The hotel I booked online became a homeless shelter and no one told me

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/travel/tripped-up-hotel-booking.html

by lxm • 4 years ago

220 153 4 years ago

Actually had a similar experience at a hotel in San Jose (Courtyard Campbell) that I stayed at for a wedding. There were homeless people and prostitutes in the parking garage and when I asked the front desk if our vehicles were going to be safe, the concierge told me the people I saw were actually guests of the hotel due to some city program... I was flabbergasted and also really didn't feel safe having my 2 year old and 3 month old at a hotel like that.

divyekapoor• 4 years ago

Project Roomkey: https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/cdss-programs/housing-...

FounderBurr• 4 years ago

Someone needs to grow a thicker skin and learn about reality.

shepherdjerred• 4 years ago

Are you not sympathetic for a pregnant woman who was alone at midnight not knowing where to go?

DocTomoe• 4 years ago

That's how religious leaders are born.

HeavenFox• 4 years ago

I am actually sympathetic here - one quirk of New York City is despite hosting some of the busiest airports in the country, there simply aren't any reasonable airport hotels.

There used to be many, but the City bought most of them outright and converted them into homeless shelters. The remainder serve as overflow, so you probably don't want to stay there either. The common wisdom in the frequent flyer community seems to be to just head to Manhattan, or go to Flushing - it's more fun that way anyways.

* The exception is probably the newly opened TWA hotel on JFK, which is really nice, albeit pricy

kaishiro• 4 years ago

I leapt into your comment to profess my love for the TWA Hotel but saw you actually mentioned it towards the end. I fly a Melbourne => JFK leg a couple of times a year and the fact that I can grab the AirTrain for one stop and then be at the hotel is pretty great. Doesn't really hit me that I'm back in the states until I walk into that lobby.

_ZeD_• 4 years ago

not about the hotels, but a correction on the jfk.

it's not one "of the busiest airport in the country". I can confirm that it's malebolge, the VIII circle of hell.

I had my share of trips in my life: european countries, uae, Japan...

But I never experienced anything remotely comparable.

All the times I went there the flights were 3-4 hours late.

One time I was in a plane that was taxing through the Airport for one hour just to wait for a free line to depart.

The lines at the immigrations entrance started from the plane itself!

And there was one time where, after waiting for the gate to open, already a couple hours late, the captain said that someone stole the airplane!!

codyb2• 4 years ago

You have had some very interesting experiences at JFK. I'm honestly always amazed at how fast I can move through security there.

I just flew out recently and it took... maybe a half hour to check my bag and get through TSA security with an opt out request (for the scanners, so they pat you down instead).

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've flown through JFK and LaGuardia a fair amount and never really had any staggering wait times.

I do wish they could have just made the Air Tram part of the subway system cause taking a taxi during rush hour was certainly a mistake but Q ->... hmm I guess the A or J or whatever train would get me to the Air Tram -> Air Tram is a bit of a pain.

Although, I will say, if you stand at the front of the air tram at night so you can look out the front window as you zoom down the track, that's pretty neat and beautiful.

zaik• 4 years ago

And there was one time where, after waiting for the gate to open, already a couple hours late, the captain said that someone stole the airplane!!

Do you have a link to a news article? I find this hard to believe.

couchand• 4 years ago

It's worth considering the direction of causality here. I doubt the City has somehow priced out frequent flyers who'd otherwise love to stay near the airport in droves. The City could afford to buy those hotels only because demand had already evaporated.

aaron_m04• 4 years ago

The City could afford to buy those hotels only because demand had already evaporated

Because of the pandemic or some other reason?

Krisjohn• 4 years ago

Our travel agent is an individual with a reputation. An app is not. An app is self-service and self-service is no service.

When travel agents were unable to get us something affordable in Paris, we attempted to solve it ourselves with an app. The experience was so bad I refuse to travel to Paris ever again, and now we only ever book through agents. My fault? Maybe. Enabled by a faceless marketplace that doesn't give a crap? Absolutely.

If a travel agent goes "Yeah, you probably don't want to do that" even ONCE while you're sorting out your travel plans, they just paid for themselves.

andrepd2• 4 years ago

Or you can just read wikivoyage and do 5 minutes of googling, but to each his own.

themitigating2• 4 years ago

You're being downvoted for a sarcatic remark but all these comments that simply point out obvious benefits seem less like genuine offers of advice and more like a way to keep damaging any big tech company.

