We scheduled a car to pick us up at our hotel in Tokyo and take us to the cruise ship terminal. When I selected a location for the car to take us to, your website would not accept the addresses I had for the cruise ship terminal which was in Yokohama so I ended up choosing the international cruise ship terminal which it turns out is not the one in Yokohama but is in Tokyo. When I received a text from our driver the night before, I gave him the address where we needed to be taken to make sure he had the right one. When he arrived the next morning, he told me via a translator on his phone that he couldn't take us there because it was farther. I called customer service and they didn't have another vehicle so we had to get 2 taxis as there were 4 of us. I emailed from our ship and explained it to Andrea. She said they couldn't give a refund because the driver was there. I explained that the problem was your website which did not allow me to choose the correct location. It made no sense for us to go to the wrong cruise terminal. I explained this in a second email to Andrea but she never responded. I expect at least a partial refund since the the error was due to your website as it caused me to choose the wrong address. I will say that our experience with the driver who picked us up at the Tokyo airport and took us to the hotel and the driver who took us from our hotel in Singapore to the airport was excellent. However, if we can't find some resolution to this situation, I will not use booking.com again.
Claimed loss: $127.42
Desired outcome: refund of at least half of the $127.42
The current free airport transfer promotion for accommodation booked on Booking.com is also very hit or miss. I recently booked accommodation for a four week stay in Pattaya, Thailand that featured this offer. I read the the Booking.com T and Cs, and they specify nearest airport without mentioning the arrangements for particular cities. It was only after paying that I clicked on the free taxi link and found the offer was for the small regional airport of Utapao. This airport is not a long haul hub, and the major airlines do not fly there. It only receives scheduled international flights from Russia, China, Dubai and Malaysia, and not many at that. Most traffic is charter flights. On the same Booking.com hotel advertisements there is sometimes mention of the availability of airport transfer at extra cost, and if you click on those details the airport is invariably Bangkok Suvarnabhumi. Now the English language Booking.com website is aimed at such areas as the UK, US and Australasia, and nobody from those countries can fly into Utapao in a way that makes any sense. So I call the promotion a scam.