Booking.com
Reviews and Complaints

I was looking for a hotel near the Salt Lake City convention center, I went to the Red Lion Hotel in Salt Lake city, when I clicked on booking, it sent me to Bookings.com. I booked the hotel, only to find out later, they booked me to a Red Lion Hotel in England. I notified Bookings.com, but they said the Hotel refused to let me cancel. Even through their email says I can cancel via their online service. They said it was non refundable. There is something wrong with Bookings.com, when they change the hotel in the middle of a booking and send you to the wrong country. DO NOT USE BOOKINGS.com.

I had a bad experience at a hotel I booked through booking.com. The hotel location was bad, and the owner was a person who disparaged Americans, accused us of something we did not do, and tried to shame us. We are polite experienced travelers who are used to being treated in a polite and welcoming way. Anyway, booking.com refused to publish our review, even though it was within their guidelines. What appeared was a rating, but no comments. I will not be using booking.com again.

I have never been so disappointed in an international hotel booking site than in booking. com. I've been going to phuket, thailand for the last 3 years. I normally do the hotel accommodation myself by comparing 3 or 4 international websites with each other and by reading all the reviews on hotels that I am interested in. I've always made use of agoda. com because of their excellent rates. It was only in june 2012 that I have, for the first time, made use of booking. com, due to the stunning rate they have offered on baan laimai resort in phuket - in my opinion this was the biggest mistake in my whole life !

I took a chance by booking the hotel without even having my air tickets. I have received a confirmation message from booking. com, indicating that my payment confirmed and guaranteed my booking. I then proceeded in getting my air tickets. I was only able to get air tickets, departing earlier and leaving later, thus a longer period. However, luckily the 13 days that I have booked at baan laimai resort fell inside this period, but I need additional accommodation. It was only then, that I became suspicious about the booking. I asked booking. com to add more days at the hotel in the beginning of the set booking period. - they informed me that they did not have any availability but that I can cancel my booking, should I wish to do so (I really found this slightly odd as with the initially booking no cancellation could be done without losing all my money) the second time around I asked for more days at the end of my booking - with yet exactly the same excuse and option for cancellation. Two days later I received an email from booking. com informing me that they have seized their business with the said hotel due to recent complaints about the standard and quality of the accommodation at baan laimai resort. I found that very strange because on non of the websites'reviews of this hotel did I find anything like this. Booking. com told me that they do take the guest reviews and complaints very seriously and will thus suspend their service until the necessary improvements to the hotel have been made. And yes again - the assurance that I can cancel my booking and that the costs will be for the hotel's account..

I was still comfortable with my booking and payment - and did not want to cancel under any circumstances. However, the next message from booking. com really caused took the wind out of my sails. Booking. com informed me that my reservation was cancelled. They claimed that they have been contacted by the hotel to cancel this booking due to the temporarily closing of the hotel (Some what different from the first reason). In any event, I doubled checked on all the other web-sites - and baan laimai was pretty much open to business.

I wrote a message to booking. com - indicating my frustration by the cancellation and the different reasons therefor. I asked them to honor my booking as payment was received by them which had guaranteed my booking. I did not receive any response!. I sent the same message another 3 times - still with no response. Then I phoned the offices in south africa [protected] for 4 days in a row - with every consultant telling me another story until the last call, where I was told that booking. com doesn't owe me anything because they did not take my money - but that the hotel took it. I was also giving the advice to declare a dispute with my bank for payment ! How on earth ! I gave permission for payment by giving my banking details to booking. com and now this !

So yes, I have most probably lost my accommodation which I have done long in advance to get a good deal, even though I had not even purchase flight tickets at that time - I was willing to take this risk because I wanted to stay in baan laimai resort so badly. In my opinion I did everything in my power to guarantee my booking. In my opinion I am the victim in what I experience as a dispute on rates between the hotel and booking. com - as the rates charged on booking. com is well below to rates that are changed on the other websites. Now my booking is cancelled, and I stand the danger of not getting my money back or get new accommodation to the same quality and for the same value.
Apart from the fact that I do not have extra money - to make another booking - it is very late in the year to get decent affordable accommodation over the december period. So the chances will most probably be that I have to cancel my flight tickets - because I will not have accommodation or extra money for new accommodation.
I tried to make contact with the hotel, and I have received the following feedback & ndash; which did not really came as a surprise, because I was suspecting the problem was lying with booking. com’s incorrect rates.
“dear maralise brits
Greetings from baan laimai beach resort, patong beach, phuket!

