Booking.com
Reviews and Complaints

Hi, a friend made a reservation for me through Booking.com. The quoted price was €442. When I got the confirmation email £442 (Pounds, Sterling) was converted to Euro. When I contacted Booking.com they responded that the quoted price is converted into the currency of the country one is staying in. That is fair enough but is it fair to advertise a price in Euro, magically transform that exact price into a Sterling (GBP) amount and then convert back to Euro again? The difference in price is approximately €150! I do not think that any company should be allowed to conduct its business in this fashion

I made a reservation of a hotel (Courtyard by Marriott Stockholm Kungsholmen) using booking.com service. I stayed at this hotel for 9 nights (from July 1st, 2014 to July 10th, 2014). Later I was sent an email by booking.com with a request to survey my experience at the property. I did it honestly, trying to be as much impartial and objective as possible. I also gave my opinion in the form of "Yes/No" answers on about 20 similar reviews of other guests of the Courtyard. Yet, I can't see neither the text of my review, nor the overall score, derived from my survey, on a corresponding webpage http://www.booking.com/hotel/se/courtyard-stockholm.en-us.html?sid=4e694c35821b1f56cee1e482705815de;dcid=1;ucfs=1;srfid=e4bcebc185b65f34f17c153866692016452a9b42X22#tab-reviews
This single fact allows me to suggest the worst: the booking.com team or specially crafted software, or the both do their best job to keep up the total score and positive public opinion of certain properties on a decent level (say no lower than 8.5, excellent). I don't think that all the reviews and scores presented there are fake, they are just carefully selected. Thus statistics are skilfully biased and the whole picture distorted. So don't expect to get objective info about quality of an accommodation from booking.com, their figures lie!

I made a booking via Booking.com for a local hotel room with the payment option to pay upon arrival. The hotel made an error when charging my card and charged me for less than the amount of the hotel room. When they discovered their error they called to inform me that they would need to get my credit card information to recharge my card for the balance. When i contacted the hotel to sort out the error they informed me that they got my credit card information from booking.com and charged my card already for the balance. I think that people need to be very careful with this site as they seem very nonchalant about people's credit card information.

I booked a hotel in France for 1 night, but required parking. The booking.com website states that they have parking at an additional fee, but there is no option for booking the parking at the time of paying for the hotel.
I requested parking at the point of paying as a note. I then went back into my reservation right after making the booking and requested parking. The reply back was that there was no parking for that night. As such I cancelled the booking right away.
Booking.com then told me that I would be charged 100% of the fee.
I would not have booked this hotel if I knew that they had limited parking. This was never pointed out on there website and there is no option to book it in advance.
I had no choice but to pay the full amount and book another hotel.
In the past I have used booking.com for business, but I will not use them again. When complaining they tell you that it is the hotel's responsibility, but when you talk to the hotel they tell you that the booking was made through booking.com so you must talk to them.
This attitude is unacceptable and almost fraudulent, but not quiet.
There is also no one, as far as I can tell, to complain to for a resolution within the travel industry so this type of behaviour will continue. The only way to get anywhere is for people to stop using this site until they relaise that their customers should be treated correctly.

We recently booked a hotel via booking.com and when we decided that we were no longer able to go on the trip, went online to cancel.

We logged into booking.com, selected the hotel booking in question and clicked on the cancel button. The website produced a screen that advised our booking had been canceled and we assumed all was done. We even went back into the system later in the day to confirm the cancellation and saw the system had already registered the change.

The day after we were to have checked into the cancelled booking, we received a "no show" email from booking.com and a bill on our credit card for the full duration of the stay ($1500). We were not impressed.

We looked back through our e-mails and realized that the booking.com system had not generated a cancellation e-mail, and when we spoke to booking.com directly they told us their system does not make mistakes and there is no record of our attempt to cancel the booking. Finally they told us that this was not their problem and we are to take it up with the hotel from here on.

We are not the only ones with this type of problem, friends have come up to us lately complaining of similar challenges with booking.com.

There is clearly a technical issue with the booking.com website and the company refuses to accept any responsibility to fix it, let alone acknowledge it exists.

Use booking.com with extreme caution, they are happy to take your booking and your money, and when you run into problems (which you will), you end up dealing with untrained individuals who are not equipped nor motivated to help the client.

