Booking.com

Apparently what happens is Booking sends the reservations they have made for the hotel only a week before the date of the reservation. The sales manager at the hotel now has to deal with the fallout of this. She states that she has to go through a list on a weekly basis to notify Booking.com of each reservation that has been made that is not valid. It is supposed to be up to Booking.com to contact all the people that booked with them to let them know that a room is not actually available.

This of course is a huge hassle for the guest to deal with so close to their scheduled trip. She continued to inform me that Booking.com often does NOT contact everyone and she has a guest arrive who of course is furious as they don't have a room. She does try to help them locate another hotel, but instructs them they will have to contact Booking.com directly, probably sit on hold for an hour and then informs the guest of the policy; that Booking.com has to pay that they are responsible for relocating you and if they cannot find a similar hotel at the same price they are responsible for paying the difference. In short AVOID Booking.com at all costs as you will have no way of knowing if you actually have a room!!

I am aware that sites such as this only have access to so many rooms, so I contacted the hotel reservation number. The nationwide reservation number was unable to locate my reservation for Friday 12/14/2018. I ended the call with them and contacted the hotel directly in San Marcos. The gentleman I spoke with was also unable to locate my reservation and proceeded to tell me that the hotel is sold out for that Friday evening, so I could not even book it directly with him. He went on to say that they have had problems as of late with others showing up with reservations made on Booking.com and the hotel has no record of their reservation and unfortunately when these people arrived the hotel was sold out and they had no place to stay!!

Thank goodness I tried to make a change to this reservation or I would have arrived and had no place to stay in a town that will most likely be sold out that weekend due to the college graduation!! I am relieved that I did not prepay for this room or I would be dealing with filing a fraud charge on my credit card as well. I have never before used a website such as this (for this very reason) and will NEVER do so again. I certainly will NEVER recommend booking.com to anyone as their practice of making non-existent reservations is FRAUDULENT!!

Wtf? You hang up on your customers who are already upset about a booking and calling you after being on hold 3x for 10 min and you hang up on them when they say don't; you call them back and say, "I have to call you back in 10 min. I can't help you right now"??? What is this? What business runs this way. HUGE problem with past horrible hotel booking and can't even get a human to act human on their customer service site. TERRIBLE TERRIBLE people who lie like the hotel lied about the room we booked. WOW just awful so angry at Booking.com right now. You guys have lost all credibility as a business. You have nothing to help customers that book and trust you.

This, even though I had contacted Booking.com ahead of time to say that we would probably be paying with a different credit card and asked if it was okay, and they assured me that it was! When I explained this to Super Eight, they said, "This is our policy, not Booking.com's, and Booking.com can't speak for us." Well, if that's the case, then why wasn't I allowed to talk with you directly when I first wanted to make the changes? What a nuisance! Basically, Booking.com is a huge waste of time that doesn't actually save you any money and results in no flexibility once the reservation is made. Major buyer's remorse here.

It's optional to put down the time of arrival. We put it down only to make it easier for the hotel. However, the staff at booking.com insisted that it's a special request to arrive late and it needs to be approved by the hotel. When we ask them how do we know if it's approved, they say that we would've received a confirmation from the hotel. We did receive confirmation from both Booking.com and the hotel. Neither of the letters mentioned there's any problem with our arrival time. Then how would one know if there's a problem with the reservation?

It's not a big problem. Maybe the hotel ran out of rooms that we want. We would happily accommodate if we are told it's the case. However, from beginning to end during the communication, the customer service and hotel insisted that it's something that we did caused this problem. I don't think it's the right attitude to serve and grow as a business.

Anyway, we get to the "hotel" and up we go, straight up 4 flights of stairs. These stairs were narrow thin and steep, honestly closer to the ladders that you would use to get into an attic. Honestly I didn't mind it, I embraced both the authenticity of this experience along with the challenge of lugging up 2 40 lb suitcases. I felt all manly and cool flexing for my girlfriend (lucky that we are skinny types too, other Americans wouldn't have been so lucky). I promise you I'm definitely the happy go lucky type! I don't normally complain. We made it to the top floor and guess what! We get to share the floor with a boiler room! Great! We open the door to our room and it is barely big enough to hold the queen bed that they provided. There was no ventilation, no air conditioning, the bathroom was a closet with a toilette, it must have been over 90 degrees in there!

