It is undoubtedly true that booking DIY holidays has become much, much easier in recent years, thanks in no small part to the online platform booking.com. But while it can easily put accommodation providers in touch with those seeking accommodation, things can go wrong and when they do, it can be hard to have them put right.
We have three different stories from readers that illustrate that point.
Last November, Emer booked an apartment in Liverpool for three days in the middle of July, with the payment taken on November 11th.
When Emer arrived in Liverpool on July 14th she was less than happy to be told by the company that managed the property in question that it had been withdrawn from short-term rentals and that booking.com had been told this last February.
RM Block
Emer and her travelling party had to book another property at very short notice, also through booking.com. She says the additional cost over the original booking was £276 (€323).
Emer contacted booking.com’s customer care team almost immediately to say she was “very disappointed in the lack of customer service shown” to her.
There followed a series of discussions with the company and its representatives.
“This is absolutely not the experience we want for you,” she was told. “We have investigated the matter and confirmed that the property is no longer accepting reservations on our platform. To ensure you are fully supported, we have already cancelled your reservation free of charge and processed a full refund back to your original payment method.”
She was told the refund would take up to 12 days to process and that booking.com had been in touch with her original accommodation. “If you’ve had any extra costs, please send us the invoice for your new accommodation after your stay, and we’ll do our best to assist you.”
Emer got back to them to say the new accommodation she booked had cost £625.49 and she asked for a refund of the difference.
She says the booking fee for the original apartment was quickly refunded to her credit card with the balance added to her booking.com wallet.
She pointed out to them that she had no future trips planned and, as a pensioner, the “out of pocket amount of £275.71 is significant to me” and she asked for a refund.
She was told that was impossible.
We then heard from another reader who recently went on his honeymoon to South Korea, staying a week in Seoul and a week in Busan.
“My wife takes her holiday planning very seriously and after a great deal of research she picked a particular luxury hotel in Busan for our second week,” he says. “As she is a long-time Genius member of booking.com she availed of a ‘partner deal’ for our stay in the Busan hotel which meant we booked a standard room for the week for around €1,000, which was within our budget.”
While the couple were in Seoul they decided to amend their booking for the second week in Busan in order to spend their last night back in Seoul, to make travel to the airport easier.
“This is where the problem began,” our reader says ominously.
“After contacting booking.com and asking them to cancel only the last night on the Busan reservation, they (by their own admission) incorrectly cancelled the entire booking rather than just the single last night, despite our email to them being very clear,” he says.
“To add insult to injury, the hotel almost immediately became fully booked apart from one executive suite. This led to hours of phone calls trying to remedy the issue only days before our planned stay and eventually booking.com agreed to pay for the difference in cost if we were to book the only available room in the same hotel, ie the executive suite. The other issue was that most of the nearby hotels of a similar standard were also fully booked and the Grand Josun was something of a dream stay for my wife so our alternative options were limited.”
He stresses that they were very clear in phone conversations and in writing that the only room left was the significantly more expensive suite, €4,000 for the week, and booking.com confirmed in writing that should they book and pay for that room they would refund them the difference from the original booking.
“We were naturally cautious about such a guarantee so we made sure to ask what documentation they would need from us in terms of invoices, proof of payment etc, as the difference in cost was €2,700, significantly over budget for us so we wanted to pre-empt any potential problems after the fact. Having received their guarantees and been informed by them that we would simply need an invoice that had the price and ‘paid in full’ on it, we proceeded with this plan.”
The couple had an “amazing stay” and paid the bill and checked out with the hotel providing the necessary documentation.
“But immediately booking.com began throwing up obstacles to reimbursement. Naturally the price was in the local currency, the Korean won (KRW), and booking.com said that only a price listed in euro or dollars was acceptable, something they had not mentioned previously,” he says.
“After a phone call where we explained the illogical nature of asking a hotel to draw up an invoice in a foreign currency, booking.com agreed to accept the invoice in KRW along with evidence of payment from our Revolut account of the equivalent amount in euro.”
He says that was two months ago “and we have neither been reimbursed nor have we had any contact from booking.com that we did not initiate”.
He points out that he and his wife have spent around four hours on the phone to the company “most of it on hold, where call centre staff tell us that they will escalate the issue to the relevant team, and regularly hang up on us while we are on hold. We have never been able to get past the initial call taker.
