Complain about a product or service

travelnow.com

Thomas of Hillsborough NJ (04/05/08)
I made a car reservation in Germany through this company, travelnow.com. I was given total estimated charges of 262.82 dollars. I reserved the car based on this estimate. What they fail to mention is the german VAT tax that is 20 percent on the euro, which is an addition 100 dollars. When I e-mailed the company, they said take it up with the car rental place, which was thrifty in frankfurt germany. I responded I made the reservation through Travelnow and they should be responsible or at least help to get it resolved. No reply.

Charged an addition 100 dollars on rental car which was undisclosed when reservations were made.

Andres of Las Matas - Madrid, Spain (04/04/07)
On Feb 1st 2007 we made two bookings (Ref 18379034) for 2 nights at FW Basel Hotelship for the 16th to 18th April in Basel (Switzerland). The tariff was 246 Euros (approx 320USD)per room per night.

On Feb 13 I received an email from Michelle P of TravelNow asking us to contact directly Lidia of the hotel (Fairs Worldwide). We did. Lidia wanted payment in advance (and not just a credit card). We checked with TravelNow and they said for us to go ahead. We did. We transferred 1,300 USD to Fairs Worldwide.

On March 25 we received an email from Fairs Worldwide (we now have discovered they are in Australia) that the accomodation reservation cannot be fulfilled. We immediately contacted Michelle P at Travelnow.com to ask for help in settling the matter. No response. We wrote to TravelNow - again - on March 27. No response. And again, on March 29. Again no response.

I feel neglected, ignored and cheated. And I dont know what I can do at all against the - apparaent - fraudulent attitude from TravelNow.com

I am 1,300 USD short, no accomodation in Basel (Switzerland) and I have to be there on the 16th because there is a very important Fair.

Irene of Southport CT (01/09/06)
Made resevations with hotel bernini palace in florence italy throught travelnow.....called hotel to confirm..was told we had no reservation and there were no avaiable rooms...so made other arrangements...subsequently billed for 2 rooms for 3 nights...2,000 dollars...tried to contact travelnow...but no response..

Billed $2,000.00 to American Express which was paid to hotel...we have not gotten any help from hotel, travelnow or AmX....

Alice of Denver NC (06/15/05)
I signed up as an affiliate of TravelNow. Shortly thereafter, I booked two first-class airline tickets through my website link they provided. When I reviewed the stats for my bookings, nothing showed up. I sent many emails, which were answered by various people, including Morgan A (account rep).

First, they say they the booking was not made through my ID, and then they say there is no link on my site. There isn't now; I removed it. I don't intend to provide a link for booking that does not pay a commission to me. The insertion of the link was time-consuming, but the commission is not enough to waste any more time over.

Loss of commission was minimal. After realizing the problem was not going to be rectified, I removed the web links and gave up. The time spent inserting the original links and trying to resolve the problem via email was the main damage.

Darlene of Sand Lake MI (10/30/04)
I was recently going on a trip to frederick maryland for a meeting with my eskie rescue group. I made hotel reservations for the travelodge in this county, with the travelnow website. I was forced to cancel my reservation and share a room with a friend due to finances. When I went to the site to cancel, the travelodge told me the reservation was not there, and now I am being forced to pay a one night charge.

I went to the travelnow.com site to cancel, it was not even on record, so how am I supposed to cancel something nobody had record of! Until recently, I never even got notice from the hotel,of any sort,not a letter of cancelation or anything telling me of it untiol I get my ccard statement. I don't feel this is right at all.

I also would like to say the hotel staff left alot to be disired, as did the cleanliness,when we first even got our room, it was not as clean as I would think it should be.

I am being forced to pay a bill for a service or a room I never used, i paid for the share of the room, I shared with my friend so don't feel I need to pay twice!

Arnold of Jerusalem ISRAEL (12/14/03)
I have a complaint about the exchange rate used to calculate my bill. The underlying charge was in Euros, and the company converted to dollars and charged my credit card. This is OK, but they calculated using the cash rate of exchange for that day (interbank rate +4 percent).

This is not fair business practice. Since they were undertaking to do the conversion on my behalf, they should have used the interbank rate, or perhaps a rate comparable to credit card exchange rates (interbank rate +2 percent).

I do not think this was a billing error, but rather a strategy to boost their margin a few percent. In my opinion this amounts to a minor fraud.

The woman, a supervisor, with whom I spoke said that her department (customer care) knew nothing about exchange rates. I would have to fax a copy of my credit card statement, for her to submit to the accounting department.

It is possible that I will eventually get a credit for the $10.00 that hangs in the balance, but it does not appear that it will be easy. I have already spent a lot of time on international phone calls. Furthermore, I believe that this is a matter of policy and I have not had anyone address the issue at this level.

I asked tanya to send me a memorandum summarizing our conversaton. She did this, but she tried to characterize the issue to the effect that they had mistakenly charged my accout in Dollars instead of Euros, which is not precisely the point.

I think that a lot of customers are being cheated out of a few dollars each time they experience a currancy conversion with this company.

I am being overcharged by perhaps $10. However, I believe that the same thing happens day in and day out to many people who would never think to check the rates of exchange.

