Hotels.com: An Online Predator?
Don’t make a mistake booking with Hotels.com – it seems they like mistakes in their favor and according to the head of the customer service at the Texas corporate office it’s their current technology that ensures you can do almost nothing to rectify it.
On Monday I booked for two nights at a hotel in Staten Island. A short while later a friend invited me to stay for a night – the second night of my trip there. So I tried to use the online “change of itinerary” option but it led to a dead end. So I called the number provided and spoke with a non US citizen with an anglo name and he appeared helpful enough to alter the booking to a single night stay, and within the allowed window for making the change before 4pm. However at the critical moment of refunding the already paid amount for one night – he suggested I call back in an hour because the computer system wasn’t responding.
That was inconvenient for me since I was on the road for five hours immediately after that, traveling to Staten island from Boston. Today I have tried 5 times to call back and arrange the refund – and the first glitch was that the Comfort Inn operated off an unchanged hotels.com booking and despite the fact I checked out, handed in my keycard, left the room empty – the Comfort Inn told the hotels.com customer service agent that it has has no record of my checking out a day early.
So I asked the hotels.com operator to wait on the line while I called the Comfort Inn to get the manager there to speak with the person I spoke to on checking out.
But while talking with Comfort Inn by cell phone the hotels.com operator disappeared off the line and my landline phone started that hung up scream in my ear. The Comfort Inn manager seemed understanding (keep in mind his Inn stood to benefit from this situation – two nights for one) but he offered a cheap consolation: a free night for having stayed in two Comfort Inns within two weeks, but for a future booking. He reaffirmed that because I paid hotels.com direct he had no record I even checked out at all!
I called back four more times to hotels.com and it seems as if they flagged my booking confirmation number as trouble – since on each occasion I waited through the recorded music – (a recorded message strongly encourages the caller to hang up since they are unusually busy in spite of a wait time of a few minutes only each time) but the line went dead soon after the dial tone to an operator began.
Thus this post – hotels.com appeared to have stolen a nights accommodation from me and blocked every avenue of its recovery. It still appears to me that it might be their customer service policy – in the offshore office – because the behavior of misleading me was consistent from the moment the first operator said the system wasn’t responding, (no offer to call me back to complete the transaction), to the next two phone calls when an operator took the call but hung up on me before dealing with the issue. Remember I spoke with them on a landline – can’t blame cell phone drop out. The last three calls failed entirely. Seems like predatory behavior to me. So beware of hotels.com.
Post Script: Since I first posted this, I located and called the corporate office for hotels.com in Texas (belongs to Expedia.com) and after waiting 25 minutes for someone to pick up I was taken seriously by a kind woman who in the end refunded my credit card the money that I didn’t spend. For the principle of the thing it has cost me 5 hours on the phone. Buyer beware! I suggest ring the hotel direct next time – and that is what I will certainly do.
I hope you plan to dispute the charge with your credit card company.
I found and rang corporate headquarters in Texas – got outside the customer service line in El Salvador – and they are refunding me as I type – so there is justice – but it cost me 5 hours today.