Booking.com
Reviews and Complaints

I have always booked accommodations via booking.com where there is free cancellation available. I book more than one accommodation for the same dates and closer to the time cancel all but one within the Free Cancellation period.

My online booking.com profile is the proof for that.

I had booked a room at Apartment Caprice which Booking.com informed me was no longer available after 1 week as informed by Apartment Caprice for the dates I was looking : 30th Aug - 2nd Sep 2016.

Booking.com and not Apartment Caprice suggested an alternative accommodation directly and I confirmed back to them that I was ok with the alternative.

Apartment Caprice also confirmed the booking via the booking.com message box that the change to the room is confirmed

With this change in room at the same hotel, I expected to see the accommodation appearing on my Booking.com profile which it never did.

Booking.com failed to tell me that the booking was going to be direct with the Apartment Caprice going forward and not via Booking.com website.

Apartment Caprice also failed to mention this in their message which they sent via booking.com message box

After coming back from my holidays, on 15th Sep, I discover I have charged the full amount of 3 days stay by Apartment Caprice which is CHF:600.

As I have mentioned above, 4 main reasons why I should be refunded all my hard earned money:

1) The alternative accommodation was suggested by Booking.com and not by Apartment Caprice directly via email. Booking.com was dealing with the booking on the Apartment’s behalf so any customer would think that all the transactions will be through Booking.com

2) Booking.com did not specify in the emails sent on 7th July and 13th July to me that the booking with Apartment Caprice is going to be direct reservation going forward and not managed through my Booking.com profile

3) Apartment Caprice confirmed the booking through Booking.com message box and not a direct email was sent, which again confirms to me that the booking will be managed by Booking.com.

4) Apartment Caprice never sent me another email regarding my no-show and that they are going ahead and deducting the full amount – they failed to inform me this and this is unprofessional.

I raised this issue with Booking.com and after more than 4 months of many emails back and forth they still won’t accept its their mistake and want me to drop the case.

For the mental torture, I probably should sue both Booking.com and Apartment Caprice

Since lack of proper communication from Booking.com and Apartment Caprice has lead to the issue. The issue with the rental money should be resolved among them and Apartment Caprice should refund the amount CHF.600 deducted from my account on 15th Sep as soon as possible

I am a Canadian consumer. I booked a one night stay at Vdara hotel on booking.com. The booking is free cancellation and on the side of the booking, it states, "Information on how to pay will be sent to you after you book." Then the credit card field states "Needed to hold your booking." I booked with my Canadian credit card as that was the only card I had at the time of booking and thought that I would update the hotel with my American credit card when I call me to verify payment. The confirmation email came and under the prepayment terms state this "Payment before arrival is required. Your host will contact you after you book to arrange it. You will be charged a prepayment of the first night after reservation." Since my booking is for one night, I was sure that the hotel will contact me first before charging me. I was wrong and the hotel charged my card. A few days later I see the charge and contacted booking.com. Due to a 2.5% currency conversion fee being charged, I was upset that they did not contact me first like it is stated on the terms. I spoke to multiple reps and they all understand my perspective. Even though there are spots that you will have to hover the mouse over to have some text show "you will be charged a prepayment of the first night after reservation." I did not see that during my booking. The confirmation clearly states the hotel will contact me. I cancelled the booking because I am not pleased with the service and even though so many of the reps at the booking.com call center agree with me, the managers refuse to take responsibility and refund the cost difference of under $5 CAD. The managers are argumentative and have no customer service skills. DO NOT book with booking.com. There are many other third party websites that offer better deals and are clear on the terms and conditions.