Outside it was cool enough to wear a hoodie! One of the windows was nailed shut and the other was an unsecured window that could be opened by anyone from the roof next to us freely. The room was nothing at all like the one we requested. I looked at my girlfriend and said "nothing like the authentic experience, I'm sure it will cool down at night." We decided that since it's Amsterdam we would be out most of the day anyway. We went out for a late dinner and came back... boy was that room hot. Honestly a less healthy person could die in that space, we couldn't breathe. I was wetting towels in cold water and wiping down our naked bodies just to keep cool while looking for a new space to stay. We started to look up more in depth reviews for Flower Market at this point. WOW did they have some bad reviews that were all buried amongst good reviews that didn't at all match the experience we promised.

How could Booking allow them to continue doing business and hide all of these bad reviews, especially since at a closer look many of them mentioned bedbugs!? The next morning I called Flower Market and told them to cancel my reservation, this was unsafe and unacceptable. They offered to get us another fan (we already had 2 left to us) and we told them politely that we had already booked another hotel as we could not weather another night in those conditions. From this moment forward the Flower Market "hotel" would be unresponsive to any of my inquiries or followups about resolving the issue. Enter Booking.com customer service. Now don't get me wrong, some of these people are polite, others not so much. One of the representatives that I spoke with on the phone told me that I shouldn't have picked a hotel with a bad review.

I personally didn't think that 6.5 was a bad review, first of all reviews are subjective, second of all 6.5 is on the lower side of average. It took them a month of back and forth just to get me a 50% refund after facing a bait and switch scenario. Booking.com does not protect its customers, only the product that it is listing. IN hindsight I would have not accepted any refund and gone to my credit card company for a chargeback. At least my card company would go up to bat against me instead of incentivizing hotel listing companies to bait and switch with the best case scenario being getting a customer for your overpriced product and the worst case scenario being getting to keep half of the deposit.

You know what, honestly part of this is my fault for not digging to the deepest reviews and giving the hotel the benefit of the doubt, some of your reviewers out there are seriously picky or complain too much about things that don't matter to me. I also believe in second chances and the occasional mistake. I tried to explain to Booking.com that they are incentivizing bad actors, and I begged them to take down the listing since it is a danger to future visitors and that they had a plethora of bad reviews including BED BUGS! Honestly, Booking.com HQ is in AMSTERDAM. A simple 5 MINUTE WALK AWAY FROM THE FLOWER MARKET "HOTEL". How could they not have taken down this listing by now?!

This is the real reason for the 1 star review. Sure they didn't protect me and they choose bad actors over clients but at the end of the day this place is a health hazard with multiple bad reviews and they didn't remove the listing. If I could do it again I probably would have filed a suit and spent the money out of my pocket just to make sure that one day somebody doesn't get hurt in these abysmal conditions. Honestly If you book with these guys in Amsterdam you can skip the Anne Frank house because you will get that experience right there.

I immediately called Booking.com to ask why the confirmation email stated there would now be a Cancellation Fee. I explained to the representative that I am certain I made a reservation that had No-Cancellation Fee, as I always do. He then told me he understood there was a discrepancy and there would be no fee from Booking.com for canceling, but that it would be up to the hotel to waive the fee of $271. He offered to call the hotel to try to resolve the issue while I was on hold. While I was on hold, I used my husband’s cell phone and I took it upon myself to also call the hotel to find out if they would waive this mysterious cancellation fee. The hotel representative said that because I was not only canceling under 24 hours after booking (but within the hour of booking), they would disregard the reservation altogether and there would be no fee.

Fast forward almost 10 days, after speaking to several of the hotel’s representatives and numerous calls/emails with Booking.com, I received an email stating that the hotel was requesting PROOF of my medical reasons for needing to cancel. I called the hotel who again said that this was not necessary and waiving the fee was up to Booking.com??? There is NO WAY I am going to disclose my personal medical information, much less provide official medical documentation to strangers over the matter of a hotel reservation and had to threaten to escalate matters to a legal level if Booking.com continued to harass me over $271 fee that they mysteriously created on my initial No-Cancellation Fee reservation.

