Booking.com
reviews and complaints

Booking.com booking reference: 301.742.455

I booked a room in the 'Luxury Apartments Mondrian Market Square II' in Warsaw through booking.com for a stay in 9 months time. I selected the 'free cancellation, pay during stay' option as my plans were not set in stone. This option cost more but I always choose this option in case my plans change. I ended up cancelling my reservation a few days later through booking.com as I wouldn't be able to get to Warsaw. However, this hotel ended up charging me IN FULL for the entire stay which was £455 after I had cancelled. There are two major issues here -

1) Booking.com have allowed this hotel to make false claims about their booking policy as no payment should have been taken until my stay.
2) They stated they had 'free cancellation' which was also not the case.

I contacted this hotel several times and heard nothing back. I also mailed booking.com and I can't believe how badly they have treated me as a customer. It is over a month ago since this hotel took this payment and I have been given the runaround by booking.com. They have been unable to get a response from this hotel either which reflects really badly on booking.com that they allow them to get away with it. I can't get a response from them and neither can booking.com so it is obvious they have no intention of refunding me. They still represent this hotel on their website which means they are putting other customers at risk.
I have been given lots of conflicting information by around 6 different customer agents - initially I was told I would get a refund within 14 days. This didn't happen. Then I was told the hotel had 24 hours to refund me, if not booking.com would refund me. This was last week and the latest correspondence from a different customer service agent has said that the hotel has another 5 days. So I am being lied to by various customer service agents from booking.com. I am yet to get a definitive response from someone at booking.com where I'm comfortable the matter will be resolved. Do they think I will just sit back and allow such a large payment to be taken and not do anything? It was taken in January too which really messed me up financially.
This is a kind of fraud in a way as this payment was not authorised. It is also false advertising. Booking.com have to have some responsibility for their (loyal) customers. How can they and this hotel get away with taking such a large payment?
I hope any booking.com customers read this with great care - you are giving your bank details to a company who don't safeguard them and they are representing establishments who are clearly unethical. This should have been treated as a serious matter from the outset by booking.com and resolved in a timely manner. Instead I have been fobbed off and this hotel still have my money.

Booked a hotel in Thailand for Aug 2016 through booking.com and noticed that the hotel charged my credit card for the full amount. This is for a holiday that is still seven months away. Promptly cancelled the booking and emailed booking.com to get a refund. They replied saying they would contact the hotel. Didn't hear anything back so had to call them and then was told I'd get a refund in a few days. A week later I am still waiting ...

When booking I was under the impression that your credit card details were used to secure a booking, not to pay up front seven months in advance. But it seems booking.com send your credit card details to the hotel who can then charge whatever they want! Oh and good luck getting your money back. I will never use booking.com again.

Thanks booking.com for messing up a family holiday we have been saving up 3 years for!

Dear all

I have had a complaint that has been ongoing with booking.com since early December. They say I booked using the wrong email address. For work reasons I ALWAYS book using my account. All I need to do is click a Log in button at the top and it signs me in automatically. I think I would remember if I entered all of my credit card details and address details again. Also my computer flags up red if I enter the wrong email address as you have to enter it twice. It comes up red and says "did you mean..." with my correct email address and will not let me pass the page till I address this. All this has not been enough for them and they are adamant it is my mistake. Even though they won't offer me any proof. They offered to refund me half the money and on my last email I agreed as I realised they were not going to take responsibility. Low and behold they have ignored me trying to contact them FOUR TIMES! They stopped replying with my ongoing discussion. I contacted customer services and they did not get back to me. I also contacted them using the contacts form and when they asked for my booking number they have also ignored getting back to me. This was 3 weeks ago. I always book with them every single week and find it disgusting that they will not give me any proof and they have ignored every single email since a few days before Christmas. Its now mid feb and I'm astounded by this level of customer negligence.

Parisa Hatami

Booking.com accept customer mis-statements, incorrect facts and outright lies without checking the veracity of comments even when the host points this out to Booking, Com's so called Review Panel. I was advised over the telephone that their only concern is if profanities are used and that bookers can make any comment regardless of accuracy or truth, what a system, I gave them an opportunity to review one such guest, my next step is to seek legal council for libel and threaten the writer, why should I have to go through this

I have used booking.com for years and consider myself a loyal customer, until they made an error with a booking and have still allowed me to be charged for their mistake.

On November 16th, I was charged for booking that I never received confirmation for and that in my booking.com account cannot be seen anywhere either. As I never received confirmation/could not see the booking anywhere, I booked a new place, which I stayed at.

Upon contacting them, they advised me the booking was for a different company and therefore I needed to contact my bank and dispute the transaction, which I did.