"Travel agents offer a more personal touch"

No shit, who didn't know this?

colmvp• 4 years ago

I've used apps many times over to travel to Asia/Europe/North America, book accommodations, rent cars... and haven't had a bad experience. That's not to say that I believe bad experiences don't ever happen, but more like they don't happen enough to me that I wouldn't ever use any of the apps.

Most of my friends are more avid than myself at traveling, and they also don't use travel agents.

It's possible it's just because I'm not super picky about my accommodations.

MrJohz• 4 years ago

I'm currently on a holiday in Greece that we booked ourselves after talking to a travel agent. Her main contribution was suggesting an island to stay on, but all her other suggestions ended up being worse than the options we found for ourselves. For example, we wanted a quick cheap stay in Athens so we could see the sights, so she found us some hotels that were somewhat outside the city centre - I'm sure they were okay, but what we actually wanted (and ended up booking ourselves) was a holiday flat in the city centre with a perfect view of the Acropolis, the flexibility we needed to sort ourselves out for breakfast and lunch, and a much cheaper price point.

Likewise, we wanted to stay in a resort for a few days afterwards and relax, so she sent us some ideas, but they were so lacklustre that we almost gave up on the idea of that part of our holiday altogether. Then we found something ourselves that was much nicer, and have been enjoying lovely beaches and incredible food for the last few days.

Even her flights were weird choices that involved a lot of waiting around at airports and would have brought us back a day earlier - booking them ourselves got us cheaper and more convenient options.

I always assumed that a travel agent would be more convenient than looking for something yourself, but I was amazed at how poor our experience was using one. Less choice and flexibility, and as you say, less self-service, and for us self-service gave us exactly what we wanted.

nicolas_t2• 4 years ago

That's been my experience, I'm certain that good travel agents exist but finding them is hard and most don't seem to be much better than I can do myself. I've also tried some of those "concierge service" and they seem to always find much worse solutions than what I can find on my own.

laundermaf3• 4 years ago

It's also possible that they suggested worse options just to get a bigger fee without looking more expensive than what you could find with a single search.

I think the best "cheap" travel agents nowadays would just do the job of searching for you for an explicit fee, and then just send you the links. This is generally useful when you have specific requests and not much time to find them.

px1999• 4 years ago

In my experience, they're like accountants and lawyers, eithet horrible or amazing (+never in between).

Most people think they're useless, because they've never used a great one.

themitigating2• 4 years ago

And you pay for that which is fine. I think these sites offer ways to stay in different types of homes which provide a unique experience. There's always a risk of problems and I think that's common sense.

When articles like this are posted I often see comments like "a travel agent is more personal" or "it's an app with less control than a hotel"

Who wasn't aware of this? These aren't a revelation.

j33zusjuice• 4 years ago

Paris is overrated. Two or three days is plenty, in my opinion. See the Eiffel Tower, hit the museums, and then you’re done. I preferred Bordeaux even though there was less to do than in Paris. On the other hand, I live in a huge city, so cities aren’t very interesting to me, so my opinion is very biased.

watwut2• 4 years ago

You can't see more then mi iscule part of museums in small city in one day, much less in Paris. I mean, if you are u interested in them sure, but why would you go into them then in the first place.

hakfoo2• 4 years ago

TBH, I'm amazed that "real travel agent via videochat" isn't a thing now. Even if you end up booking yourself, I could see paying up front $20 for half an hour of asking for some basic suggestions and sanity checks, or even providing a proposed itinerary via email for review.

I'm almost sure I left money on the table the last time I booked a holiday. I could probably have optimized my rail pass choice more, not sure I picked the absolute best departure days (I could probably have gone a week earlier or later) and there was probably a better way to book a hotel when I needed two non-consecutive stays (Visit $major_tourist_city for four days, then spend three days with family, then back to $major_tourist_city)

I ended up staying in the hotel said family used when they would spend a weekend in that city, which was extremely convenient and passable, but as much as anything, I went for it because I figured I couldn't trust random weirdly cropped photos and dueling reviews on travel sites. If I want to go somewhere else, I don't have that opportunity.

ginko• 4 years ago

I could probably have optimized my rail pass choice more, not sure I picked the absolute best departure days (I could probably have gone a week earlier or later) and there was probably a better way to book a hotel when I needed two non-consecutive stays

But will a travel agent really do that for you? Most likely they just use more or less the same booking interface as you do and give you some package deal and that's that.