After reiterating the issue again and again, I relayed to both the hotel and Booking.com, that I have already received an email stating that this matter had been resolved and the reservation had been canceled free of charge. After requesting to speak to a higher authority (management/supervisor) in hopes to resolve this matter, the Booking.com representative completely ignored my requests and kept on talking.

Booking.com clearly has poor communication within their own company, as well as poor communication with their customers. I feel I wasted too much time and experienced way too much run-around trying solve a simple discrepancy created on their behalf. I was told by the last hotel representative I spoke with that, when booking services through a third party, such as Booking.com, the customer should never feel the need to contact the establishment (hotel) directly. Agreed. I will NEVER use Booking.com again!!!

Booking.com was USELESS in offering any solution to this problem and simply referred us to the host, who is a liar and a scam artist. In this competitive online travel services market, there's no reason whatsoever to use Booking.com, who will leave you high & dry, when there are so many others who will protect the consumer from fraud such as this. NEVER AGAIN.

Hercules was the supervisor name; he was horrible and rude. Told me and I quote "nothing we can do for you, it's not our fault your child is **" then hung up on me. I was in full blown tears as I called back. Got a hold of Pat and spoke with her. She asked to send email pic of the hotel room so we can show that it wasn't what was promised via their web page. She called the hotel manager and said that I told them I wanted to be moved to another hotel and all kinds of things, mind you I was standing with the manager at that time. So they called me back and said the manager said I already booked another room, I told them I did not and that I was standing with the manager and they hung up on me. I received the emails and sent the pictures as I was asked.

Made it through the weekend with my daughter after buying a blow up air mattress so that she could sleep without being touched. Called Booking.com again when I got home and the supervisor again called me a liar and told me I have never called and they have no email from me and told me they will not help me in any way. I told them I have pictures, screenshots of my call log, names of people I spoke with and the supervisor then told me "I must be ** like my daughter" and hung up on me after telling me their decision was final. So they messed up my entire weekend vacation, added extreme stress to my child with autism and called her outside of her name and made me feel like complete garbage.

NEVER WILL I EVER USE BOOKING.COM. I WILL TELL EVERYONE I KNOW MY STORY. I WILL POST ABOUT IT ON EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM I CAN. On the upside. BEST WESTERN was amazing and so very understanding and helpful for my stay, never once made me feel like a horrible person and Keith came up and check on my self and my child while he was on duty. Everyone was extremely helpful and caring. Booking.com is horrible and I will never use them again.

Soon after this incident, I asked someone who could speak the language to contact them and they promised that will get the manager on the phone. It never happened. I have reasons to believe that this attack had been carried out by Turkish hackers because: - the confirmation messages were sent to my email in the Turkish language. - In the special requests addressed to the hotel at the time of booking the hotel, the hackers wrote ‘İş amaçlı seyahat ediyorum ve iş amaçlı kredi kartımı kullanabilirim.’ Which means ‘I travel for business purposes and use this credit card for business purposes.’ The hotel replied promptly in English: ‘Ok, we will help you.’ The hackers got the time to remove my profile photo. I had that photo since I created the account.

Luckily, I was online when this happened and detected the suspicious activity immediately, changed the password, cancelled the reservation and informed Booking.com in hope of support. However, I was disappointed by their reply: "The policy you booked is non-refundable, which usually doesn’t allow changes or cancellations. This policy is outlined in your confirmation email and on our website. Despite this, we asked the property to make an exception for you. As soon as the property responds, we’ll contact you with their answer. If the property decides to waive the penalty, kindly inform us if it would still be possible to refund the canceled credit card or if you disputed this charge at your earliest convenience." As if it was my mistake for being hacked. I had nothing to do with this booking. I am the victim here. An investigation could identify the IP address used during the reservation.