Overall we are VERY displeased and would not recommend anybody use Booking.com.

We used this company several times in 2013 and tried again in 2014. IT is not any better. Places they book are often dirty, unkempt and not as advertised.

Customer service is arrogant and doesn't care a bit about what your problem is. They use the excuse that they are not responsible even though THEY charge you up front and are agents for the sites.

They have very fine print and will charge your card well in advance (regardless of what it says). They will charge you the FULL Amount even if you cancel and you play hell to try and get your money back.

I booked a hotel room 9 days in advance and as soon as I realised (17 minutes later) that the hotel was outside of the city and required a car I cancelled the booking and contacted booking.com and informed them of my mistake. They informed me that to cancel the room the hotel would take the whole cost of the stay I had booked :Total cancellation cost € 439.245
Calling the hotel I receive no help and booking.com are no help. This is robbery and I'm sure it must be a fraudulent practice. Totally disgusted and am looking for a way to get my booking refunded.

I used booking.com for hotel room reservation in WxW Istanbul Hotel. Regarding to some changes in the schedule, I canceled it within the free cancellation period later on. I did not notice whether I received a confirmation email or not at that time due to my problematic web mail account. But I am sure I had finished the cancellation process. After that I made another booking for my colleagues in that hotel again,

And now I am being charged by the hotel for Euro 238 as No Show Charges and booking.com says they can do nothing because I cannot prove I canceled my reservation. One of the CR hang off the phone when I am still explaining the my case.
CR told me to settle this with the hotel. The hotel, claims that they never received my cancellation. It is the problem of the system of Booking.com.
I had done nothing wrong but choosing the wrong agent.

Booking.com, I will never use it again, and of course, I'll make sure my friends won't use it again from now on.

On Jan 15 at 18:47 I booked a hotel in California for Jan 17 through Booking.com from my home in Colorado. It stated that it could be cancelled free up to two days before. Later on Jan 15 I went to cancel the booking and Booking.com showed a charge. I called Booking.com and they told me that they go by Central European Time. So by their reckoning it was already Jan 16! Obviously any deadlines should be quoted in the local time of the hotel. Furthermore the email confirmation they sent me showed: ">From January 16, 2014 2:47 AM [CET] : USD 64. This reservation can't be canceled free of charge."
This was exactly the time I made the reservation at (January 15, 18:47MST). So its clear that their booking system has a bug. They compute the day you reserve based on CET time. This may be a day later than the hotel date and so they think you cannot cancel free. Customer Service did fix this, but the error is still in their system.

I feel there is a need for all suppliers to be aware of the difficulties I have had in dealing with Booking.com, and to warn all operators that this company treats its suppliers with utter disdain.

It all started with an overbooking. Guests arrived for a 2 night stay and we knew nothing about them and we could not locate any booking email. Unfortunately we were full for the weekend and could not accommodate them. We therefore looked up alternative accommodation on Booking.com, so that it would still get its commission, and found another nearby property that had a vacancy, but at a slightly higher tariff. It also provided breakfast which we don’t as we are a self-catering property. The guest agreed to the accommodation and price and so I rang and personally spoke to a Booking.com operator who agreed after consulting the guest to transfer the booking to the other property. The guests were satisfied, and left to go to the other accommodation.

Booking.com then had the hide to try and charge me commission, despite putting through the new booking to the other property and charging them commission as well. I lodged a strong complaint about double dipping and they finally reversed the charge to me.

The next thing is I received an invoice from Booking.com for the $55 extra tariff that the guest had to pay, despite the fact that they had agreed to pay it.

If we were to be charged the extra $55 then the operator should have clearly told us so at the time. In such a case I would have booked cheaper alternative accommodation elsewhere. I’m not in the business of shelling out $55 for nothing ! I don’t know why they have taken this stance, as they earned extra commission on this booking because the tariff, agreed to by the guest, was $55 more than they would have otherwise got. I have refused to pay their invoice.

Not long thereafter we received a 4 night booking email from Booking.com for a guest to arrive the same day on behalf of an Italian Travel Agent with no individual name specified. We thought this was a bit strange, but as these are confirmed bookings, and came via an official Booking.com email, we had to accept it. The email provided AMEX credit card details for payment, however as we don’t accept AMEX we tried contacting the guest for an alternative credit card. The phone number given and the email address did not work. I then looked up this company on the Internet and could find no reference to it, and the address that was provided did not exist.