ethotool• 4 years ago

Always book directly through the hotel website. Priceline has deals but their customer service is horrible. Also it seemed like the majority of the time I would book an express deal they would put me in an accessible room. I’m not disabled and generally no issues with it but I found it odd. Not only that, they will never honor their “price match guarantee.” They state that if you find a cheaper price on a express deal they will refund you up to 200% of the difference. They will act like you are crazy if you call them after finding a cheaper rate. I learned my lesson the hard way. Don’t book through 3rd party travel websites.

hakfoo2• 4 years ago

Theory: people who need the disabled room are likely aware of this and are more likely to book ahead. Therefore, when you get to day-of or very close to it, if the disabled room is still available, it's unlikely it's suddenly going to be reserved by an actual disabled guest, so they may as well offer it cheap if it's more profitable than letting it sit empty.

steelframe• 4 years ago

My elderly mother and her (also elderly) friend recently booked a place in Lyon, France using a well-known online travel agency (OTA). The taxi cab driver dumped their stuff on the sidewalk and spun out of the area as quickly as he could get away. Apparently the "accommodations" were a collection of small apartments in a bad part of town. They punched in a code to open the door and get into the hallway, only to find that there was nothing there but a bunch of doors and a staircase leading to another floor with nothing but a bunch of doors. This went up for a few stories. There apparently was no way to turn the lights on.

They had no indication as to which door they were supposed to go through or how to get through it. There was nobody in sight at the facility. After trudging up a few flights of stairs and back down again, they elected to ask some students passing by where they could find a hotel. Fortunately they were able to find a place that had a vacancy.

Then they had to fight the OTA for a refund. Fortunately they are retired and had nothing better to do all day long than call them until they finally gave a refund.

I've had a couple of really obnoxious problems with OTAs involving event tickets. In one case I bought the wrong type of Disneyland tickets. I had to purchase different tickets once I got to the park. Then trying to get a refund from the OTA was a living nightmare. After about a week of daily calls I finally reverse-engineered enough of their process of moving money between them and the park and what not to convince them to refund me for the wrong (and unused) tickets. Another time an OTA with a customer service stand at a hotel in Hawaii had worked with me for 20 minutes to book tickets for an event, and then at the very end they said, "The booking fee is $250. But we'll waive that if you attend a 1-hour sales pitch!"

My strategy these days is to use an online travel agency to learn about hotels with vacancies and events in the area and then to go directly to the hotel or event web sites to purchase. If there's no way to book except through the OTA, I'm not going to have anything to do with said hotel or event.

nexus7556• 4 years ago

I will never use an OTA again too.

I booked a massage at the Banyan Tree on Koh Samui via Expedia back in 2021.

My email confirmation of the booking said I needed to contact a company Newway Travel via phone to confirm the reservation time. I attempted to call Newway Travel five times throughout via phone but nobody ever answered. I called the Banyan Tree Spa and they had no record of the booking. I waited until later in the day to see if there were just processing delays.

Later in the evening I received an email from Newway Travel stating that “for chinese speaking , right ? Becasue this package 90 mins available for that market.” I asked them to call me to clarify their policy and they replied via email and reiterated "*Inform you that 90 mins package available for chainese market only and 60 mins package for worldwide market. Pls inform us guest what nationality ?”

I told them I object to such race based discrimination and Newway replied: “As the hotel needs us to report the customer’s nationality and it’s about the different rates for each market as well.”

I had to spend about 10 hours on the phone with Expedia trying to get a refund since we were refused service even after sharing the email correspondence I had with them. Horrible experience, horrible customer service.

raverbashing2• 4 years ago

Oh so the Chinese market had the "special package" I guess?!

Regardless, I'd try to chargeback this from the credit card

sumedh2• 4 years ago

My elderly mother and her (also elderly) friend recently booked a place in Lyon, France using a well-known online travel agency (OTA).

Did they check the reviews?

soco3• 4 years ago

At least on Booking.com there are tricks the hosts can pull so you cannot leave a bad review: they cancel your stay as "no show" and booking.com will not do anything about it. The only way is to check reviews in other places as well - google and whatnot.

rytis2• 4 years ago

Is it not possible to dispute and chargeback via credit card provider? My strategy of giving three attempts to get a refund as per their procedures, then warning about dispute, then eventually issuing a chargeback worked quite fine so far across multiple vendors. It rarely goes as far as the actual chargeback, typically the warning is sufficient.

tluyben23• 4 years ago

If you paid via Cc sure, but, in the EU at least, bank or debit card are pretty common, and while it is possible to charge back with those, it is pretty hard depending on the policies and size of the bank. I have a bank acc in Spain who chargeback without questions when I pop over an email, while my dutch or uk accounts require stacks of paperwork and often say ‘nope’.

gravlaks• 4 years ago

When flying, I will avoid using an online travel agency (OTA) as well if I can .