We are really sorry for this inconvenience that caused, first off all we would clarify this problem that is not from our sides because this problem is come from booking. com that improve their system that make our price that shown on web site wrong. We have contact to booking. com about this problem and let them solve this problem for us, we cannot confirm all bookings that made with wrong rate until we received any responsible from booking. com. Many times have discussed with
Senior account manager of booking. com thailand, it's seem like they will not do anything that shown responsible with this mistaken, and last thing that they do with these booking and with us is stop sale contract and suspense our web page on their site. And all the bookings that have problem has cancelled from them also.
We just to solve this problem that if bookings have been charge, now we are under processing to refund for guest.

About your bookings we will do refund for you but if you would like to cancel we can offer special rate for you.
We do apologize for this inconvenience again”.

So all along booking. com was covering up for a vital mistake made by themselves and they are most probably getting away with it ! I think booking. com should be expose for what they are doing to innocent customers, they should take responsibility for their own mistakes by advertising incorrect rates and should instead of punishing and bad-mouthing the hotel, rather try their best to solve this mistake and accommodate their customers. All the customers have entered into a contract with booking. com and not with the hotel. So the responsibility lies with booking. com! A company like booking. com should not get away with this !

I made a booking through Booking.com for a hotel in Germany. A few months before the trip I found out I had lost my job and would not be able to go, so I cancelled. The cancellation went through as accepted, but thinking back, I do not recall getting a cancellation email - this admittedly is something I should have chased up, but I did not think at the time.

I then recieved a no show invoice from the hotel asking me to pay the full price within two weeks. I emailed them to let them know of my circumstances and that I would not be able to pay and should not have to pay as the fault lied with Booking.com. I also emailed Booking.com but they just told me to speak with the hotel directly. The hotel are now sending me demanding emails, stating that I must pay the money in full within the next week, I simply do not have £600 lying around to give them. They are threatening me with court and the Police if we do not pay. I have tried explaining that it is not my error so I should not be forced to pay, but they just say that I have to pay the money. I understand that they have lost money also, but I feel they should be compensated by Booking.com, not me.

Booking are not replying to my emails or doing anything helpful at all. I am very distraught and distressed at the whole situation.

I booked a room on www.booking.com at Ferme de Geffosse (http://www.gite-normandie.com/). They asked the details of my credit card all though it WASN'T a prepaid booking.
They informed me that I should keep in touch the rest of details of arrival with the hotel.
They passed all the details of the credit card to the hotel.
Due to a health problem at one of the travelers, we had to cancel our trip to France.
I wrote an email to the hotel to cancel the reservation .
After couple of days I saw a charge of 600E on the bank-card without my approval from the hotel.

I tried to contact the hotel immediately but they had a problem with the email server.

After couple of days they wrote me an email that booking.com confirmed the payment. It was a lie because they charged me (I saw at the bank!).

I wrote an email to booking but they didn't respond.

NEVER give your credit card details to booking.com because they facilitates fraud.

Bookıng. com gave best price guarantee therefore I didnot check the other websites, but ### today they charged me thousand usd more I checked the other and as seen below for the hotel I booked eastgate tower neyyork and for the same perid 18-31 october they are all cheaper and I would save more than 600 gbp if I picked kayak. com expedia. com etc for my bookişng

Dont trust them use other websites

£132 book
Kayak & pound;151 total w/taxes
More options
£132 go
Expedia. Co. Uk & pound;151 total w/taxes
£132 go
Hotels. com & pound;151 total w/taxes
£132 go
Reservetravel. com & pound;151 total w/taxes
£156 go
Booking. com & pound;179 total w/taxes