I made a booking for a 7 days stay at this hotel checking in on the7th of january 2017. This was mainly based  on the following, proximity to business client, free wifi, parking (Stated to be available on site) when I got the hotel last night I found that there was no parking available an that the parking lot was full. I spoke to the receptionist who apologised several times after I was told her that I had confirmed with the hotel by telephone before making the booking. I was told by the hotel staff member that parking was available. Following this I made the booking hoping for a peace of mind.
However, on getting to hotel there was no parking available as already stated above. I was then told that if at all a parking space became available out the only 4-5 spaces available for the whole hotel, the parking charge is £12 per/night.   in total I would have to pay £84 for the 7 nights with parking not guaranteed. Also the fact that as I found out then from posters in that hotel parking costs £ 30 on event days.
The receptionist then advised me that I should drive to the nearest holiday inn and park there at a charge of £12 per night. As I was tired from a very long journey with no-where else to go, I did go look for parking at the holiday inn and there was no parking available. There was no other nearby parking available and also the hotel drop off area had cars parked there with no parking available on site it meant I could not park. I made a decision to go back to reception (Risking a parking ticket)  and managed to compromise for me to off-load my heavy luggage for a 7 days stay.
I managed to stay overnight but with the fear that my car was not parked safely and I was at the mercy of the hotel staff.
The other available parking lot available only on wembley stadium event days was simply unaffordable as it is charged by the hour. As I gathered there was no usable parking nearby to enable me to stay at the hotel without suffering great inconvenience.   
This meant I was forced to check out at 7am this morning for something that could have be avoided had this site been specific about the parking restrictions, the applicable charges and none available to very limited parking  most hotels show the £ sign on booking. com clearly shows parking is chargeable. At least this would have made me look for another site. This information that they have advertised all over the hotel about the cost of parking at the hotel site is not reflected on booking. com. This is misleading and very costly as in my case. As I was forced to check out for reasons caused by misleading advertising I would like to be refunded for the remaining nights I have not used.
When I then asked to be transferred to a different ibis hotel in borehamwood, I was told this could not be done and that i would have to make a new booking at that hotel.

The decision to check out early the next morning was a difficult one. However, I had no choice but to check-out due to not being guaranteed parking on or around the area due the wembley stadium event days parking restrictions throughout the brent borough. This is why I needed a hotel with parking based on room availability for the days for my stay.
This has caused me to move to a different hotel 2 miles away with chargeable parking as advertised on their website on booking. com. At least here I can park on the hotel grounds without wondering where I would leaving my car every night for seven nights in a row.

I have nothing but praises for the hotel reception staff as this was beyond their job roles. They tried their best to re-assure me when I raised my complaint. The hotel facilities are excellent. The staff told me they would inform the hotel manager when he comes in. However, I am rather stunned that no management from either the hotel or boooking. com has responded to my complaint and request for a refund.
I look forward to your response in resolving this matter.
Susan mpofu

I would like to ask for a refund for this hostal that I wasn't able to stay because of their wrong advertisement. I needed wifi badly and their wifi didn't work. Even on their desktop. My phone was working with any other wifi connection.

If they told me that this happens at their hotel I wouldn't have booked that. I didn't stay in the room which I booked for 2 days and found another hotel. Which means I paid twice for those two nights.
And Eco Hostal Yuluka charged me for two nights not even one!

Please refund the nights for wrong advertisement. As a very loyal customer and always trusting booking .com I would expect booking.com to stand behind the travelers.

Please let me know if you need any bank account information.

The hostal costed 66.67£ for two nights which is 240000 colombian peso

I booked a room of Aparthotel Adagio Access Lille Vauban from jan 14 to Jan 26, 2017 on booking.com in cancellation cost they said(piture 1) : free cancellation within 14 days (Jan 10 ), after that(from Jan 11) i will be charged 215 eur.

The problem here is they also mention in small part in 2 page( picture 2) that hotel will charge me 40% cost after 1-2 days after booking and it's non-refundable.

For me it's a trap when you mention 2 policies in 2 different places in confirmation of booking, this is the first time i faced this problem with booking.com, if it's solved fairly i think it's the last time i use their (Booking.com and Adagio )service.