I booking with Gotogate.com, but the flight was canceled. Then when trying to get a refund Gotogate systematically try to stall time as much as possible. You have to call support, and are answered by people with very thick Indian accent which is impossible to understand.

Luckily I had paid with Paypal, so I could request a refund through there.

Unfortunately, when booking flights that needs connections, you have to use an OTA. If one flight is cancelled, the others should be too, which an OTA fixes.

tluyben23• 4 years ago

There are good ones and bad ones; gotogate so far is awful; I avoid them like the plague. Direct with the airline is better anyway.

beojan• 4 years ago

You should book directly with an airline who will book all the connections so long as they're all with partner airlines (i.e usually in the same alliance). Often you can even book with an airline in that alliance that you won't even be flying to possibly get cheaper tickets.

Some OTAs will book connections on airlines that aren't partnered as separate tickets so if you're incoming flight is delayed and you miss a connection, tough luck.

raverbashing2• 4 years ago

Very bad experience. I wonder what the reviews say (and you might actually want to read the recent reviews and check more than one website)

I always try to check places like Wikivoyage etc for the neighborhoods

As per comparing it with "offline travel agents", I've had some bad experiences with them as well.

rosege3• 4 years ago

I had a similar experience with booking.com. I booked a place in Australia and when I got their I found it was a house run by a junkie who chain smoked inside. I cancelled it on booking.com but they refused to refund me because their policy is that they will only do that if the provider agrees. That was the last time I used their site.

Agoda also have a scam going - where if you elect to pay later in a foreign currency then they add on a 17% service charge which is hidden in some fine print which I still haven't found. This is illegal here in Australia and I am contemplating taking them to small claims court over it. The amount is small ($100) but I would like to set a precedent.

slaw• 4 years ago

Agoda and Booking is the same company.

fho3• 4 years ago

Anecdotal: there are bad things to say about Airbnb... But (for me) their customer service has been top notch. We were twice in a situation were we had to rebook spontaneous, once because the the original host canceled minutes before we arrived, another time because the host was very generous with their descriptions and we found ourselves in a tiny room without AC and shared accomodations instead of an apartment.

Both times a call to Airbnb quickly resolved the issue and they even payed the increase in rent.

mox1• 4 years ago

Is this a shill or do you work for Airbnb? The internet is overwhelmingly filled with negative Airbnb experiences...

Your experience is by far the outlier from the typical way Airbnb handles this.

ww520• 4 years ago

Book direct with the hotels. 3rd party bookings are most often not worth it.

wildrhythms• 4 years ago

+1 the last time I used such a service to book a hotel they confirmed it and gave me a confirmation number. I printed everything on paper. When I arrived at the hotel after a 13 hour flight, I showed the receptionist the confirmation number and they 'couldn't find it in their system'. I compared my confirmation number with a colleague's who was traveling with me and they were the same unique format. How the hell does that happen

alphabettsy• 4 years ago

I’ve had good experiences with Hotels.com and find the reviews helpful. The free nights are a nice perk too.

Have contacted customer service only twice and can’t really complain. When reviews or other information weren’t available in the app I’ve called directly.

This seems really unfortunate.

Hnrobert422• 4 years ago

I am a gold member with them, meaning I stay more than 30 nights a year. They definitely have tiered customer service. At the regular level, it’s meh. At gold, I left a complaint with a virtual agent about the app not working well with VPNs, and a person called me back the next day.

The crazy thing is that I hit gold level staying at $30/night places in SE Asia.

imgabe• 4 years ago

I've completely sworn off third-party booking services. They never know what's going on and when anything goes wrong they just tell you they can't help you. Then the place tells you that they can't help you because you didn't book through them and they just point fingers at each other.

Better to book directly from whatever hotel / airline / whatever you want to use. Whatever savings you might get is not worth it and a lot of times hotels appreciate direct bookings and they're cheaper anyway.

bmitc• 4 years ago

I agree. It never seems to go right. The third party either has the wrong room availability, wrong room type, wrong price, etc. And I actually side with the hotels because it’s exactly as if someone else bought the room for you and messed up, which the hotel can’t really deal with but they usually try. And for the most part, hotels seem like one of the last places you can still get actual customer service with.

