody to actually do any more than send a generic ‘sorry but’ reply.I would do an booking with the hotel again (just to see if they inform you of the 11am deadline).
Then contact them to see if they inform you of it. They may as they did this time.
You can then contact your credit card provider and ask for a chargeback. They usually are quite good in these sort of cases.
If the credit card doesn’t play along you can raise to ombudsman. They tend to be very much by the t&c so if there was something missing or misleading.
Before going to your credit card company where you might not win, I would write to David McAughan, Head of Operations (damcaughan@expediagroup.com) at Hotels.com’s parent company. I think they will sort it out, as long as you are quite sure no information was given about the arrival time and there was genuinely no alternative.
Update…
after fearing for my sanity after a 13 message email trail, hotels have now refunded me the £30 odd on my card and my 2 free night vouchers. Very happy finally, though this experience has somewhat tarnished my previously high opinion of their customer service. Even though all the details were set out in the conversation, every response was from a different agent, and 3 times started referring to a completely different booking. Persistent rejection of their rejection seems to have been key, having been told 4 times absolutely nothing else could be done.
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