Our reservation was as follows:
Place: kopaonik, r. serbia
Name: tina vaskov
Check-in december 31, 2016, check-out january 7, 2017
Apartment - villa bianka, ground floor

And we get:
Apartment - villa bianka, but suteren (underground floor)

We got in touch with ms. tijana bogosavljevic, the responsible person for the apartment! she tried to convince us that the ground floor and suteren are the same and that we actually paid for the suteren.
In addition, we are sending pictures in order to be able to show how our accommodation look like. as you can see from the photos, the hall where the entrance into our apartment is, is marked with board on which suteren is written with big letters! also from the photos you can see that in the same hall ancillary/service rooms are placed. and about the room, you can see that we have only one very small window, looking into a concrete wall, and after the snow fell we did not have natural light! this was real nightmare!

I expect from booking to have highly developed mechanism to protect the rights of its customers from dishonest apartment renters and to guarantee that we will get what we paid. i also expect price reduce from the previously agreed amount of 776 us dollars, since we did not get what we have agreed.

Thank you in advance!
Regards,
Tina vaskov

Scam alert! We are disgusted at how booking.com handled a scam we recently went through on their site. They were not helpful, not perturbed and the scammers are still running deals on their site!
On christmas day we arrive in bloubergstrand, south africa at the said location attached to the apartments called ocean sunset. We were very happy as the apartment building was beautiful and had a big pool and was beachfront as stated in the booking.com page and matched the original pictures. We were early and the agent said she would meet us at a later time to check in and give our keys. We proceeded to have christmas lunch.
At the last minute the agent called us to say the location of our apartment was actually 20km away in greenpoint. This is not what we paid for. (The agent tried to convince us the other apartment is better)
We had to pay a hefty bill for uber to get to this other apartment. When we arrived we were shocked to find the apartment was actually situated on the outskirts of greenpoint, in the back of a dingy building, not on a beach front or anywhere near a leisurely beach and 20km from the location stated. The room looks like a staff quarters with a bunk bed, and could not possibly accommodate 3 adults. No aircon, no tv, no ventilation in the stuffy room, no kitchen, approximately 8 square meters and not the 35 we were promised. Furthermore the agent was staying in a room basically in our apartment!
The accommodation we were given did not have a beach front, did not have a sea view, did not have an indoor and outdoor pool, did not have a fitness center, bbg facilities or water sport as stated on the website as promised. The pictures did not match what we were given. The original pictures are just given to lure you in and think you are given a beach apartment.
When we tried to negotiate to go to the location in our contract, the agent stated that these apartments were double what we had paid and was booked up.
We were explaining this to booking.com to try resolve the situation. All they suggested is we get a refund of the accommodation and weren’t even helpful. Where were we to find accommodation so late on christmas day? We had paid so much money for flights and were stuck in a city that was fully booked up over the christmas season with nowhere to stay! (Look at photo of what we got and what was on the website)

I had done my booking in first week of December through booking.com website for Hotel Lalit inn in lonavala for stay from 30 Dec to 1 January. Suddenly on 24 December, when I dropped a mail to hotel requesting for early check in, they informed me that they had cancelled my room. How can you cancel a booking without even bothering to inform the customer. I presume that they have sold the room on higher rates. Not only this, there was this guy called Amit, in the hotel who was unprofessional and very arrogant during his conversation. They were not even apologetic about it. Completely unprofessional attitude from Hotel Lalit Inn lonavala

Dear Sir/Madam,
My bank account has been debited with 14835.87 Pak Rupees without my permission and they are not refunding me back. My email have been hacked and my account has been used to get money from my bank account and hotels have been booked in Sigapore and booking was cancelled same day . Incident happened 23/12/2016.Booked hotels and cancelled same day to scam money.
details are as follow

'' Booking.com Booking number: [protected]
PIN code: 3405
Your booking has been canceled for S$ 203.15.