Aeolun2• 4 years ago

I think most places that require you to pay $100-200/day for the privilege of using them still have customer service.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 4 years ago

Some locations have no option to book outside of the third party service, unfortunately. I visited Peru recently and was only able to book directly with the stay on about 1/4 of the occasions.

petedoyle2• 4 years ago

I've spent ~150 nights in hotels in the past year, and it's super rare that booking directly is cheaper. I almost always save like 30% on Hotels.com/HotelTonight/etc.

I recently wanted to extend a stay and the front desk quoted me $120/nt while Hotels.com was $107 (plus 10% back as a reward, so ~$96).

I wish that weren't the case because this is 100% true:

never know what's going on and when anything goes wrong they just tell you they can't help you. Then the place tells you that they can't help you because you didn't book through them and they just point fingers at each other.

I've come to rely greatly on in-app ratings/reviews before booking.

rebuilder2• 4 years ago

Here, hotels have deals with booking.com etc that forbid them to post lower rates on their own websites. However, if you call to reserve, you get a discount code. I don’t know if that’s a more global practice or not.

xivzgrev2• 4 years ago

I found that to be the case a lot more during covid. Hilton and other chains had these amazing deals where if you found something cheaper they’d match plus knock 30% off or whatever. It was almost a certainty that was the case so I was getting good deals on rooms.

That guarantee still exists but I find the prices are now usually the same for those mega chains.

Hnrobert422• 4 years ago

Not only that, hotels.com often has rooms when the hotel is “fully booked.” Twice last month in London, I wanted to extend my stay. The staff said the hotel was full. I went online and booked. Then asked them to keep me in the same room. I think it’s because they reserve a block for online sales.

tluyben23• 4 years ago

I had issues with the accommodation after booking, but hotels.com always fixed it and so far to my benefit (getting better rooms or hotels than I paid for to compensate me).

wodenokoto2• 4 years ago

I've come to rely greatly on in-app ratings/reviews before booking.

Really? My last vacation we booked the first few nights and then decided where to go and booked the next night on booking.com and my take-away was that they must mostly keep the good reviews online and remove most of the bad ones.

brewdad2• 4 years ago

I've found that booking direct will get me the same rate as something like hotels.com, at least for the hotels I'm booking. I do have a much higher confidence that I will get the room type I booked and any additional add-ons like parking if I book direct than with the 3rd party.

I'll also check back closer to arrival to see if there's a better rate. It's been about 50/50 this year.

astura• 4 years ago

Many chains will price match

https://thepointsguy.com/news/hotel-price-match/

lotsofpulp4• 4 years ago

All the hotel chains offer a Best Price Guarantee discount or maybe even a free night if you report that you found a cheaper hotel room than the official website (at the same time/date of shopping):

https://www.marriott.com/look/claimForm.mi

https://www.hilton.com/en/p/price-match-guarantee/

https://www.hyatt.com/info/best-rate-guarantee

https://www.ihg.com/content/us/en/customer-care/best-price-g...

https://www.choicehotels.com/deals/best-rate

https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/hotel-deals/best-rate-guarante...

sumedh2• 4 years ago

they're cheaper anyway.

Sometimes they are not cheaper, the price on their site is higher compared to what you see on booking.com.

Some hotels dont have a website and I dont like to book using the phone.

xivzgrev2• 4 years ago

100% agree. You can also ask a hotel for free upgrades when you check in because you booked directly. Doesn’t always work but once in a while it does.

girvo2• 4 years ago

Not only is it often cheaper to book directly through the hotel, they often upgrade you to a nicer suite at least here in Aus whenever I've done that.

My grandfather taught me a decade ago (more even) to use Wotif (now Expedia) and similar to find places, then call directly. For someone who definitely did not grow up with this sort of tech, he was quite excellent at working the boundaries of tech and people to get good results.

dcdc123• 4 years ago

I’ve tried booking through hotels directly and it’s never been cheaper. It is so weird. I usually end up using hotels.com which is just one of many booking services owned by Expedia.

3np• 4 years ago

While I've had that as well, I've also had occasions where the hotel staff replies "oh yeah, to get the cheaper rates you'll have to go through <agent-site-with-lower-list-price>" when calling them, or even trying to extend an existing reservation at the desk.

Norms do seem to vary between regions and countries.

