I used Hotels.com to book a hotel room on New Year's Eve. When I got to the hotel they said that they had the reservation but that the credit card number that hotels.com had supplied to them was denied. Luckily the manager was very helpful and allowed us access to a room to use the phone and call hotels.com.
The first person I got was someone who couldn't speak english well or understand me very well. He kept telling me that it was my credit card that was denied. That I needed to pay him the balance in order for them to pay the hotel. When I asked to talk to a manager he said that one wasn't on duty. After several minutes of me trying to explain to him that it wasn't a credit card, that it was my debit card I finally hung up on him.
I rushed to an ATM to double check, and I called my debit card company to triple check. Of course the problem wasn't my card, hotels.com had already debited the balance for the room as soon as I booked it.
The second person I talked to was a lady who did say that it wasn't my card that it was on their end. She asked me to hold for 2-5 minutes while she called the front desk of the hotel. After being on hold for ten minutes my fiance went down to check and make sure they had called. He was told by the manager that hotels.com had told him the hotel couldn't get paid until Friday when the accounting office opened up. Being extremely perturbed he hung up on them. After I was on hold for 20 minutes I was hung up on.
The third and final call I made was from the same phone I had used all night and I was put on hold, finally after waiting another 10 minutes my fiance called the company from my cell in which he was put through automatically.
This lady again told me it wasn't my fault. She said that the one-time-use card that they use to pay the hotel had already been used and that since the accounting department was closed they couldn't do anything about it that night. She called the front desk and talked to them (or so she said). After another 5 minutes she got back on with me and told me that since the hotel manager wasn't willing to wait til Friday that I could have my money back and they would cancel the reservation. She said that I would have a full refund within 72 hours.
Luckily the very nice manager let us stay in the room and only charged us $40.00. I had gotten charged $60 on hotels.com.
This morning (36 hours in) I called hotels.com again after reading all the reports on usacomplaints.com. I wanted a confirmation on the cancellation. This man told me that it would be up to 30 days before I got my full refund. I told him that the lady had told me 72 hours and he said that was the shortest amount of time it would be.
They have until Monday morning (it is now Friday afternoon) and I am calling my bank. If the money is not there, hotels.com better be ready for on extremely upset phone call.
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