We were full for the first two nights of this booking and felt that we couldn’t just cancel it, as the guest may well just turn up. In the meantime we turned away two other inquiries for the first two nights of this booking in the same unit. It became more obvious that this might be a fake booking. Naturally, by the end of the night, no-one turned up and we had no option but to cancel the booking. Unfortunately in the meantime we had lost the opportunity, and income, to book the unit to someone else. We notified Booking.com and lodged a complaint about the fake booking.

After I had warned other operators in my local area, I received a phone call from another property advising that they had just received three fake bookings !

One of the first suggestions that I made to Booking.com was that they should have performed a simple credit card test at the time of making a booking. Booking.com asks suppliers to list what credit cards they accept on it’s website, but then they just allow the guest to enter details of a card that is not actually accepted. In this case, had the guest not been able to make a booking using AMEX, the fraudulent booking may not have come through and we would not have lost the income that we did. Of course the credit details would have most likely been fake as well, or it was a stolen card, however Booking.com does no credit card checks.

So what did Booking.com do ? They issued me with a termination notice for daring to criticise their procedures and making suggestions for improvement ! Their only argument was that their terms and conditions state that every property must accept AMEX credit cards. I felt they had no right to demand that properties take a specific type of credit card. I wondered whether they were getting some sort of kick-back from AMEX.

I therefore decided to do a bit of investigation and found that, of the 140 properties listed on Booking.com in my local area alone, 67 (or 48%) do not accept AMEX credit cards ! No doubt this statistic could easily translate to all other properties in Australia, let alone the world. It was impossible for me to agree to Booking.com’s contract conditions in the circumstances. So if they were going to terminate my listing because I didn’t take AMEX, then they should do likewise for every other property in the world that also doesn’t accept AMEX.

In any case they obviously allow properties to transact without AMEX as evidenced by the banner on the booking page for my property warning guests that this type of credit card is not accepted, and the fact that their Extranet requires properties to indicate which credit cards they do accept and which they do not. In any case the warning would have little influence on hackers. A simple test at the time of a guest booking would easily solve this issue. Instead suppliers have to go the trouble of trying to contact a guest to get another credit card. Why they can’t see that is simply beyond me. They steadfastly refused to change their process.

One of their junior employees in Australia then advised me that this particular booking was legitimate and they had other bookings from this same “Travel Agency”, even though he had done no checks of his own to see if it was in fact a real company/travel agent !

There is obviously a problem with Booking.com’s business model. As they don’t take any funds from the guest, all the risk is on the supplier.

After further representations from me they eventually reinstated my property.

When they continued to chase me over the unpaid $55 invoice for the overbooking, I decided that, as I had lost money on the fraudulent booking, I would invoice them to recover my costs. I therefore sent them an invoice for the same amount of $55 which was just a token amount of compensation for the 2 nights lost income that I could have received had I not kept the reservation for the fraudulent booking. Needless to say they have ignored this invoice which is now accruing interest on a monthly basis.

Of course the sensible thing to do would be for both of us to cancel our $55 invoices and call it quits in the interest of good customer service. But that’s a bit too much for a company like Booking.com. They have now suspended me again for non payment of their $55 invoice, whilst at the same time ignoring my own invoice!

Stupidity reigns supreme at Booking.com !

