When planning a move across country we needed a hotel for a night that would allow us to bring our dog along. My husband found Dogfriendlyhotels.org and did not find any real complaints against them. Therefor, we decided to use this company to select a hotel and make a reservation for our trip.
I decided to make my reservation via the phone number they gave rather than on-line fill in the blanks. The first issue was that the customer service is apparently located oversees. The original representative that helped us was not a native English speaker and was extremely difficult to understand and to get her to understand me. At first I thought that it was just the rep I had for the initial reservation, subsequent calls to the company has made it clear that this customer service center is located oversees. Not an issue except that communication is incredibly difficult and other issues began to present themselves.
The main issue is in the Cancellation Policy. The policy was stated to me by the original rep that I arranged the reservation with. It was verbally given to me and I even repeated it to ensure that I had it correct. (See above statements to see why this was so significant.) In addition, I received the Cancellation Policy in writing via a confirmation email also after the reservation was complete.
The Cancellation Policy was pretty clear: if we canceled our reservation (no change reservation policy by the way) by a specified date and time then we would receive a full refund. End of policy on that. To continue, the policy then goes into detail about the amounts that you would not be refunded after that specified date and time. This part included that there would also be cancellation fee if you waited till after the full refund date and time. All this made sense since it is the norm in reservations.
However, when I contacted Dogfriendlyhotels.org prior to the cancellation date and time to check on changing the arrival date by one day, they insisted that I could not change that I could only cancel and that they would charge me a fee. After discussing this with the rep and the supervisor, they were completely unwilling to honor their own Cancellation Policy.
After this ridiculous phone conversation I decided to contact the hotel directly. Not only was it not an issue to change the date and no fee this early, there was not to much of a change needed. I discovered that Dogfriendlyhotels.org had made my reservation for two nights, not the one requested, they overcharged for the room, charged twice the taxes, and all in addition to their extras.
The final interesting point was that I had asked the original reservation rep to ensure that the hotel allowed dogs. She had placed me on hold and stated that she had contacted them and doubled checked. Not so surprising that she had, in fact, not contacted the hotel and that the dog was not a part of our reservation.
Even better, Dogfriendlyhotels.org charges your credit card on the day of the reservation and did not notify the hotel that the stay was already paid for. Can't wait to see how this one works out.
I would advise anyone to avoid this website at all costs. Use it to locate the hotel that might allow your pet along, BUT DO NOT USE THEM FOR A RESERVATION. Contact the hotel directly. This site is a ridiculous excuse for a business that has no right to be scamming hard working families.
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