More sites and price details

I had made a reservation with Booking.com to the Shores of Panama from Oasis, Panama City Beach, Florda. Two days before my vacation, I called the hotel to confirm my reservation and they said my reservation had been cancelled. I called booking.com and they called the hotel to reconfirm the reservation, which they did. On my drive to the hotel on the first day of my vacation I again called the hotel to confirm my reservation and they again said it was cancelled. Booking had assured me my reservation was good two days prior to this. They ended up booking me in another hotel 4 miles down the beach away from from the rest of my family which caused me to sit in traffic for about two hours a day to get down to where my family was staying. They (Booking.com) claimed the new hotel (Caypso) was an upgrade but I have to disagree because we had less bathrooms and our east side seemed to have only one elevator working and 5 minute wait every time not to mention it was too far away from my other family members down by our orginal hotel. When I checked out, I had to pay 30% more than what I had planned for. This was the worst experience for a vacation you could have. The whole time I had the Hotel blaming Booking and Booking blaming the Hotel. What a nightmare. My Booking number was [protected].

Booked an Hotel with Booking.com on a Saturday afternoon, found the same hotel cheaper on another web site. Which I booked with a view to cancel the Booking.com, but couldn't due to a non refundable booking, so had to cancel the cheaper one. Found out that Booking.com do a price match so sent e-mails to customer service along with a scanned copy of my booking and payment through the cheaper company to assist them with the refund. Received an email back from Booking.com saying that they can only give a price match when they are notified to investigate the price match, which as you guessed it when they got round to a price match the cheaper company had increased in costs, so sending them my booking receipt was a waste of time. I will not be booking with them again and also the company (Blue chip) which I work for will not be using them again. Regards Lynda

My wife decided to book a one week stay in Florida near Disney. She found the Booking.com website and booked the vacation. She was aware that there were no refunds. She was also told that we would not be charged until we checked in. Unfortunately, we were charged prior to check in. There was a $1, 794.38 charge on our debit card. I was going to use my credit card when I arrived to charge the room. We had no problem with paying we just weren't ready to be charged yet and that caused us to have insufficient funds. We were able to move money into the account from another account but the point is they clearly stated we would not be charged and I had to pay a $35.00 fee at my bank. We called but got the run around. Fortunately the hotel chain is Holiday Inn and they couldn't have been more helpful. If you use Booking.com assume you will be charged right away and you can avoid this type of incident. For our part we learned a lesson.

I searched for a hotel in NYC for 3/2/2001. When I clicked through to Booking.com, their system transposed the date and month values, and the hotel received a reservation for 2/3/2001. I of course did not realize the glitch until I called to confirm with the hotel a few days prior to my trip. When the hotel couldn't find my reservation for 3/2 I checked my CC statement and saw that I had been charged as a no-show a month prior.

Unfortunately, since the hotel is not at fault, they have no incentive to offer me a refund or apply my charges towards another reservation. I called Booking.com where I spoke with an agent who initially tried to blame me for the mixup. When I told him that I would be contacting Kayak.com about the issue, he offered to call the hotel, but could not get them to refund or reapply the charges. He then told me that I was basically out of luck, and because Booking.com doesn't take payments from customers, they don't issue refunds.

This company does not stand behind their service, and when errors occur within their system, they blame the customer. They are unreliable and will leave you stranded with no recourse!

  An awful experience at Elphin Villas in Launceston. I've made a booking via BOOKING.COM of 2 bedroom studio for 4 person with confirmation that confirmed the rate at $150 however we were told $150 is for 2 person to stay in a 2 bedroom studio so $60 more has to be charged for extra 2 person upon check in. I then contacted BOOKING.COM and they said its kind of misunderstanding in which they will deal with the hotel to remain unchanged the rate. However the Receptionist Cathy couldn't be more than rude. She had never listened to the guest and kept saying that we are CHEATING in which she noticed that I did require for 4 person stay in the booking. I had never tried to cheat that we are 2. So I requested to see the manager Tania Seward for help and let her to talk to the agent but she ignored. As a hotel manager she had never tried to listen and help the guest but put all the responsibility on the guest's side even she noted our confirmation showed $150 but still insisted to charge us $210. I expressed I felt upset that her staff Cathy was terribly rude to said we were CHEATING, but she agreed and used her finger to point at the guest when we were making complaints.  It's unbelievable as a hotel manager could be such ridiculous and even couldn't handle such a minor case. Since we felt like being set so we decided to cancel the book then I called the agent to cancel the booking without any pentalty. However, Tania said we could do whatever we like but she will still charge our credit as late cancellation fee. I explained that it's not we intended to give up the accommodation but the problem was the rate showed difference in which was not our fault. 