I am writing here with a complaint against the inaction of booking.com and China Hotel Marriott in Guangzhou, China.
The point is that I booked two rooms in this hotel on October 18, 2013. Those were bookings for my colleagues who went to China for a business trip. I reserved the rooms via booking.com using my credit card but I indicated in the comments box that the guests would pay for their stay on their arrival by the card of one of them (it was written that it is possible to give my credit card number just as a booking guarantee).
Nevertheless, when the guests checked-in, I got a message on my mobile phone that China Hotel Marriott charged 1380 RMB from my card. I know that the whole cost of their stay was charged from the guest's credit card at check-out. I immediately contacted booking.com and they assured me that this sum of money was not charged but was only “frozen”. They assured me that the money would be returned to my card within 35 days.
35 days passed and nothing happened.
I would like to point out that I am not a sheik’s daughter and not an oil tycoon to forget about this money. This is a big sum of money for me.
I contacted booking.com again who promised to settle the problem as soon as possible. We have been corresponding for almost three weeks already, but this correspondence gave no results. I provided booking.com with my credit card bank account statement which they asked for. It is clearly stated there that the money was charged by the hotel but it was never returned to me.
They also asked me to send them a scanned copy of the invoice which the guests received when he checked out of the hotel. However, I do not have this document because it was sent to our auditing company two months ago and there is no possibility to get it back. Anyway, I am absolutely sure that China Hotel has all records of the guests’ payments and it is not such a tall order to get it from them. Besides, it is written on booking.com that they have an office in Guangzhou, but for some reason they cannot send anyone to China Hotel Marriott to get the invoice and settle the matter.
They refuse to give my money back without the invoice which I am not able to provide through no fault of mine!
Now 2, 5 months passed of wasted nerves and time. I cannot remain patient because any patience has an end.
I hope that you will help me and make China Hotel Marriott and booking.com DO THEIR WORK THE WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE, without postponing issues which they obviously consider unimportant.

Best regards,
Yulia B
[protected]@atletika.ru

i had book a hotel via booking.com, it is pre-payment type and i had paid via credit card. But after few weeks i received email from the hotel said that their hotel will undergo renovation during my stay period. Booking.com appologies and provide the solution that request me to book alternative hotel and the different charge will be refund to me after my stay period. Once i back from my said trip, i had email several times to them but get no any reply. Their customer services is truly bad. Will not consider to booking hotel via this website anymore.

2013, we had made rooms reservation with booking.com for dec vacation earlier in october..we booked 4 family rooms with special request:same level and non smoking.our request was confirm via email.so thats settle.when the time came for us to check in hotel we were told by hotel staff that our family rooms were unavailable yet cause they were all taken by vip cause they book earlier than us.than why show there are 5 family rooms left for us to book.after some arguing the staff put us on different rooms and separate levels, over all we did not get what we expect and what we want when time of booking.no more booking .com for us.

I have booked a room at the Carleton Hotel in Singapore for the night of November 14, 2013 about 4 days earlier, booking number [protected]. I used my husband I Pad and cancel the room on their website customer service, click on cancel booking on line. I wrote a note that while I was travelling, please confirm the cancellation on my travelling email address. This never arrived. A few days later, I received a bill of Carlton Hotel in Singapore for $217., I then emailed Booking.com and asked what happened. Again, no reply
I certainly will never use this site again and will pass it around.
I would like my money back.
D. Lawrence

Made 2 hotels reservations on booking.com with free cancellation policies. Then my plans changed and I canceled them. They didn't send me confirmation emails (I think it was done intentionally) though site showed that reservations were canceled. I was surprised not to see cancellation emails and at first though it's just their email system delay - sometime emails come late, I didn't receive and next day went to their site to double check and site showed that cancellation was done indeed. Silly my I didn't make screen shoots. Eventually they charged me money and refused to help insisting that I forgot to cancel, which I surely did. Woman in their customer service were even screaming at me. Now I see that there's a lot of complaints from other people about similar cancellation issues. Stay away from them.

Hy,

My name is Victor and I´m from Spain.
On Sunday 14/09/2013, checking by bank account, realized that a hotel from Rotterdam charged 122 euros in my credit card. Because I´ve been using this credit card for 5 years only to guarantee my reservations in Booking.com, and of course I`ve never reserved a hotel in Rotterdam, I called Customer Service in Madrid asking for explanations. The guy that attended me, was very nice but he only said that there was nothing strange in my booking.com account.
Then I contacted by mail with the hotel manager in Holland, asking him to help me to find out what happened.
This afternoon I received by e-mail the copy of the reservation, and the invoice, and surprise, surprise, the reservation was made by someone named " free man" throw www.booking.com. This person didn`t show up, and the hotel charged in my credit card a 2 day stay.
In the invoice are my credit card number, with the correct digits, the correct expiration date, but only with one of my names ( I have a compound name), without my surname and with the wrong back number (CVC), 123 instead of correct one.
Today, I formulated a formal complain to the police, and gave it to my bank that`s going to return my money.
The problem is that I can`t trust anymore in making a reservation over Internet if a big company like Booking.com can`t ensure the confidentiality of my credit card details.

