Hotel booking warning

[dr.girlfriend]

Ugh, I'm so mad at myself!  I wanted to book a stay at a hotel we had stayed at several years ago.  I googled the hotel name, and the first hit was a website that was like (www.)nameofhotel.com/guest_reservations.  I made a booking through the site and only afterwards realized it was a stupid third party travel website that charged me more and made a nonrefundable reservation.  I should have realized but I was juggling multiple tabs and trying to cancel another reservation at the same time as booking this one, and I got fooled.

I've been on hold with the third party place for more than an hour, but I'm pretty sure they are going to charge me massive fees to cancel and book directly with the hotel -- the fine print says they charge one night's stay plus all their extra fees for any cancellations.  So, just a warning to others, especially if you're out of practice with travel reservations due to COVID like I am!

[TR]

That is sneaky! I hope you're able to cancel without losing too much money.

[icedcoffee]

I booked a hotel through hotels.com last year and I thought I had filtered by only cancelable reservations but after I booked I noticed it was not cancellable. I immediately noticed and the process is to request cancellation through hotels.com who sends a message to the hotel asking for permission to refund. The hotel wouldn't allow it even when I told them I wanted to cancel and rebook the MORE EXPENSIVE refundable reservation just in case. It was super annoying.

Anyway--it turned out that my H had something come up and if it was refundable we would have just shortened the trip by 1 day, but because we couldn't I flew out a day early to be by myself. It was so sad. (Not! It was great!) But also annoying that they wouldn't work with me.

[k3am]

dr.girlfriend, assuming it hasn't been a long time since you've booked the reservation, if you can't get them to refund it with out fees, I'd consider reaching out to your credit card company to see if you can process a dispute. Document the amount of time you've spent attempting to contact them, etc.

[just]

This exact thing happened to my DH last year. Our Credit Card flagged it as suspicious and didn't process it, and we realized before reprocessing the booking. Sneaky fuckers.

[af1212]

Same thing happened to me a few months ago - luckily I noticed it was the wrong site just as I was about to click confirm.

[lolalolalola]

I did the same thing a few years ago. I was so mad at myself. They’re so sneaky and make it look like you’re on the hotel website. I didn’t realize it until I received the email confirmation.

[sadlebred]

I've gotten to where I only book on the hotel's own site (marriot.com, hyatt.com, etc). It's so bad!

[dr.girlfriend]

May 16, 2022 21:23:57 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

I've gotten to where I only book on the hotel's own site (marriot.com, hyatt.com, etc). It's so bad!

That's why I'm so mad!  I thought it WAS the hotel's website.  It's a boutique hotel, but like pretend it was called The Little Inn in Penn's Landing, I googled "The Little Inn in Penn's Landing" and the first hit was a website like (www).littleinninpennslanding.com/guest_reservations.  But the third party agency is called "Guest reservations" and has just snapped up domains for a bunch of boutique hotels and created websites that seem like they belong to the hotel.  Grrr.

The main number for the third party travel agency didn't even WORK.  A customer service number I found deeper in the website said my estimated wait time was 2 minutes, and an hour later no one had picked up.  I swear I don't know if anyone ever would.  I figured considering it a lesson learned was better than giving myself high blood pressure angrily waiting for a customer service rep who would be unlikely to help anyway and gave up.  :-(

[dr.girlfriend]

May 16, 2022 15:42:52 GMT -5 just said:

This exact thing happened to my DH last year. Our Credit Card flagged it as suspicious and didn't process it, and we realized before reprocessing the booking. Sneaky fuckers.

Yeah, I'm so mad at myself because I actually did get a text from my credit card asking if I authorized the charge but I thought it was just because it was the third hotel we booked (we're hitting up three cities on this trip) and so they were worried about the amount of new charges, not the vendor.  

[sadlebred]

dr.girlfriend I'd be so mad!!!! I hate that!

[icedcoffee]

May 16, 2022 22:07:50 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

May 16, 2022 15:42:52 GMT -5 just said:

This exact thing happened to my DH last year. Our Credit Card flagged it as suspicious and didn't process it, and we realized before reprocessing the booking. Sneaky fuckers.

Yeah, I'm so mad at myself because I actually did get a text from my credit card asking if I authorized the charge but I thought it was just because it was the third hotel we booked (we're hitting up three cities on this trip) and so they were worried about the amount of new charges, not the vendor.  

Dispute the charge. That’s sketchy AF.

[gt7301b]

I heard on a finance podcast that this is happening more frequently, so this is a good warning for people. Thanks for the reminder.

[k3am]

dr.girlfriend, at this point, I'd definitely dispute the charge.

[imojoebunny]

If you can, dispute the charges based on site impersonation/fraud, especially, if it is far out, I would try. We travel quite a bit, and for anything other than huge chain hotels, have much better luck calling to book. Occasionally, we will get a "you can only get that rate booking on-line", but not very often. Many times, we get a better room/rate calling the actual hotel. We started doing this because we needed two rooms next to each other or a room with a space for our very noise sensitive kid, but it works well for lots of request. The staff at the hotel know the rooms, so if you want an interior room, that is quiet, they can help you. If you want the room with the pool side access, they can get you that, too, for not much different.

[Gato]

I noticed that happening multiple times when I was booking my upcoming Arizona trip. These sites use all the tricks to make sure their listing comes up first. It's maddening.

Google seems to do a better job of putting the actual site you want first. The Microsoft Edge browser is really terrible.

[mich1]

Something similar happened to me a few years ago when I was trying to get an e visa for Turkey. I had gone into the tr.gov site (directly) and got the price, so knew how much it should cost. When I went back to (what I thought) the site, I got all the way through filling in the fields and when I got to the cost, it was about 3x what was in the tr.gov site. At that point, I backed out of it but was pretty pissed that I had filled out all the forms up until that point only to find out that I had clicked on the wrong link. The price was the ONLY thing that cued me in.

It is getting harder and harder to find the exact site I'm looking for rather than a third party.

[dr.girlfriend]

Thanks, everyone. I don't really think I can dispute the charge because I clicked one of those "I accept the terms and conditions" boxes but it helped a ton to vent and know I'm not alone -- and maybe help someone else from being taken in!

ETA:  I did check with the hotel directly and the booking *has* been made, so it's not a total scam, just scammy.  It probably cost me an extra $100 per night of the booking plus the nonrefundable aspect of it which is not the hotel's policy but that of the travel agency.

[carriebear822]

May 18, 2022 21:15:36 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

Thanks, everyone. I don't really think I can dispute the charge because I clicked one of those "I accept the terms and conditions" boxes but it helped a ton to vent and know I'm not alone -- and maybe help someone else from being taken in!

This just happened to one of my employees using their corporate card and we tried to dispute it. The 3rd party company sent in the T&C and we lost the dispute due to them checking that box.

[arehopsveggies]

That happened to my husband last year. I was soooo mad. Somehow I did get it cancelled there was just another fee for canceling. But even with that it was cheaper to cancel and rebook

[RockNVoll]

I noticed this same issue when trying to book tickets online for various cultural sites during our recent Spain trip. The URL and site graphics/language totally looked official but I kept checking against a Rick Steve's book to make sure it was the right website. Very scammy and I'm sorry that happened to you.