Since she insisted charging us instead of letting us cancel the booking, we took a look of the room. ********The interior badly need renovation. Its very old and the beddings are dirty. The lightings also inadequate. Quite bad impression generally. *******We decided not to take the room due the the awful conditions and asked the hotel not to steal money from us but Tania horribly replied that it's not her money and she doesn't care. We then contacted BOOKING.COM again for help, the Senior Customer Care Excutive was surprisingly encourged tge hotel to CHARGE us even we were unhappy to the room rate difference, bad conditions of room & awful service of the hotel ! Since we felt helpless and wanted to call police. The awful manager Tania said she was happy to call the police for us but the police won't involve and no one could help us. After wasting 4 hours time there we left and my credit card was charged $210 right after. It's irridicuous to be charged for 4 person as it should only be charged the basic room charge for late cancellation or no show. We found that we were over charged then we called the hotel receptionist Cathy who stated that she didn't know anything and couldn't contact with the manager Tania then ignored the overcharge issue. I then called Tania on the next day regarding the over charge however she replied that she didnt understand what I meant and hung me up again. I felt so disappointed with this awful experience at Elphin Villas in Launceston.

We found NORTH LODGE with nearly a half price to stay in a penthouse. The hotel manager Renee  was so kind and helpful. She welcomed us and started conversation with us. After she found that we've got such a terrible day she then free upgraded  us to a penthouse with spa in the room as she also disagreed the attitude and the bad handling of Tania in which she would like to try her best to give us a pleasant stay and forget the bad impression about Launceston. I very much appreciated  Renee as she has the right attitude to work in the hospitality industry.

I'm working for Hilton Hotel & I have never seen a hotel manager could be that horribly rude & a hotel could over charged the guest and stated that it's according to the owner's instruction ! Moreover BOOKING.COM provided guest credit card details to the hotel and allow them to charge the guest without any responsibility ?!?!? It's awful & ridiculous  !  How could a hotel manager & customer excutive to do such awful thing to ruin a happy vacation of the tourist?! 

Anyway, trust me, don't stay at ELPHIN VILLAS and never make booking with BOOKING.COM. Its not worth the money. There are numerous motels along elphin road and we paid cheaper price finally but stayed happily at another motel with a magnificent view from the balcony. Don't risk spoiling your holiday like we did. 

Booking. com website won't accept my credit card number ("please enter a valid credit number") , although I entered the number perfectly correct and it worked well on expedia.
Impossible to contact the company as there is no phone number and not even a contact form on the website

Booked hotel from Oct 4 for 2 nights. On the 3rd contacted booking.com to say we could not make those dates as my husband was unwell. They did not contact the hotel until the 8th at which time the hotel told them we should have given alternate dates before the booking expired. If we had known that on the 3rd I would have come up with alternate dates. We have lost about 350 euros and booking.com are denying any responsibility. If I had booked direct with the hotel I would have known their policy but I expected booking.com to act on our behalf.
Any help you can give will be appreciated.

I was due to travel a considerable distance to attend a family wedding, and 2 days before I was to stay at the burnhouse manor hotel the hotel sent me an emal to cancel, they advised it was the booking. com's fault. When I called booking. Cm they advised it was not their problem. This caused a big family arguement at a time that should have been a celebration. I am getting no where with either the hotel or booking. com

I booked the hotel on booking.com for my vacation on Aug. 17-21st in Cambodia. On Aug.22, I got a feedback request email from booking.com about Terrasse des Elephants Hotel & Restaurant which was not the hotel that I stayed. There is a tool named “my booking” on Booking.com. On the FAQ of Booking.com, it says “you can cancel or change your booking via our self-service tool “my booking”. There is no record of the booking of Terrasse des Elephants Hotel & Restaurant in my “my booking” page. I cancelled all the other hotels in “my booking” except the one that I stayed. I trusted their system and thought it was convenient to manage my bookings in their system. I didn’t double-check those confirmation letters mailed to me because I thought it wouldn’t be necessary since they got all my bookings in their system. After I got the feedback request mail, I found the confirmation letter of Terrasse des Elephants Hotel & Restaurant and interestingly saw the very same phrase “you can cancel or change your booking via our self-service tool “my booking”” in it. How could I cancel a booking that is NOT in “my booking”? The cancellation policy of this hotel is that they will charge the total price of reservation in case of no-show. I called the bank and realized that I haven’t been charged yet. In order not to be charged, I mailed to Booking.com to explain this situation and they just simply replied me the cancellation policy. On Aug. 23, I mailed back and then their response are as follows:

Please note that the booking can be shown in the "my booking list" only when the guest loges in first before making reservations, otherwise, it will not be shown in the list. However, if you do not see your bookings in you list, it doesn't mean it is not in the system. When you made the reservations and clicked the button of "confirmation", the booking then has been made and confirmed by booking.com. A confirmation letter was expected to deliver to your email address. If you do not receive the confirmation letter, you are responsible for contacting us again.

I hope the answers above address your concerns.

And we are also contacting the hotel and seek the permission to waive the penalty for you. And we are currently waiting for the response.

We will get back to you as soon as possible when we receive the reply.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.

Kind regards,
---
Lijuan Yang
Customer Service Team

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I thought that means customers can’t trust their system because the records in “my booking” probably NOT ALL of their bookings. Why do they offer this tool and keep telling customers to manage and cancel their bookings via this tool? No response from booking.com on Aug. 24 and then I got a “noshow” letter on Aug. 25. It said that I was noshow at Terrasse des Elephants Hotel & Restaurant and will be charged $260 which is the total price of reservation. I am really worried about they’re going to charge anyway because they got the information of my credit card. I am still waiting for their response. Please beware of their unreliable system.

I booked a hotel with booking.com for my vacation for August 10-17th in waikiki, Hawaii. The pictures on the website on the hotel didn't look nothing like the hotel realy looked like. The website said that the hotel was a 3 1/2 star hotel but that was a lie more like 11/2 maybe a 2 star hotel. The furniture was all old and out of date the hot water in the shower didn't work and the lights didn't want to come on we had to keep turning it then it popped on. The bed spreads was all olded and out of date. We where very unhappy and unsatisfied with the room that we checked out 5 days early then we was going to. This mess up our vacation. Cause this room and hotel was not confortable to us. And to us this was false advertisement and i don't believe that this was right. We wasted $232.00 on this hotel. I will never use this website again for nothing and will not tell anyone esle to use it or the hotel. Cause it doesn't look like what it realy does. I am very very unhappy with this hotel and booking.com. What booking.com need to do is to make sure that the hotel pictures looks like it realy does before they put them on there site.

My credit card number was stolen during hotel booking on booking.com. Then it was charged with some crazy facebook expenses (probably facebook credits). This credit card I never used before on internet as it was a new one - only used on booking.com. What is strange is that this expenses were made on first day of my stay at hotel (no, it was not charged by hotel nor by booking.com). So it seems that one who stole my credit card numbers knew also the time when I was travelling and was difficult for me to check credit card expenses. It was not a large amount of money (30EUR) but when you multiply it by a thousand possible credit cards then it is a lot.

booking.com charged me for 4 rooms when i only booked 2 rooms, they will not return any money, they are just passing the buck

I have toured some countries with the booking.com's hotel reservation on may.
But there happened a serious problem.
When I came back, I received e-mail that noticed no-show payment for 4 hotels.
Suprising with the e-mail, I reviewed the situation.
I remember I cancelled all the hotel that I couldn't to go among the hotel I have booked
There is a 'my booking' page in the booking.com site, and there is a 'all my bookings' list in the 'my booking' page.
At last, I found that there aren't the names of the controversial 4 hotels in the 'all my bookings' list.
So, I couldn't realized that those hotels were booked.
I have thought that the booking.com site is very well-systemed and perfect.
I couldn't imagine that there were omitted hotels among the 'all my bookings' list.

I appealed to the customer service woman of booking.com company.
She explained it's the reason that I have booked without log-in.
I wonder why it expressed 'all my bookings' that are by no means all my bookings.
I was confused with the serious wrong information of booking.com company.
After my appeal, the company changed the 'all my bookings' to 'my bookings' in the site.
But they refused to refund for me.
Please let me know what can I do in this unjust situation.
Thank you.