FYI: HostelWorld charges a deposit fee (in my case, one night of hostel charge) AND EVEN IF you cancel the reservation within the time frame proscribed for you NOT to be charged by the hostel for making a change, HOSTELWORLD.com ITSELF still keeps your ‘deposit fee’.
Even though they say on their site, that you can cancel w/in the timeframe & not be charged by the hostel (implying it’s possible to do so w/out charge, period) they don’t mention there in the bold print, but only buried deep in their interminable terms statement, that THEY WILL NOT REFUND YOUR DEPOSIT! Very deceptive practice.
Plus they will not respond to your questions about this, until you flood their inbox w / requests to do so. THEN they responded (to me anyway) w / an email that completely ignored this request. THEN they told me to contact the hostel for a refund. When, finally, they acknowledged they themselves had collected this ‘deposit’ fee from me, they refused to refund it.
In my experience, I’d say STAY AWAY from them, as there are other more integrous sites (Hostels.com, Hostelsbookers, Lonelyplant.com, etc, in fact every other hostel booking site I reviewed) that do NOT keep your ‘deposit’ & then claim you can cancel w/out charge.
HostelWorld was hugely uncool in this regard, & I think readers should be advised of this really deceptive, misleading policy of theirs.
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