While making vacation plans for May in northern California, my daughter, girlfirend and I were planning to take a driving tour of the Lost Coast. I made reservations for hotels using Hotels.com, a utility I have used with success. I booked the rooms with my credit card and was prompted on the website that it was necessary to use my daughter's name to reserve a room for her. I provided the information and the transaction were completed.
Prior to our vacation I found that we had to change our plans and take another route because my daughter had a work stop to make during this time. I phoned hotels.com and cancelled the existing reservations (or so I thought). I then used their web utility to make new reservations for our new route.
Just before our trip I received an email from hotels.com regarding the details for one of the rooms (for my daughter) on our original vacation route. I called hotels.com and found that because the room had been reserved in my daughter's name, they had not cancelled any of the rooms reserved for her when I had called to cancel. So, I cancelled all of her reservations as well and received cancellation confirmations for all rooms at 3 hotels on our original route. This was done within the allowable cancellation period.
When I returned from vacation and checked my bank online, I fould there had been a charge from hotels.com placed on my account for one room at one of the hotels I had cancelled the reservations for. I contacted hotels.com via their website and got this reply:
"Thank you for taking the time to write to us in regards to booking number 23863057.
We have confirmed that booking # 23863057 for 2 rooms was cancelled. Cancellation # 76613257,76613256.
Regarding the charge on your bank account you need to contact the hotel directly at 1-707-9644003 since they are the billing party.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused."
How could there have been any charge made if the reservation was cancelled?
Why is the hotel responsible for refunding money that they were not authorized to or did not withdraw? The hotel didn't withdraw the funds. I would think that Hotels.com has a fiduciary responsibility and has fallen short of fulfilling that.
The moral is, save all the headaches and deal directly hotels. It cost me $70 to learn this lesson, but I'm a quick study.
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