Thank you

I used Booking.com to reserve a hotel in Montreal. Immediately after purchasing the reservation, I discovered the address I'd been given was wrong. Within five minutes of the purchase, I contacted Booking.com to change (not cancel) my reservation. They refused, saying my reservation was non-refundable. I sent them screen-shots showing that the link for cancellations/changes takes the user around in circles without actually providing them the opportunity to cancel or change. I sent them screen-shots showing that their non-cancellation policy was made visible only after purchase. In spite of only a five minute delay, Booking.com refused to consider the case and my credit car was charged the full amount. I will not use Booking.com again, their site is misleading, if not down-right disnhonest.

On July 15 I booked a hotel in Paris via booking.com for €437, 00 for Thursday, 18 July 2013 until Sunday, 21 July 2013.
On Thursday, 18 July 2013 I picked up the key in a building far away form the apartment. The safety boxes in the office, that held the keys, had no staff member attending it. After we picked up the key we walked to the apartment and at 5:30pm we entered the room.

It was hot inside, the window was open and could not be closed and locked (4the floor). The first impression was not good at all. The AC was out of order. There was no WiFi and after switching the router off and on (as explained in the spanish written welcome document!) it still didn't work. Maybe it was the loose cables that came out of the wall. In the bathroom there was a used shampoo and the whole apartment did not look clean at all. The worst however was the bed with its used sheets. This was disgusting. This we saw at 6:05pm.
It was impossible to sleep in such a bed and we tried calling the agency. We wanted them to clean the room or to get an alternate apartment where we could stay.
First we called the agency office. We could only reach an answering machine telling us that the agency is closed on Thursdays at 6pm. Then we called the emergency number at 6:11pm. Also here we only reached an answering machine! At 6:12pm we called the emergency number again and again, there was no person to talk to. So we left a voice message explaining the reason for our call as well as the room conditions and we asked them to call us back. We left our phone number and waited. Until today nobody got back to us! And we called the emergency number! This is unacceptable, an emergency number should always be reachable by a real person.
At 7pm we left the apartment and cancelled the booking with all details described on booking .com. I received a cancellation confirmation immediately from Booking.com. So we booked a different hotel which was more expensive.

On July 23 I checked my credit card account and realized that the hotel charged me 218, 00€ on July 16 as well as on July 22 (436, 00€ in total). Even I called the emergency number at arrival nobody got back to me. Instead they charged me for this uninhabitable apartment. I called the customer service at booking.com more then once and I wrote more than 15 emails with photos and screen shots, explained the situation and sent an email with details and images attached on July 23.

What did Booking.com do? They asked the hotel to give me 50% of the money back. That's it. I couldn't stay there (check the images attached) and I couldn't reach anybody in the hotel to give an different apartment. And booking.com says that it is my fault that I cancelled the reservation. Now I payed 218, 00€ for nothing. Booking.com didn't even sent the link so I can write a review on their page. They say: "A review invitation is sending to the guests just after their stay at the hotel, but only if you stayed at hotel. As you cancelled your reservation and left on arrival, you don't have the possibility to write a review on this hotel." And they said that I should never book a hotel on booking.com with a user review rating less than 7.

My learnings so far: Stay away from booking.com. They don't help you if you have trouble with the hotel. Also you will never see reviews on booking.com from people who couldn't stay in a hotel because of various reasons.

Christian

Credit Card Details taken!
Over the years myself and my wife have successfully used booking.com and have never had a problem, until recently... A month ago, my wife received a call from our bank asking if she had used her credit card for online purchases that day (as one had been declined) - it turns out they were criminals using her card unauthorised!, please note: we are very careful with our data, pin numbers, statements, etc.. we shred everything & cover up pin numbers / check bank details daily.. The bank cancelled her card and sent another through the post.
Today we received another call from the bank with yet another 2 unauthorised transactions! My wife has only used the card once - with booking.com to secure a hotel booking! And thinking back to the previous transactions on the old card, a "secure" payment was made just before the unauthorised transaction happened!
Be aware that booking.com take you details "securely", but then pass your details to hotels, etc.. unsecurely!