Urban Hostel
城市旅馆
Singapore, Singapore CANCELED
Phone: +[protected]
Check-in Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Check-out Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Cancellation Terms
Please note, if canceled, modified or in case of no-show, the total price of the reservation will be charged.
Total cancellation cost: S$ 203.15, ,

First Hotel was booked and then cancelled same time and i wish to sue them for fraud. Please help me.
Regards

I decided to book a hotel through booking.com on 20 Dec 2016, with "semi-flexible" terms but 30% + more expensive compared to expedia.com (hotels.com) which is non-refundable.

After confirmation, booking.com actually charged me 100%, cancellation fee 100% of the amount. As it turns out the "semi-flexible" does not apply to my booking as it's within 60 days, so it's non-refundable.

When I contacted their customer service to require a price match refund: 1st customer service told me it's up to finance team to decide; 2nd customer service kept me on hold for 20 minutes, never came back; 3rd customer service finally checked and said they can't match because the terms was described differently (NOTE: although same meaning).

And you know booking.com belong to "Priceline" group, which also operates agoda.com and has an operating margin of 35.33% in 2015 ! Because of their oligarchy position, they can do whatever they like to profit. The industry needs more competition !

When I made the reservation, in big bold letters, it said : "Free Cancellation."

Later, I received my email confirmation.

Like many people, I was busy and didn't study the fine print. Only there does booking.com mention any cancellation fee.

I called them, they said to call the hotel, and of course the hotel refused to waive the fee.

Bad Business!

I got stung, and Booking.com deliberately set me up.

Booking.com passed my credit card around and stole my identity with it. I found fraudulent charges on my credit card and they refused to acknowledge it or refund my money. Their website is either not stable or they are crooks themselves. There is a charge on my credit card from a town I was never in. They either used the credit card themselves of passed it on to some one else, They said they"called the hotel" and the hotel refused to refund my money. When I called them back they said they could not get anyone who spoke English. Funny because many people I spoke to had a Spanish accent. another lie. They are scam artists. stay away

I booked a room for 2 adults and a 9-month old baby via booking.com at Hotel Elysée Gare de Lyon in Paris, and AFTERWARDS the hotel said that I have to book another room for one adult or upgrade the room, as we cannot all sleep together. (Actually, it's parent's choice, whether to sleep with a baby, right?). Unless the hotel explicitly stated that in their terms, it's not something you would assume.

Despite the fact that my booking was a non-refundable, I want my money back, as the new conditions were revealed by the hotel after the booking.

Booked a 3* hotel in Cannes for my husband and his colleague for three nights. Hotel was disgusting - dirty sheets, broken wires hanging out of TV, smelled horrible. Was shown several rooms each as bad or worse than the one before. Told hotel they would not be staying - booked another hotel through Booking.com. Complained to Booking.com who appeared helpful at first but after 10 days came back saying the hotel would not refund the amount they had taken but Booking.com would give us 10% back as an ex gratia payment.
I have used booking.com for years but will never use them again. They accept no responsibility for the hotels on their site, there is obviously no checks made so as long as they get their fees from the hotel they could not care less about their customers!

On my first trip to Amsterdam, I though I would use booking.com.
I was pleasantly surprised about how many hotels there were on this website.
Once I had decided on Victoria Plaza Hotel, the price for 3 nights was outside my budget, so I chose to wait for the price to come down.
3 days before my travel date, the price came down by £100.00 and "no prepayment required", so I accepted this price.
On the eve of my trip, I decided to check my bank account online, to my horror, I saw they had charged the original price of £461.00. As it was too late to raise a complaint, I though I would wait until I return.
In the last 48 hours, I have sent an email with my complaint, who have replied saying that they will respond within 7 days!
7 days, booking.com, is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

I have been using booking.com for ever so I decided last week or so to book a hotel in Ellensburg in december of this year. From what I've always understood was my card is just secure the room. I have NEVER EVER been charged until I was checking in. Well I just went to use my card and I see they took out the money and actually over put my bank acct in negative. Once again today is 10/25/16 and my trip isn't until 12/16/16. I called booking and the lady said it's non refundable... WTF how are you able to charge me this has never happened before. she said she was not able to do anything. I said welllll how come when I booked the room it says card info only to hold room I will not be charged until checkin? She wanted to play dumb or maybe she really was. so I called bank of America claims department and explained how stupid booking is and immediately they reversed the charges without any problem. I will NEVER book through them ever again.

