Regarding payment.
I have used booking.com on a very regular basis over the past few years, and have on a few occasions paid slightly more for the flexibility of the free cancelation service. These have always been booked on the basis that the full amount is payable on check out at the hotel.
Anyway, I came to book a holiday for next year (my honeymoon actually, so a pricier holiday than I would normally book). At the moment I need some flexibility about where I go, but hotels are booking up fast, so I used the 'free cancellation' option again.
However this time, turns out they charge a 50% deposit. It's a multi stay trip, so I had booked a few hotels on the same basis, and they were all a 50% deposit. Which was really not explicit in the slightest. Until I checked my bank account and a lot of money had been taken from it.
AIBU that this is a ridiculous change to make, and not to flag. And also warn you not to make the same mistake I did!
AIBU?
to be intrigued (read: appalled) at Booking.com's seemingly new policy...
Jewels234 · 06/06/2015 22:37
The thread may as well have been written in [insert name of language you don't speak] but congrats on the event immediately prior to your honeymoon, Jewels. 
I think they are just agents, aren't they? And deposits, cancellation etc is always set by the hotel.
I haven't had to pay a deposit with them ever. And we've had three (count them 
) cancelled trips where we haven't even had to cancel, because you pay on arrival. (Of course we did to be polite!)
I used to manage a hotel as we used Booking.com and policies vary between hotels so I'm afraid you've just been unlucky!
Enjoy your honeymoon!
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Name changed but am regular. We run a small guesthouse and the big booking engines can be pains in the proverbial. The commissions they charge are huge - traditionally commissions in hospitality industry have been 10%, but Expedia, Booking.com etc charge 15-17%. If you pay upfront, we don't get the money until the end of the month after you've stayed - so if you book and pay in September for a room you stay in in January, we get paid at the end of February - the booking agent keeps the money in the meantime.
We also don't have credit card facilities, so if a customer does not pay upfront, and then doesn't show up, we don't have any way of getting the £, and we still get charged commissions. I know you'll say that we should have the facility to accept card payments, but between the admin and compliance fees, it all adds to room rates.
If a customer books then cancels at the last minute, it probably wouldn't affect big hotels very much. It does affect us. We never charge for a cancellation, and if a booking has been pre-paid we always refund in full, but it does impact our income.
Many small businesses like ours are having to close because we can't compete with the discounts/business practices of the big boys. Premier Inn are supposed to be opening a hotel in our town soon. It will kill our business because the perception is that Premier Inn is cheap. It can be, on some limited nights, but it can also be very expensive for what they offer, but, of course, perception is everything.
We are homogenising our world so much, and pushing out the small individual businesses because they 'don't quite fit' the way that huge corporates want to do business.
Apologies for rant but I do get a bit cross about this stuff
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