BluSyn• 4 years ago

I've had this exact experience with third-party brokers so many times. I now use third-party sites just for searching and price comparisons, but always book direct with hotel / airline. Usually they give miles / points / benefits you wouldn't get otherwise.

wodenokoto2• 4 years ago

Whatever savings you might get is not worth it and a lot of times hotels appreciate direct bookings and they're cheaper anyway.

Come again? You lose out on saving using hotel instead of third-party booking service, but at least the hotel is cheaper?

laundermaf3• 4 years ago

For flights yes, for hotels I suppose it varies on location.

In South East Asia hotels are cheaper on Agoda and even contacting the hosts directly wouldn't get you a better price most of the time. It's a waste of time to try so I stopped doing that.

ipython3• 4 years ago

I get that hotels are safer but I have rented with booking.com (careful to book only apartments that have 9/10 ratings) with much success for my large-ish family. Traveling with more than two people is a huge pain and buying two hotel rooms is not only expensive but also never guarantees the two rooms are next to each other, making family travel inconvenient and expensive.

My experiences with booking (in Europe mostly) have been very positive and I find them way more transparent about fees, etc than Airbnb.

topherPedersen• 4 years ago

This happened to me too in Austin! I booked a room at a La Quinta Inn in South Austin that they had turned into a homeless shelter. I was pretty upset and quit using HotelTonight and stopped staying at La Quinta Inn over it. I was able to get my money back though, and just showed up a different hotel downtown in person and got a room there instead.

malshe• 4 years ago

When was this? I stayed at the same La Quinta Inn just before the pandemic and it was not yet a homeless shelter!

neilv• 4 years ago

It is hard to tell how to divide the blame between the service representative you spoke to — according to you, at a call center in a faraway country — or the system that trained her.

I don't understand why the NYT is getting into company-internal blame. The customer's interface seems to have been Booking.com. Shouldn't any blame -- from the perspective of customer and this NYT writer -- stop at the company?

irjustin• 4 years ago

I've stopped booking through Kayak (used to be my favorite), other OTAs, even many budget airlines, because it's simply not worth the post booking headaches.

laundermaf3• 4 years ago

Hotel searches on Kayak are pretty poor simply due to the fact that they somehow always show low-res images. I generally book on Agoda or search on Google Maps nowadays. Kayak is still my go-to for flights though.

WirelessGigabit• 4 years ago

I'm actually sick of all of these intermediaries taking money but when something goes wrong they're like: oh we're just the middle man.

I've got a contract with you, not with the hotel. I upheld my end of the bargain, now you uphold yours...

nicbou• 4 years ago

Agreed. It seems like every platform's goal is to ignore all rules and responsibility and grow large enough to become a toll road for an entire industry.

Al-Khwarizmi2• 4 years ago

Am I the only one who had a very positive experience with Booking?

Once I had booked a hotel in Hong Kong for a week, pretty expensive, and I finally couldn't go. But this was in an especially hectic moment (personally and professionally) so I missed the full refund deadline for cancellation. It was obviously my fault, as the deadline had been clear from the beginning, so I just cancelled without refund (or maybe with partial refund, I don't remember) and moved on.

The next day, and without having asked, I got an email from Booking saying that they would negotiate with the hotel to see if they could give me a full refund anyway. A day after that, I got the refund. It was a substantial amount of money so I'm quite grateful to whomever did that at Booking.

On the other hand, I hate their pricing practices, e.g. presumably because I am a relatively frequent customer, the website often offers me worse prices than my wife who almost never used it. Also different prices on mobile and PC, etc.

codyb2• 4 years ago

I don't think it was booking but after hurricane Ian swept through the Ft Myers, Florida region this year my parents got a full refund before they even reached out.

I don't know what service it was but they were very proactive about it.

I haven't had much issue with Booking.com but I haven't had any times where I needed to refund either.

rosege3• 4 years ago

I had lots of positive experiences with them until one I didnt and they wouldnt do anything to help or refund me for sending me to a smoke filled crack house. Since then I don't use them anymore.

Frondo• 4 years ago

My one experience with Booking.com was a mixed bag. I paid for a room for a few nights in a city on the Black Sea, and when I got there (pretty late at night, after several hours of driving through the lovely and beautiful mountains), they couldn't find any record of the booking. None, and no rooms available. We suddenly had nowhere to stay.

I went out and sat in the car, and eventually got to chat with a Booking.com agent, who said they could do nothing at first. After 15 minutes of chatting with them, they said, "We don't have any relationship to that hotel. What is the local number you have for them?" And about 15 seconds later, "I am issuing a full refund."

