Sonder USA review: Booking cancelled without notification

TL;DR: Booked a Dublin apartment with Sonder and on the day of the flight to Dublin, my girlfriend and I saw that our accounts had been BLOCKED. We didn't receive any notification of this happening and after reaching Customer Support, we were told our booking was CANCELLED and there was NOTHING they could do, we had to book something else. We arrived Dublin at around midnight without a place to stay, even though we did the whole booking process correctly.

On October 14th, my girlfriend and I booked an apartment called "Mountjoy Square" in Dublin through the Sonder website for the dates between the 9th and 13th of November. The booking process was fairly simple, having to both create an account, which was done with my girlfriend's credentials and details, and using my credit card, which then required an identity verification, that I did using my driver's license. After the booking was completed, we received a message asking us to validate our identity, which we already had done minutes before. I did it again, this time using my citizenship card. Besides this small hiccup with the validation, so far so good. Or so we thought.

After 3 days, on October 17th, my girlfriend receives by email another notification asking us to validate our identity, which we already did twice. At first we thought it was strange, but we thought 3rd time's the charm, and so I validated my identity again, using my citizenship card again. It seemed to have worked this time.

However, again some days pass, and on November 6th, my girlfriend receives another email, this time confirming the booking, but to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT apartment than the one we booked initially, named "Britain Quay". Upon seeing this mistake, my girlfriend reached Sonder through their application's chat and reported the issue. By chat, they were able to "solve" the problem, stating it was caused by an error in their service. After the chat concluded, they told her that nothing else was needed from our side, everything was aligned and we received an email with all the check-in details to the first apartment we booked, "Mountjoy Square", including the PIN to access the building and the PIN for the lockbox that had the key to the apartment.

We thought it was the end of the booking adventure we had so far. But the worst was yet to come.

On the day of our flight, November 9th, at around 8pm, we went to the Sonder application to make sure everything was okay with our booking. It was then that we saw that my girlfriend's account was DEACTIVATED. I had created an account as well, to receive the booking details invite on my side, and my account was also deactivated. We were livid to say the least.

We started panicking, reaching all the customer support channels we could think of, but we couldn't use the application's chat, since our accounts were not working. We could've called, but we didn't have money on our phones to call another country's number. We tried WhatsApp, but only the Spanish number worked. On WhatsApp chat, I asked for help, explaining we had a booking for that same day, but our accounts were blocked. Mind you, we were minutes away from boarding our flight, and he were about to lose internet access, not knowing if we were going to reach Dublin around midnight without a place to stay. By WhatsApp, the Spanish representative couldn't do much, the only thing he could say is that our accounts were blocked but we had to talk to someone from Dublin, and they were trying to do that themselves to help.

At that moment, I thought about creating a 2nd account to access the application, which I did. I then went to the Chat, the same Chat my girlfriend used to align the booking mistake, and I once again explained the situation. Unfortunately, I was at the plane by this time, so I made sure to give as many of our details as I could and asked if they could solve the issue, as we were about to fly. I was told they would be looking into it and to be sure they would do whatever they could to help.

We were really worried during our flight, but we hoped it was just another issue with their service that could be fixed.

Unfortunately for us, this wasn't the case. When we arrived Dublin and opened the app, we were being told that our accounts were deactivated due to being flagged by their security rules. They didn't explain what made the accounts be flagged. They also told us they sent us an email warning us of the situation and that our booking was being cancelled. This was a SHOCK as you might imagine. We just reached a new city we didn't know at around midnight, after a day of working, and we didn't have a place to stay after everything being good the day before.

I started complaining. The key fact about this whole situation was that we DID NOT receive any email letting us know what had happened. I mentioned this in the chat, which I was told it was a mistake from their side. Basically, they cancelled our booking, our accounts, and didn't notify us of this happening. Had we not opened the application before our flight and we would've only learned the situation when trying to access the apartment.

I still believed we could get our apartment back, I still believed that all of the incompetence so far could be turned around. We already had booked travel for "Mountjoy Square", and we started going on its direction, but upon arriving and after a lot of back and forth in the Chat with customer support, which you can read in the attachments, we were basically told they couldn't do anything and that our booking was fully cancelled. They told us a refund was sent (they sent us proof in the Chat, in which we saw that the refund was only sent on the exact same day, November 9th) and it would take 7-10 business days to be done and that the apartment we wanted was no longer available. They could only help us book a new apartment, which he had to pay again, even though we hadn't received the refund yet. Surprise surprise, the only apartment available was "Britain Quay", the apartment my girlfriend received confirmation for, supposedly by mistake. This was basically the last straw. The apartment was the same price as the one we booked, but it was super far away from the place we wanted to stay and they wouldn't neither reimburse the travel to the first apartment nor help us get to the new apartment.

It's fair to say we didn't want to have to deal with Sonder again. At almost 1 am, we had to look for another place to stay, near the first apartment, and we ended up having to stay at an hotel which was more expensive. Fortunately we had a way to pay this hotel, but imagine we didn't, imagine we only had the money we used at first to book with Sonder. We weren't getting this money any time soon. How were we going to get a place to stay without the refund money? What would we do? This would be a nightmare for some people.

This was the first and last experience with Sonder. It was a [censored] show from the start and now the only thing we can do is tell everyone our experience in hopes no one has to deal with them again. If you want to have a place to stay, please don't book with Sonder. Any other choice, even if more expensive, is a better choice in the end.

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