Booking.com hotel didnt have our confirmation - cant contact anyone to help

[growgrowinggrown]

Arrived at our hotel late last night in Greece -

Night receptionist told us we have no booking with them and was really dismissive, shrugged his shoulders and told us we needed to leave as it isnt safe for his guest to have non guests there that late.

Our taxi driver noticed us having issues and came in to help. Eventually he convinced the receptionist to call a manager, who confirmed there was no booking showing but he could put us up in a sister hotel 30mins away. He would call us in the morning to arrange transfer back to the hotel.

At this point it was gone midnight and I just wanted a bed for the kids so off we went.

Sister hotel is up a really steep hill, no family suite, no where near the beach and very dated.

Hotel have now said we cant be transferred to original hotel and need to stay here. The 4k I paid for the room is 'missing' and I need to pay again.

Booking.com have online chat -24hr response time, phone number goes to AI robot who is all but useless.

Im extremely tired and cant see the wood for the trees at the moment

Any advice on how to proceed? Whole thing feels like a scam

This sort of thing happened to me too and is why I will never use booking.com again. In my case I arrived at the hotel I’d booked and paid for and that they confirmed and found it had been closed for four months. I’d been travelling for 14 hours by that point and was devastated... With some persistence I got my money back.

Good luck getting it sorted and I hope you manage to have a nice holiday.

Hotel receptionist here. On a couple of occasions, a reservation made on booking.com did not automatically integrate into our own reservations system. I cannot think of any other reason (other than as a PP said, you are at the wrong hotel) that the hotel would not have received your booking.

I am certain that you will have shown them a copy of your confirmation on your phone so they could check the spelling of your name etc..

It may be that they are overbooked and have outbooked you to this other hotel and don't want to be honest that this is what they are doing.

I hope you get this all sorted out soon.

It may be a genuine error but at the end of the day you are a customer of Booking.com and they should be doing everything to accommodate you right now free of charge until this gets resolved. If it transpires the hotel was wrong that's for Booking.com to pursue and nothing to do with you.

We had a nightmare last year, partly our fault because we didn't see an email (dh work email was turned off) but they cancelled our accommodation because the card for payment didn't match the initial booking, it had been lost and replaced through then year, so basically our payment didn't process. Their resolution was to cancel our holiday, they didn't even phone us. We found out before we flew so got somewhere else with no pool no breakfast, just a room on the side of a hot dusty road. The hotel had unfortunately given our room away as soon as they got the cancellation and warned that this stuff happens all the time. They let us use their pool as a courtesy which we did although we had to get a bus there. I was grateful for that. This year I booked directly I just couldn't deal with the stress of last year again. Dh did eventually get to talk to someone at Booking.com although there was no resolution at that point.

I really hope you get sorted soon OP. It's hard enough if it's just you but a nightmare with kids.

Did you pay by credit card? They offer a lot more consumer protection. The banks /CC companies are generally able to be a lot more forceful in getting the money owed than an individual customer. Hope it all works out.

@User415373 Usually yes, I've had a cheaper quote or paid the same but had a free upgrade and have and the same terms and conditions as booking.com, they take my card details and I have up to 48 hours before arrival to cancel free.

@Dontlletmedownbruce
I've dealt with this far more than I should have had to from the other side, they don't give any warning or reminder and if the payment doesn't go through for any reason then the booking is cancelled immediately, usually just after midnight, and then of course the room is released immediately and another booking made online can drop straight in. The guest doesn't realise until the next morning, or worse when they arrive (they send us an email saying it's been cancelled but not why, or even if it's them or the guest that has cancelled it, just that it's cancelled) and then especially in busy times, you're completely full and they've nowhere to sleep. You can't even see on the portal why it's been cancelled, just that it has. Experience tells me what's happened because I've had guests in that situation tell me they've found the email cancelling their booking because the payment failed.

@DelilahMy hello fellow receptionist! We've had it a few times, where it hasn't come through or where it's duplicated bookings, they're always sending emails asking if we want to release 'sold out rooms' and I suspect on a couple of occasions that these rooms have been released when they shouldn't have been and we then have overbooking which is something we never do (I know some hotels do, but we don't) and we have to then deal with the fall out because they're nowhere to be found and certainly won't talk to the guest and explain!

Anyone else reading this thread with growing anxiety?
Ill be calling the hotel to double confirm a few days before for sure 😬

Another person had this a few days ago on here. I can’t find the post but it was a scam.

If you pay by credit card, can you do a chargeback?

I’ve just emailed.

Agree with never using booking.com for flights. Last year, I went to check in for my flight 24 hours before we were due to fly and the flight had been cancelled 4 months before. Booking.com knew this but failed to email us, KLM who we were flying with couldn't change the flight or refund us because we'd paid through booking.com. Ended up buying new flights from a different airport which meant we couldn't use the airport parking and had to use a taxi and ended up with a stopover flight. Booking.com after much debate refunded the original flight cost but due to late notice the new flights were double the price of the original ones which we had to pay for.