Frustrating, but I did get my money back, and did find another room elsewhere in the city (unbelievably, with the one hotel chain where I use their rewards program!)

Turns out someone had simply set up a fake hotel profile for this prominent hotel in the city and was collecting booking fees from people like me! Like I said, at least I did get my money back...

superultra• 4 years ago

That's great, but things like hotels aren't like, say, I dunno, say one stick of gum not having flavor out of every 50 that do; you just spit it out and move on. Hotels are where people temporarily reside. This situation is more akin to one stick of gum out of 50 causing food poisoning and possibly death. That becomes much more serious, even though there might be 49 people who just really love that gum. That is, tldr: it's great, until it's not.

The further we get from the factory/industrialized IS9000(1) standards of the 1960s where quality control was king, the further we get into wildly inconsistent and personally variable experiences, with spectrums of experience that fluctuate wildly from yours, and the person in the article. And that's a big problem.

Consistency is really hard, but when companies are built on software which can more or less withstand moderate failures, errors like this are more prone.

I hate to be "we need to go back" - but we really do need a return to consistency of experience and product.

qikInNdOutReply• 4 years ago

Outsource your anger: https://www.upcounsel.com/ ?

benatkin• 4 years ago

I just tried this to get past the paywall and it worked: https://gist.github.com/FermiDirak/f32032a30381f1b66dbc50298...

ggm• 4 years ago

Purely as an observation, as a driving holiday tourist I stayed in hotels in Penn. in the 2010s era, and even in off the main path motels, the reception was a wire mesh cage with a hole to pass money. For anyone who comes from other developed western economy cultures this can be a bit of a shock. "rough" is very contextually defined.

If however, you wound up in the parts of town truck drivers in the UK have to put up with (they call them lorry parks, not truck parks) you could find similar things. Not that the drivers are a problem: far from it. They just get shunted to some of the worst parts of town.

Lots and lots of cheap hotels and B&B in the UK are now de-facto housing otherwise homeless people: this started to be routine under Margaret Thatcher if not before, and has continued at varying pace ever since.

quickthrower22• 4 years ago

The old money taking intermediary that doesn’t take responsibility: happens all the time with all the things. Don’t take shit from these shoulder shruggers and try not to use them. Not just booking websites but tradespeople and wrapped finanical services too.

jiggunjer• 4 years ago

So you'd personally register at a stock exchange to avoid dealing with a broker?

quickthrower22• 4 years ago

No but I don’t have a choice there. I have had shares locked up for a year due to a broker blaming another bank dealing with shares moving to another exchange (not my choice) though. So just waiting and no organ grinders to help me.

acuozzo• 4 years ago

Is it possible to do so for free?

encryptluks2• 4 years ago

I agree based on the good reporting that everyone is at fault here, but for gods sake Booking.com learn to react in situations like this by just getting the person a room and eat the costs and you will earn double that in more people using your service in the future. I imagine that Booking.com and related sites mostly exists due to their business partnerships where they handle bookings for employees for business travel, and that their consumer business is just a side business where they don't give a shit if people are left stranded in the middle of nowhere. If the hotel is accepting reservations, but not actually in regular communication with Booking.com or weekly checking boxes that they are still accepting reservations then that is on Booking.com for not doing any diligence and I believe they are guilty of negligence if something more serious did happen.

dangus3• 4 years ago

I thought an interesting point of the article was that the customer wasn’t entirely blameless and the article said as much. Read her situation a couple more times over.

This person arrived to check in at 11:30 PM and intended to catch a 6 AM flight the next day. So their original plan involved only sleeping from around 11:45PM to 4:30AM assuming they were right next to the airport.

This is a complaint about missing out on less than 5 hours of sleep in the first place.

Here’s the real issue: her itinerary wasn’t realistic to begin with, and she was never going to be properly rested regardless of her possession of a hotel room.

You can’t catch a friend’s wedding on Saturday night and then expect to make your husband’s family reunion in a whole different state on Sunday without some major fatiguing circumstances.

Arguably, Booking upheld their end of the bargain by refunding the hotel. This is all they’re obligated to do. No other type of business gives you any more than that.

Sure, Booking had crappy ineffective customer service. What else is new with the corporate world? Even if they had a perfect concierge level process they physically couldn’t accommodate the customer’s needs because they can’t materialize vacant rooms.

