Booking.com - what a scam

Not saying Booking.com isn't crap but have you a source for this? As far as I can find it's owned by a large Incorporated company in the US.

A guy at work told me about this, and he's usually quite credible. I've since looked in to it and it's tosh :rolleyes:
 
You should ask booking dot com for a refund. Oh wait. Exactly.

This is nothing more than an example of why people should do their own due diligence and not just rely on what ever the internet/alexa/chat bot/AI/any website tell them.
 
Yeah, booking.com is just an aggregator. They take your money, promise its all good but they fail to live up to their promises. We booked a hotel in Loughborough I think it was to see the wifes cousin, we were phoned the day before we turned up by the hotel to say that they wouldn't allow my wifes oxygen equipment in the hotel. Then said they wouldn't be refunding us. Contacted booking.com who said you could cancel for any reason and they tried to speak to the hotel who wouldn't budge even though neither booking.com could fulfil their promise or the hotel to fulfil the contract. Looking on my bank statement, the cost of the hotel room came up as some football club, which was dodgy AF.
 
This is nothing more than an example of why people should do their own due diligence and not just rely on what ever the internet/alexa/chat bot/AI/any website tell them.

Agreed, I should've gone to a site that presents me with options based on my specific criteria, and has customer reviews.


Anyway. At 14:11 yesterday I submitted a ticket, "we'll get back to you within 24 hours". It's now five hours after their self-imposed deadline, and still nothing. They can go **** themselves tbh.
 
I’ve been suspicious of them ever since thetrainline started opening a booking.com popunder every time I searched for a ticket.

If I’m looking for hotels I tend to use various aggregator review type sites - booking.com, trip advisor, hotels.com, google reviews - and read multiple reviews across all of them. Anything below 4 stars out of 5 is almost certainly utter trash. At that point just book the nearest premier inn or whatever, because while it will be crap, it will be an extremely predictable level of crap and you won’t pay through the nose for it. What you don’t want is to pay £300 a night because you think 3.8/5 seems ok, because trust me bro, it will not be ok.
 
I’ve been suspicious of them ever since thetrainline started opening a booking.com popunder every time I searched for a ticket.
That's thetrainline's decision/setting, not that of Booking.com

Lots of sites have a Booking.com popunder - rome2rio springs to mind as one.
 
Despite me freezing my CC, the payment is showing as pending today.

They're now 21 hours past their self-imposed "we'll get back to you within 24 hours" message. I also have no way of escalating this with them, so I've raised it with HSBC as a fraudulent transaction.

I will fight this to the death if I have to. They will not out-Karen me.
 
Despite me freezing my CC, the payment is showing as pending today.

They're now 21 hours past their self-imposed "we'll get back to you within 24 hours" message. I also have no way of escalating this with them, so I've raised it with HSBC as a fraudulent transaction.

I will fight this to the death if I have to. They will not out-Karen me.

Just call up your credit card and tell them, do a recharge if need be. Skip ahead all their own internal refund process.
 
I used to use booking.com 10-15 years ago when it was cheaper than direct, but I just go direct these days.

What I don't like is when using railway and other travel sites, it opens up another browser tab to booking.com when I click the submit button. It's like today's version of the pop-up ad, but the pop-up blocker can't block it because it's a tab, not a new window.
 
I switched my Booking.com booking to Agoda, was actually cheaper. But I checked direct and it was like 15% more.
 
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Just checked my booking.com account and I've had 14 bookings and stays using them this year so far.

No problems with any of them.

I really don't know what the fuss is all about in this thread.
 
I will probably go with whoever is usually the cheapest...but book with credit card for protection and that will be that.
 
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