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Oh, wow. This is a next level OTA play. I thought I knew sh1th0usery but this turns it up to 11
I booked and paid for a stay mid September via Expedia on a flexible basis. I needed to shift the stay forward by one day. Expedia online didn’t work, so I booked the now new “first day” of the stay as a stand alone. Expedia then tell me that the hotel have no booking for the remainder of my stay and the muppets at Expedia can’t seem to comprehend why I’m aggrieved when they have been holding my cash for 8 weeks for what is nothing more than a fictitious reservation.
I really don’t know where to start with this. I’m a regular at the hotel so have pinged them, but we do seem to be “jumping the shark” now when it comes to OTAs ripping you a new one.
I’m hoping the hotel will come back with something sensible by the morning
Did you get a booking confirmation from them or anything?
Yes. I got an email and it shows up in my Expedia account too. Their solution is to move me to another hotel. I only booked on Expedia because the hotel’s own site wasn’t clear on the cancellation terms.
I know you want us to share your anger at Expedia, but… You booked through Expedia….
I know you want us to share your anger at Expedia, but… You booked through Expedia….
And when he he says he was a regular at the hotel in question! That hotel would undoubtedly have offered a better deal and clarified re cancellation policy if that was an issue.
This is usually the hotels fault, what have they said? Do they have availability still showing direct?
That hotel would undoubtedly have offered a better deal and clarified re cancellation policy if that was an issue.
Exactly. If you ever find a better rate via an OTA, call or email the hotel, I’ve never failed for them to match the offer, at a minimum.
Hotel is now showing as sold out. The hotel hasn’t responded yet.
OH once booked a flight via expedia, despite my warnings. Supposedly business to SYD via somewhere on Malaysia I think. When the details came through it was business on 2 segments and economy on the other 2. When he phoned to complain they claimed that booking business doesn’t guarantee business on every segment!
As the booking date is quite close it sounds like Expedia had access to an OTA allocation of rooms, but I’m guessing back office of Expedia took your money but didn’t process your reservation before the allocation expired/was withdrawn by the hotel. Allocations to tour operators and OTA’s have time limits I believe. @RusselH knows about this stuff
Did expedia buy an allocation from the hotel and they just haven’t sold it sensibly?
OH once booked a flight via expedia, despite my warnings. Supposedly business to SYD via somewhere on Malaysia I think. When the details came through it was business on 2 segments and economy on the other 2. When he phoned to complain they claimed that booking business doesn’t guarantee business on every segment!
Not just Expedia that do that. I’ve priced up many routes and for example Qatar with AA miles the same warning is clear on the search page. For Man-Doh-CPT as a an example a lot of the tickets are one leg in econ, one in business.
As the booking date is quite close it sounds like Expedia had access to an OTA allocation of rooms, but I’m guessing back office of Expedia took your money but didn’t process your reservation before the allocation expired/was withdrawn by the hotel. Allocations to tour operators and OTA’s have time limits I believe. @RusselH knows about this stuff
Expedia doesn’t usually work like this. The hotel gives them “live” availability via a portal or an integration directly to their back office systems. So usually it goes wrong when either the hotel didn’t key in the reservation, their interface somehow ate it or something went wrong and they gave expedia inventory that they didn’t have.
I’m therefore curious about you saying expedia told you the hotel doesn’t have the reservation, since usually in the above scenarios everything looks fine to them
The ones you have to watch out for are places like tour operators or dodgy third party websites. If they oversell their allocation then the hotel can (and will, if they’re busy) refuse the booking even if they have rooms left. But these days now things are a lot more integrated that they used to be it should be less of an issue all round.
Sorry to hear this.
Expedia are (IMO) reliable. Certainly one of the better OTAs anyway.
So I’m surprised they’ve provided this kind of service.What hotel was it?
OK, so the hotel responded. They do have a room for me booked via expedia and they have confirmed it’s all paid for etc.
So i’m really confused now.
OK, so the hotel responded. They do have a room for me booked via expedia and they have confirmed it’s all paid for etc.
So i’m really confused now.
Why do you think expedia doesn’t have a booking for you?
Because I contacted Expedia yesterday. I wanted to shorten the length of my stay. Expedia then contacted the hotel who apparently said there was no booking for me, despite me having already paid Expedia for it.
So I don’t know what to do next in terms of reducing that stay. Although pre-paid, the booking can be cancelled until a few days before arrival.
For comfort & stress reduction, you only really have 2 choices.
1. Cancel both reservations and book elsewhere,
2. Check in as normal, check out when you need to and write off the money for the rest of the stay.If the hotel told you they have a paid reservation I’d be inclined to believe them rather than Expedia.
Sounds like a mix up when Expedia called the hotel the first time although if it’s a flexible booking not sure why they’d be calling them at all!
It’s likely best to have Expedia just drop the last day of your stay and keep your seperate booking for the first night . Contact the hotel and let them know you’ve two seperate bookings and they should be able to figure out allocating you the same room
So the hotel did some asking around. They claim that when Expedia called, the dates they (Expedia) had for me were incorrect, which is why the hotel had no booking. Given Expedia had the right dates in their system it’s all very odd.
I was contacting Expedia to have them lop that last night off the stay, they needed to speak to the hotel etc etc because of the sold out situation.
Expedia usually works well and tells you exactly what flights you are getting in which booking classes, which is more than some airline websites tell you.
However the CS is occasionally incompetent. So I wouldn’t use them for anything which I have a chance of needing to change.
When it works, Expedia is great. When it doesn’t, it’s a sh1t show.
I had a terrible experience on a booking in Cape Town around NYE. When we arrived the top suite at the hotel wasn’t available and they gave us a “superior” room when in fact, was their entry level room. The alternative, the hotel said, was to cancel the booking and we would be left to our own devices – Cape Town, NYE, good luck!
The problem was with some glitch that caused a double booking. I asked Expedia to step in, they wouldn’t really care and when they did they couldn’t do anything.
I had to go to Amex and then the Ombudsman who only recently ruled in my favour, so I’m getting some money back after only 7 months.
When you use a third party you’ve broken the debtor-creditor-supplier relationship. Expedia wasn’t the supplier, the hotel was. So you can’t rely on S75 if Expedia didn’t make the error as they rightly can say they didn’t do anything wrong. So you’re lucky you resolved it. I had similar when flybe went pop and I’d used an OTA, HSBC only refunded my cash as a gesture of goodwill.
This is why it’s always best wherever possible in any scenario in life to pay directly with the supplier and pay at least £100 with a UK credit card that has been issued to you as the primary card holder. Same goes for using PayPal, ebay, curve etc – avoid where possible if you’re going to have any risk of anything going wrong
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