Elizabeth of Cary NC (05/11/03)
I booked a hotel in New York in Jan. for March 14-19, because if I pay w/Master Card I'll have a $25 rebate. I mailed to the address they provided but no one knows anything about the rebate. I called the Master Card, I called the issuer bank, I emailed travolnow.com. They are pointing to each other, and they have the $25 rebate, and the interest that I could have gotten if I invested the $300 instead to pay for the hotel three months in advance.

That $25 rebate definitely would be an economic loss. No physical damage.

Barbara of Bakersfield CA (08/27/02)
On July 30, 2002 I made a reservation for a room at the Clarion Ventura Beach hotel via the Internet and Travelnow.com.

I requested a room for 3 adults and the description of the room implied that it had two beds. After entering all of the required information including my credit card, and pressing the button to proceed with the reservation I was presented with a confirmation screen.

The confirmation screen came back showing a room with only 1 bed. I certainly was not going to jam 3 adults into 1 bed. After looking through all of the screens and printouts I discovered that Travelnow.com did not provide a phone number on any of them. I received an email confirmation immediately, but it only provided an email address and physical address.

An email address is not an acceptable way to resolve a problem. A business should always provide a phone number. I called the Clarion and they couldn't help me because they didn't get the on-line reservation information for several hours.

I had no choice but to cancel that reservation, on-line, and book a room with another hotel. This time I used the phone and called a different hotel directly. When I received my credit card statement the charge for the hotel had been cancelled but there was a $10 cancellation fee. My credit card statement also had a phone number for Travelnow.com. I called Travelnow.com and talked with a very nice girl named Rachael. She told me that I should have ignored the cofirmation screen because it was incorrect in showing that the room only had 1 bed. The fact that their website shows incorrect information should be enough to get the penalty waved, however, it was not. She talked with her manager and the manager said that the penalty would stand.

My feelings are that Travelnow.com or any business should be required to provide their phone number at the time of purchase. Also, if a business presents wrong information on the Internet or any where else, for that matter, they should not be allowed to charge you a penalty for cancelling a service or returning a product.

The consequences that resulted from this episode were only a $10 cancellation fee, 30 minutes to an hour of my time trying to resolve the issue, an enormouse amount of aggravation, and loss of revenue to the Clarion Hotel or any others that use Travelnow.com for on-line reservations.

Lee of Silverado CA (05/17/02)
Received email and verbal confirmations on numerous occasions that reservations had been made. All lies. Found out too late to book using other resources. Hotel had no rooms left. Damage - purpose of trip was for family gathering to bury my mother's remains. Being close to other family members very critical at this juncture. TravelNow uses deceitful tactics with no consideration for the welfare of thier customer. In dealing with several of thier employees I find their tactics universal. They all start out with the same lie to try to get rid of you. One lie leads to another and unless you are extremely persistent you will not discover that you do not have a room until you get there. These people should be put out of business. It is obvious they are all trained the same. I am beyond mad. I want to get even. I will still make this trip but have had to spend a lot more to get rooms at the last minute at another hotel. If there are any groups out there with a plan to reveal these scoundrels for what they are, count me in.

Brent of Allen, TX, writes (5/9/01):
We planned a cruise which required an over night stay in New Orleans. We have booked other travel needs like hotels over the internet so we booked a room in the Doubletree Hotel in the French Quarter in New Orleans through the travelnow.com Web site. Our trip was March 23 - April 1 2001 but I booked the room January 13, 2001. The total was $204.00 for one room for one night for two people.

We emailed this company February 14 since they had already billed the credit card in January just to make sure every thing was okay. Toby replied to my email and said we were confirmed with the hotel but the reservation was under the company's name and this would change a few days before our arrival. I also called a few days before we left on the trip (around March 20th ) and an agent assured we had a room in the Doubletree for the 24th of March.

Well, we arrived in New Orleans and took a shuttle to the hotel. We waited almost an hour while they tried to find our reservation. Finally, we were told the company sent a fax on March 14th to get us a room but since there were two conferences in town, the hotel was FULL and had been for some time. We were not informed of this even though I called travelnow.com days after travelnow.com had supposedly sent the reservation fax to the hotel and after the hotel informed travelnow.com that there were NO ROOMS AVAILABLE!

We had to call around and find another hotel, no easy feat when there are two conferences in town at the same time. We then had to take a taxi to another hotel further away from the cruise dock and pay for a room in the other hotel (about $150). When we arrived at our new hotel, I called the 1 800 number and informed them of their mistake and asked for my refund since I did not get the room I had paid for due to travelnow.com's mistake. The agent kept me on hold for about fifteen or twenty minutes and then came back and told me I would get my $204.00 credited back to my credit card and would receive some coupons for my trouble.

It is now May and after numerous attempts to reach travelnow.com by phone, e-mail and mail and receive my refund, we have heard nothing from this company! We have copies of all the documents and emails sent to them and by travelnow.com to me.

We are still waiting for our $204.00. We wasted 99% of our sightseeing time finding a new hotel, travelling to the new hotel, calling travelnow.com and waiting on hold. We travelled early so I could show my wife New Orleans where I grew up and I had to spend our free time dealing with hotel problems. Travelnow.com assured I had a room but I had no room in the Doubletree and they still have my $204.00.