Hotelscheap.org reviews and complaints

On August 31 I booked two rooms through hotelscheap.org at the Melrose in Washington, DC for the Thanksgiving holiday. Our travel plans were impacted by Hurricane Sandy and I wanted to add one night to one room and subtract one night from the other -- a wash in terms of cost, but I figured I should go through hotelscheap.org to work this out. I was told that I had no reservations; that they had been canceled. Why? How? When? When was I supposed to find out? No explanation save something nebulous about the hotel accepting walk-in guests. I pressed but to no avail. I received a cancelation from this company by email while I was on the line with the representative who assured me that my refund would be processed within 24 hours. I called my credit card company today. Nothing yet. I called hotelscheap.org and was told the refund had been processed buy it would take 3 to 7 days for it to 'show'. This representative also insisted that I MUST have gotten notice of the cancelation. Not so. I asked to speak to someone and was told that the 'department' that handles cancelations only speaks to customers being canceled. HUH? I said I didn't know whether hotelscheap was the hotel's vendor or the other way around, but that as a customer I regarded hotelscheap as a company of all feasance: mis, mal and non. To think that I would have shown up at the Melrose fully expecting to check in and begin a happy holiday with my family only to learn then that we had no rooms and that hotelscheap had a considerable amount of my money. NEVER do business with hotelscheap. Stick to the reputable, tried and true companies.

I've wasted hours of my life on the phone with them. Approx. 10 different service people who couldn't use my codeto redeem a coupon that I had earned.They would place me on hold for a seriously long time so I could talk to their supervisor ( who was just another co worker ) or in a few instances would give me another number to call which seemed to be hotels.com where they didn't use the code. One person assured me that after he took down all my credit card info and placed the reservation that someone else would enter the rebate code for me. I tried to cancel that reservation within the same call and they still wanted to charge me their hidden penalty fee. I could go on and on. Now that I think back to my summer vacation which I had booked through them, I recall that the hotel we had booked had no record of our booking and said it was a wrong code. Luckily we still we able to book. I think that both websites are affilitated with eachother and they are both scams! I wonder if anyone has ever been able to use the 30 per cent back credit coupon. My husband thinks you pay a premium to book with them in the first place as he was able to find better prices on the internet for same rooms on our summer vacation.

I am frustrated by the amount of time I wasted trying to redeem our credit back coupon only to be finally told by the last rep that we couldn't use them in an angry tone ...for this time period. STAY AWAY from both hotelscheap.org and hotelscheap.com.