“During today’s call we finally discovered that the issue has been escalated to ‘the partner team’ as the initial reservation was under a ‘partner deal’. However, since the reservation we made after the cancellation was not a partner deal we wonder if our case is in limbo now, since it shares a booking number with the original reservation but was functionally a new reservation.”
He says that “having just paid for a wedding and now trying to save for a deposit for a house, the loss of this lump sum is not trivial for us and since it was paid for by credit card it has accumulated interest”.
Finally, we heard from Maria, who warned us that we “might need to buckle up, as it’s a long one”.
She booked a house in Suffolk for seven people. “We need a minimum of four bedrooms and our booking was from Sunday, June 1st, to Wednesday, June 24th and the charge was £519, which I paid in full on booking.”
Three weeks before they were due to travel, Maria got an email notification from booking.com to say the accommodation was no longer available.
“I was promised a refund within 14 days. I was also offered two alternatives, one in South Yorkshire and the other in Coventry (not quite in the same area). And was told that booking.com would cover the difference in charges if we chose one of these. I rang the company as neither of the options were suitable for me and we needed to find something suitable quite quickly,” she says.
“They then found me a detached 4-bed house in Suffolk which looked perfect. The cost for that was £1,237.20 – quite a difference in price from our original booking. They again promised that they would refund the difference in travel credits as the mistake was theirs. Based on that, I booked the new place.”
When they arrived at the accommodation and rang the number on the booking they were horrified to discover that the house was not listed for holiday lettings and was in fact a private residence.
She rang booking.com immediately and spent around 90 minutes on the call hoping to find a second alternative booking.
“At some point the owners did turn up to find a strange car and occupants sitting in their driveway. That was embarrassing,” she says.
“After quite a long time and many telephone conversations, I was once again told by booking.com that they had found another place for us to stay. It was about half an hour away and the cost this time was £2,090.70, which was quite an increase from our very first booking,” she says.
“During this time, I asked booking.com to check that this property was indeed available as my trust levels were falling quickly. They ended our call and called me back a few minutes later to confirm that this property was indeed available. So not really having a choice, I paid £2,090.70 for this, the third booking, and was told that I would be refunded the difference with my original booking.”
Around five minutes later they received a call they could scarcely believe. It was from the owner of the property they were heading to.
“He told me that his property was not available. Booking.com hadn’t called him that afternoon to check before I booked it. Once again (and it was about 4.30pm at this point) we had nowhere to go and I was over £2k down in my bank account,” she says.
“So we pulled into a pub car park as everyone needed to rehydrate and rang booking.com again. They then found us four rooms in a hotel not too far away, thankfully. Again, I asked them to check and double check that the rooms were available. The reassured me that they were.”
She also rang the hotel to confirm.
“So off we went again and ended up spending three nights in a hotel at a cost of £1,296. In addition to the accommodation, as we weren’t in a self-catering place which we would have preferred and had originally booked, we spent another £304 on two breakfasts and one dinner which we would have made ourselves for much less.”
Almost five weeks “and a ton of emails later, booking.com has not done what they promised”.
“I have had to push and negotiate for a refund of the difference. I really needed a refund into my account, which at one point they agreed to. I sent bank details but then they changed their minds and went back to offering travel credits. As you can imagine, it’s hard for me to trust booking.com and I don’t really want travel credits.”
She says she has been offered three amounts, all in euro, which doesn’t equate to the difference in spend. “They haven’t offered any compensation for “the afternoon lost, the frustration and the stress, the cost of the many telephone calls, which I’ve also pointed out to them.”
“I’m hoping you might be in a position to advise on what to do next, if anything. Should I ‘quieten down’ and be happy with the credits we’ve been offered or do I have any other options?”
We contacted booking.com and received the following statement.
“We were sorry to hear about the experiences of these customers. When a hotel, apartment or other type of accommodation chooses to list on booking.com, they must agree to our terms and conditions, which include keeping their room availability up to date.
“If an accommodation can no longer host guests, or ceases to operate, we provide clear guidance and processes to ensure they can easily close reservations on our platform, which enables guests to be informed in advance of any stay.”
The statement said that while situations like these are rare, “we recognise the disruption they can cause, and we can confirm that our customer service team will review each case and update the customers as needed”.
With regard to the second story – about the honeymooning couple in Korea – we were told the “customer will receive a refund”.