"Dear Rebecca Smith,
Thank you for choosing Booking.com.
We are writing to you regarding your reservation [protected] at Perfect Days Charles Bridge 2, check-in date 2015-11-12, and check-out date 2015-11-16.
The accommodation has confirmed that the reservation was paid on arrival, but they say they did not charge the credit card provided. The charge to your credit card has been made by Malostranska Rezidence Praha which is not the same company.
In this case please do dispute the charges with your credit card provider.
Please feel free to contact us with any additional questions.
Kind regards,
--
Birgit
Booking.com Customer Service Team"

The bank came back to me and advised that when they contacted the hotel that the charge was taken for, they had a "no show" and thus the charge would go through (which has now put me in debt). When I called booking.com they advised that as I had the booking number now (the hotel gave this to my bank, who in turn gave it me, I NEVER received this), that this was a booking (why not advise me that the first time I contacted) and that there was nothing they could do, then hung up on me.

Again, I emphasis that this booking is not found on my side, no one contacted me about it, confirmed or called to find out why I never showed? Which means the room could have been resold also. As a customer of theirs for a long time, I will take this as far as I need to, to prove this was their error that they need to rectify and ensure their agents treat clients correctly, with respect also.

Wow! What a company disregard for safety!
I wrote in complaining of a safety issue. Our adult son ended up in the hospital with a concussion after hitting the doorway that was so low that he lost consciousness. Our daughter hit it as well but only ended up with a bad bump. Booking.com told us that they can’t guarantee any of their properties and there is nothing they can do !

I am enclosing pictures of the doorway. We are not talking that it is slightly low, it is incredibly low and dangerous and this is compounded by the fact that there are stairs right under them. The stairs go down from the living area to the kitchen and it is a very cumbersome and dangerous situation managing the stairs, having to duck and to time when to go up without hitting your head if you are over 5 feet 5 inches!
This property was recently remodeled and there should be a warning mark on the doorway. (red or yellow line)
I would have thought that booking.com would have been interested in safety issues, but I guess I am wrong. I am a healthcare provider and it is ingrained that you look after the well being of others. I think that it is obvious that money comes before safety at booking.com.
I will not only NEVER use their services again and I will go out of my way to tell everyone I can about the experience I had and show them your response! I think I will incorporate this into my lectures at the school I teach and demonstrate how not everyone cares about others.

Im a vacation rental owner and I found out their site just does not cater well for this type of thing even though they say they do. Their internet interface (extranet) which is their booking management system is so complicated and full of errors that you encounter every possible thing that can go wrong: f.e when a customer books, the customer's credit cards would show charge declined, and we are supposed to then press the link on their booking system: credit card invalid so we dont get charged commission for the transaction. The link did not work and customer service (every time a different country!) could not fix, consequence I got charged 15% commission and the guest never paid or booked! I would get a booking, but then the cvc code for the credit card was not displayed for security reasons! Well, how can I charge it without a CVC code? Consequence: you guessed right, they charged booking fees, but I could not process the payment from the guest. On and on. Then they started to accept bookings from guests even though my calendar was messed up due to their complicated calendar system on the extranet (to close up a room - as they call it, you have this really antiquated spreadsheet system and you have to do multiple steps - (close entire room, then close from monday-friday, then the amount of hours or something equally weird), a nightmare to manage!
Dont use these people. I am Dutch and they are a Dutch company but this is such a back to the 90's internet set up that I am ashamed that they are from my country. So old fashioned in their internet dealings! Terrible.

I booked a room through Booking. But due to the health reasons I had to cancel the booking few days later. When I made a reservation, I paid the full amount. So I contacted the hotel and they said that my booking was never cancelled and that is why they could not return my money. Then I contacted booking.com customer service many times and finally got in touch with somebody from the staff. They said that they need time to find the resolution. One month later I received a message from them stating they could not find the resolution, so there will be no refund. Please, avoid this scam service and save your money.

It is the first time I feel really disappointed with booking. com. I have used it a lot of times, but their service this time is not professional. This hotel bumi hegar guest house treat us terribly bad and we cant even create a review. How can people trust this site. This hotel said that we didnt come or no show so we cant wrote review about this hotel, and booking. com let this such a thing happen. We came there from another city, and we called the owner, and he said he gave the hotel to someon else already, we still understand, eventhough we are really tored that time, and we have booked the hotel, and he didnt give us a room, he told us to travel to the other part of city, which is 1 hour, he promise us a room with ac, etc, and etc. When we arrive there after 1 hour by taxi, the room is small, like 2x1m, dirty, with really small bad, with ac, or fan. What a scam. Thanks for booking. com for being uncooperative. We wish we could just write a review for this hotel so one else has the same experience.