This was allegedly a business trip. I never booked a business trip before and I am not a business person. I only travel with my family. I never reserve long stays in hotels. My previous reservations are enough to prove this. The booking interval did not match my vacation period and it was made during a time when my travel documents were being renewed so I could not even think of travelling abroad. As I said before, the language used throughout the booking was Turkish. I neither speak nor understand Turkish.

I wrote Booking asking them to clarify what happened but so far I only received the message copy/pasted above and this: “Kindly note that this reservation was made through the account [email address]. The reason you have received all the communication in Turkish is because the language selected during the booking process is Turkish. Please note that we advise you to contact your bank to report any fraud claims you may have.”

I never had any issues with booking.com before. However, I believe that booking.com is vulnerable against cyber-attacks and they need to take this matter very seriously for the sake of their many thousands of customers who entrusted them by sharing their credit card details. My question is why do Booking.com not take any responsibility in this hacking case? This is a massive security breach. There are thousands of booking.com customers whose accounts are in danger due to a very weak level of account protection. I changed my own password several times and noticed that I could reuse the same password the hackers used to defraud me of nearly 2000 euros.

This is just mind-blowing. A company such as Booking.com should not allow these things to happen. I tried to find out more information about the hotel that received the fraudulent payment and the message displayed by Booking.com next to this hotel’s photos is “NUEVAS SUİTES isn’t bookable on our site anymore, but we’ve found some great alternatives for you in Istanbul!” Is it possible that someone from inside the hotel had access to Booking.com customers’ credit cards details? We may never find out…

When they did they got back to me, they told me that I did not show up at the property and that the host was waiting for me. (although I called booking.com from outside the property and explained the situation for them for about 20 min. They also called the property at my request and their phone was off). Booking.com concluded that I was lying. This experience with Booking.com has put me off completely from booking with them. Their customer services - which was great before - is now at the lowest point. I spoke to 4 people at Booking.com they were all useless and while they asked me to wait for their phone call that never happened. I would not recommend Booking.com anymore and actually just cancelled my next booking with them.

I am furious as I already send him the message beforehand to make sure the room is available for my family and he replied he is noted. If the room is really unavailable, the system will have not allowed me to book or already cancel my booking. In fact, I guess the owner wants to increase the price or what Because he texted me to cancel the booking. I can't find a place to write this review below the house as I haven't stay there yet. Lastly, it sucks!!!

Also, I went back to look at the reviews of this place to see if I had done something wrong and was surprised to find the Booking ranking system is a complete fraud. I gave the place negative reviews up and down, but the lowest score possible was 2.5, while others could give 9-10; this obviously is a statistically ploy to make rooms look better than they are. I also looked at many other reviews which were horrific, but, due to the way Booking tabulates their scores, showed up as a 6. One lady complained that, while staying in a hostel, she was placed in a room with men, people tried to break open her locked bags and that someone urinated on her towel and nightshirt, and this review was given a score of around 6.

Furthermore, beside the overall rating, if you look at how Booking.com cherry picks its reviews, the fraud is striking: this reservation was in a sleazy building with a loud bar, homeless people taking drugs outside and one person complained of dogs barking in the hallways at night, but the highlighted reviews claimed it was in a great location, clean and quiet. The real reviews were found only after my more extensive second look and more accurate reviews were on TripAdvisor.

In summation: Booking.com puts this facility at the top of their list under the "Genius" program, skews the ranking higher, cherry picks reviews that seem out of touch with reality, and then when their customer is stuck in an unusable room in a foreign city basically says that it isn't their problem. So, I'm out almost $500 that the facility took, Booking got a cutoff, and I'm out of luck. Whatever money you might save from this site when things go right, doesn't make up for the mistakes; next time, I will pay more up front for a real travel agent who will stand by their work.

At this point the story changed and she had to talk to her manager. I was on hold for over 10 minutes and then she told me that no, the price was too big of a difference. So on the eve of my arrival I went from, "Hey we are moving to you," to "Now we are taking even more money from you." I asked her to cancel the reservation at this point and told her I would make my own arrangements. Guess what, now we can’t cancel. She emailed the place and they might agree to cancel and refund my money. I am feeling completely and utterly screwed by your company.