Every minute wasted in this situation defeats the purpose of a hotel room in the first place (I.e., she could have gotten a room further from the airport but that would have eaten up travel time that would have netted her 2 hours of sleep instead of 4, because of her own bad itinerary. If she could check in at an earlier hour this wouldn’t be a problem).

When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time. I’m not sure what kind of emergency service anyone would expect to receive from a business like this. At no point was she in tangible danger, and this entire experience was a piece of inconvenience that was essentially self-inflicted.

watwut2• 4 years ago

5 hours of sleep is much much better then 3 which is much much better then 0.

dangus3• 4 years ago

Sure, but having more time in the first place would have opened up more options for alternative lodging. If you’ve only got 5 hours then you basically have to stay at a hotel within spitting distance of the airport, and that severely limits your options if something goes wrong.

One of those options would be to find a hotel elsewhere in NYC. If her check-in time was more like 9PM that would have been entirely reasonable.

The golden rule of travel is “shit happens” and that’s why you run a risk of all kinds of issues when you run a tight itinerary. When that shit happens, correctly assigning fault doesn’t tend to change one’s predicament.

If I had a weekend with a family reunion and a friend’s wedding in two different cities I would personally just pick one.

probably_wrong• 4 years ago

When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time.

No, but you are owed another flight in a reasonable timeframe. The airline doesn't get to give you your money back and say "we've upheld the end of our bargain" and leave you stranded. I'd argue that Booking (and friends) have a similar obligation not to leave you homeless in a city you're probably unfamiliar with. In fact, the article itself claims that it's standard policy for Booking to find you alternate accomodations and that their rep (allegedly) screwed up.

At no point was she in tangible danger

She was a 5-month pregnant woman who found herself without a roof in front of an NY homeless shelter at (almost) midnight with no place to go. She may not have been in actual danger, but that's pretty high on the "unsafe" scale.

dangus3• 4 years ago

You actually aren’t owed anything for a canceled flight beyond a refund. Rebooking is a courtesy provided by the airline. They are not legally obligated to do it.

Source:

https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...

The only time you are owed anything in addition to a refund is in the case of being bumped due to overbooking.

Her situation was high on perceived danger. You said so yourself. She wasn’t in any tangible danger, it’s best described as discomfort.

Being in front of a homeless shelter is not a permanent affliction. You can just…not be in front of it.

…Which is what she did. She got an Uber to the airport. She wasn’t stranded. She didn’t have “no place to go.” Even though the airport was closed for the time being, I’m sure she could have found a 24/7 diner to kill some time. It’s New York, there are establishments open.

NYC is statistically safer than the town she came from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-york-city-is-a-l...

But as soon as someone says “stranded in the big city” our minds wander over to getting mugged or getting initiated into a gang or something like that.

jokoon• 4 years ago

For ethical reasons regarding climate change, I don't travel very much.

Anything bought and paid online should not be trusted.

Hotels are a luxury, in my view, so unless you pay a real price, expect to have problems.

nunez2• 4 years ago

number one reason why i never EVER recommend booking hotels or cars through aggregators. you'll save very little money but deal with a lot of pain if something goes wrong.

Eavolution• 4 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20221026050421/https://www.nytim...

prmoustache• 4 years ago

Shouldn't she just have registered at the shelter since at that point she was homeless in that particular city?

eb0la• 4 years ago

A customer runs a reservation engine that OTAs use as a white label backend.

Their IT manager once told me that he didn't understand how people can actually get their rooms in an hotel since most reservations come to the hotel as an email (unless you are going to a big girl chain).

Most hotel management systems do not talk with booking management systems and all transactions come via email. Of course they don't have their full inventory in the platforms just in case something like a spam filter happens.

DrNosferatu• 4 years ago

After bad experiences with Booking.com, I just use them as a search engine: call ahead to the property I want to stay in and propose a deal that we book directly with a discount (so split in half between us the Booking.com middleman commission) - it usually works! I suggest you do the same, as using Booking.com offers no protection for problems - don't give them your money!

Booking.com operates like a monopoly and doesn't need to care whatsoever if the money they collect from you will correspond to a night of accomodation.

Last bad experience: I successfully booked - and paid! - a room in an evening emergency (broken-down car) to find out that the hostel door was locked and no one would open. Called Booking.com customer support about them collecting money for a service they were not in a position to provide: a total back-and-forward mess and they couldn't care less. I did not get my money back.

The hotel I booked online became a homeless shelter and no one told me

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