Hotels.com / OneKey problems

[Cat]

Happy Sunday, from the long, traffic-filled road from Denpasar to Ubud!

I’m having some problems with Hotels.com, since switching to OneKey – I had a change of plans and needed to rebook part of my journey (the slow boat to Flores involved some very rough seas, lots of vomiting, and I changed my mind about doing the return journey), so I needed to book 3 more nights of hotels. The hotels I wanted were actually cheaper on Hotels.com than elsewhere, so I booked there, despite having just switched to OneKey. Oddly the booking confirmation never came through, and the pending OneKey cash and trip element aren’t showing in my account, which is annoying. I’ve contacted Hotels.com, and they keep sending me an email saying that they’ve re-sent the booking confirmation. This has now happened 3 times, but no booking confirmation has arrived. I’ve checked my spam folder, there’s nothing. I do want the trip elements, to get to Platinum (I might as well, and it might be useful for a status match).

Has anyone else had this?

I also had a deeply annoying incident where I booked a new hotel that recently opened back in November, and clearly got an introductory rate, along with 30% off for being Gold. I booked an overwater bungalow, which at the time was the same price as a mountainside villa. I absolutely love falling asleep over the water, with the sound of the waves all around me,and was willing to pay a bit more than usual for this room. My booking confirmation referred to the room as an Exclusive Studio Suite, without mentioning whether the suite was overwater or mountainside (I know I booked overwater, I double checked and triple checked before booking). I arrived to check in at 8:30pm, after a hellish journey, 1 hour out of Labuan Bajo on a dreadful road that I really struggled to find a driver willing to drive on. When I checked in, they had moved me to a mountainside villa, and claimed that this is what I had booked. Their booking confirmation was via Expedia, was dated 2 months after I made the booking (Jan rather than Nov), and also referred to the Exclusive Studio Suite but then said hillside in Bahasa Indonesia. When I explained and showed my booking confirmation, they argued, said for the price I paid, it must be the villa, laughed at me and claimed mine was fraudulent, as it did not come from Expedia (I did explain they were the same company) and said they wouldn’t do anything until I showed them the real booking confirmation. I was absolutely devastated, as I’d spend most of the last 2 days travelling the length of Flores, I felt utterly disgusting, and I’d been daydreaming about stepping down into the sea from my deck, and going for a lovely swim the entire time.

My suspicion is that, at some point in January, they realised that people would pay much more for the OWB, and they changed the pricing structure, and downgraded all of the cheaper, early bookings to the mountainside villas, and sold the OWBs for twice the price I paid. They have since renamed all of the room categories and added two new room categories, yet the names on Hotels.com don’t match the names on Booking.com, and neither match the names on the hotel website itself, I suspect to enable exactly the same kind of bait & switch they pulled on me.

Anyway, it was by this point 9pm,the odds of finding another taxi willing to drive me back to town at that time were slim, and the odds of finding a bed that wasn’t in a YH dorm were slimmer and anyway the cancellation deadline was passed so I would have had to pay either way, so after a chat with Hotels.com, I had to take the room downgrade. I’m still trying to negotiate with Hotels.com for reasonable compensation – they’ve offered me less than 10% of the value of the booking, in the form of a voucher.

Has anyone got any sage words of wisdom on how to get Hotels.com to pay more?

I’m obviously going to eviscerate the hotel in TripAdvisor.

Any and all advice gratefully received!

TIA

P.S. I’ll get round to a trip report at some point!

[NorthernLass]

@Cat, I can’t offer much help, but I live in hope that one day you will have a completely stress-free holiday!

I’ve pretty much given up on hotels.com, but some years ago we were charged extra taxes at check-in, on top of the price shown on our booking confirmation (about £90 in total). I complained to hotels.com, pointing out that they were failing to comply with advertising standards regulations in respect of transparent pricing, and they refunded us the extra amount PDQ.

Just for clarification (sorry if I missed it), does your booking confirmation say water villa? If so, you can definitely argue that you didn’t get what was advertised, and what you paid for.

[Cat]

No, the confirmation just says Exclusive Studio Suite, but when I booked it, the booking page said Exclusive Studio Suite – Sea Villa. Now the rooms are all called different names, and I suspect my booking was muddled in the shuffle (or maybe it was a deliberate decision to sell the Sea Suite for a higher price) 🤷🏻‍♀️, either way, I’m annoyed!

[NorthernLass]

Grghh, you might struggle then, but I would still lodge some sort of formal complaint. It’s a faff, but a couple of times when a confirmation hasn’t exactly matched what I booked, I rebooked it taking screenshots at each stage. (I think at least one of these might have been a bit of a “too good to be true”-type deal 🤦‍♀️).

Anyway, hope you can relax and enjoy the rest of the trip – September will be here before you know it! I just remembered it’s A level results *this week* as well 😱

*Point us to your TA review, as well, I’d love to read that!

[meta]

Sorry to hear your issues. I had this issue before, but I luckily had a screenshot of the booking page. Hotels.com gave me an option to move or compensation in form of a voucher for the entire stay. I would press them more. Maybe calling them instead of online chat would yield more favourable result.

[Cat]

I’m trying not to think about results day! Two A-Level classes and then a whole load of GCSE students the following week!

I wish I had screenshotted, I really do.

[Cat]

meta wrote:

Sorry to hear your issues. I had this issue before, but I luckily had a screenshot of the booking page. Hotels.com gave me an option to move or compensation in form of a voucher for the entire stay. I would press them more. Maybe calling them instead of online chat would yield more favourable result.

Hi @meta! Do you have the Gold number? I couldn’t find it when I looked. I’ve been emailing the back office staff for the last day or two, but they’re not great – they don’t appear to have read all the info I sent to the Cha team…

[meta]

From my previous interactions 0808 234 5370 or 0203 564 5246

Not sure if anything changed since the move to OneKey.

[qc]

The first phone no at least still works but they were pretty useless when I got through. That’s the number for Gold btw – I wonder if there’s another number for Platinum.

My problem was that both the Hotels.com app and the web page kept failing at the cvv part regardless of what credit card I tried to use. I wouldn’t have bothered but it was £80 cheaper there over booking direct. Whilst the chap was away trying to book I had the clever idea to book on Expedia and that went through no problem even though I had to start afresh with all the details. He then came back saying he was still trying to do and I was able to tell him I didn’t need his help after all!