I made a reservation for 1 night in Valley Isles in Lahaina Maui for our surprise as we got the Hotel the reservation got Cancellation the day before because booking posted the hotel online without the permission of the hotel owner! Bookings sent us an email to advise we needed to make a new reservation now we had no internet until we got to the hotel in Maui so we dint knew about this Cancellation we tried several people from customer services from 5 pm forward to get a new hotel which on the email sent from Booking they said they would pay the difference! we asked all the people that we talked on the phone to make the new reservation because we couldn't see anything available anymore on the website so it was impossible for us to make the new reservation ourselves later on the phone with one of the managers she apologized for the other people we talked not having provided this service Manager Name Amanda she refused to give out her last name and said she would follow up and until now following day still waiting for her follow up! the conversations and several useless phone calls and driving from hotel to hotel to find a place went on through the night until one of the agents proposed we get in touch with a another hotel on the other side of the island name of hotel or house we dont know because we never found the place was Maui 2 Minutes from the beach again we got in touch with this place through bookings and made the reservation at their advise and all this is recorded in the log we have with our first reservation all the phone calls and all their advises! we made the reservation and provided the Credit card details for payment we looked until midnight for the place and we couldn't find anything even though we asked everyone we could find on the street so after so much frustration we decided to head back to the cruise ship were we all work and end this stupid awful adventure! we are crew members working for royal Caribbean in the reservations department i will make my mission from this moment forward that everyone i can will be advised never to use Bookings.com in case my complaints are not met and replied accordingly. aside from the frustration of having all of our little free time lost driving around without a specific destination we spent $300 dollars in food we didn't eat or cook we spent $50 in gas driving around and after we accepted the option given by booking for the Hotel Maui 2 minutes from the sea when we couldn't find it at midnight and we asked them just to cancel that hotel they said to us that it would be non refundable because we didn't book with them! how ridiculous is this when we asked them to make the reservation they refused and then they advise us to make the reservation on our own and don't want to take charge on all this situation! please check all the details and all the phone calls me made that should me attached to Booking Number: [protected] PIN Code: 5235
this should show we didn't spent our time relaxing and enjoying a proper day out in Hawaii and now i have a Cancellation charge of $900 on my credit card for a hotel we were never even able to find!

I booked a Montmartr studio in Paris via booking.com.
When I arrived, the studio personnel was nowhere to be found. I was waiting for a girl with keys to show up for 3 hours (!)
Then, when she opened the door the sight was just horrific: stained sheets, used before, no ceiling lights, no toilet paper. Then, the wardrobe was not usable as it was stuffed with sheets and towels up to the ceiling.
I left immediately and had to book another hotel.
Now booking.com is telling me that it is "up to the studio owner to refund me" while he in turn told me that it is up to booking to refund my credit card.
As a result, I paid for hotels In Paris twice!
Should I file a lawsuit?

on the 24th september my daughter wanted to treat her boyfriend my daughter paid for a lovely room it had aurdrey hepburn pic on the wall looked gorgeous but my daughter got a room at the back of the appartment type block near to the place she booked the place was filthy had flies and stunk of we can show pics of what she ordered and what she got know i hear booking.com is not abta protected and these places can falsely show clean tidy places when its actually stinky room with flies you will get photos of the room she booked the second picture was the room she got so sad as she is only 18 years old and dont have any money as she dont work it just makes me annoyed the never gave her money back.

I booked a room for three nights at beautiful house harrow london via booking.com and was expected to check in at 1800 however my flight was late and the hotel gave the room to someone else and charged me for full three nights. Booking.com was unwilling to help and said that even if I had paid for full three nights it was the hotel policy that if guests was late by even few hours he/she could not get the room.
This is such a con and needs to be investigated by authorities.
Never trust booking.com again.