I booked a holiday, not flight, with booking.com on the 11 November 2015, date of arrival Thursday 14 January 2016, date of leaving Tuesday 19 January 2016. Unfortunately my elderly mother became unwell on the 19 November 2015 and was admitted to hospital and sadly passed away on the 23 December 2015. Due to the Christmas and New Year period, her funeral was scheduled to take place on the 14 January 2016 the day that I was due to go on holiday. I therefore contacted Booking.com to explain the circumstances and to advise that I wished to cancel the holiday as I had rather a lot to contend with. I was informed that I could only reschedule the holiday and not have refund and that I would have to make my reschedule by the 14 January 2016, the day of the original holiday, the day of my Mums funeral. As I was dealing with the funeral arrangements and other related matters following my Mums death, the last thing that I could possibly consider was the rescheduling of the holiday and consider this totally unacceptable of Booking.com not to offer me a refund considering my circumstances. Please could you assist.

I booked a hotel for my trip to Chennai on 10th Jan 2016 thru booking.com. My Booking number: [protected] I received a confirmation for my stay at this hotel from booking.com and they reconfirmed it and followed it up with reminders wishing me a pleasant stay. I showed up at the hotel after along drive from the airport and was surprised to see that the hotel had changed management and its name recently. They obviously didn't acknowledge or accept my booking and summarily declined to make a room available. I was also informed that the property had changed hands more than 3 months ago. In fact i had booked the same property for an earlier trip planned for the last week of Nov and received the same kind of confirmation from booking.com. I was forced to cancel that booking due to the city getting flooded. This is the most unusual and agonizing experience i have had with reservations. My wife and I were forced to shack up with friends and start hunting a suitable hotel for our 36 hour stay in the city. Clearly booking.com is at best an incompetent operation or at worst a scam. they freely hand out ghost bookings and don't have a mechanism to confirm the bookings with the properties. I am just fortunate that i chose to not use my credit card on this site. Please BEWARE. never again pay through booking.com even if you use it to browse options. Suresh Iyer

I wanted to share my recent experience with Booking.com. I booked a hotel back in October 2015. I booked 2 rooms, because we were 2 adults and 2 kids. They charged my credit card for both rooms. When we arrived, there was only one room prepared for our family. I contacted customer service, they said how sorry they were, but there was nothing hey could do. Their agent assured me I would be refunded. Several minutes later they called me back and told they found us another hotel (for which I paid again). Few months passed and still no money. I called the customer service, they are now refusing to refund me, because the hotel doesn't want to refund them!

I booked a room on Booking.com and it was quoted all in £gbp as 'best rate'. It was the best rate we found but when the booking reservation came through the price was confirmed as fixed in euro not £. I called to complain and they maintained that it was made clear that the price would be paid in the hotel's own currency. that would be fine except that it did not state that the price confirmed was converted to euro so suddenly we are now exposed to exchange rates at the point payment will be taken. have been back over the process and all the way through the price is given in £ with no mention that the price is now fixed in euro. This is totally misleading. At the end of the reservation it clearly states £375 = €510 and not €510 = £375

Confirmation ref [protected] club mykonos south Africa. I booked a weekend away at this resort in November and was advised to pay the hotel direct, which I did. Unfortunately we have had to cancel this trip and requested a refund . Again booking dot .com advised me to contact hotel direct which I did 29th November . I still have not received my refund. Hotel say unable to pay into my UK account and have given them my sa bank account but still no joy. I have asked booking.com for assistance but they keep advising me to contact hotel. Where do I go from here, sent hotel another e mail today,

Booking.com and their associate hotel - The Renaissance by Marriott in Boca Raton took my private info when I booked two rooms for two weeks - $7, 600.00 and then it appears shared my personal information concerning our deal with third parties, including but not limited to Robert B. Schatz an attorney working for Audi of America a division of The Volkswagen Group who has recently been exposed in a humongous worldwide consumer fraud. I would suggest you really think very hard and seriously about using Booking.com for a trip if they cannot be trusted to honor their privacy agreement.

During april & june 2015 we enquired about accommodation in naples italy and wanted quotes. When filling in the forms they ask for credit card detail except the 3 numbers on the back off the card. We got the quotes but did not accept the quotes. The 2 hotels in question is hotel magri. S and andris hotel. When we came back to rsa we noticed that our absa credit card has been debited from magri's hotel for r4429.28 and andris hotel with r15532.67. The was for a family holiday to celebrate my 70th birthday in italy. This is a lot of money for the normal person what still about pensioners, the saying the rich will always steel from the poor. What a disgrace never ever will I use booking. com again. Reading through other complaints about booking. com it all seems to boil down to the same trick dishonest the site should be closed down. All I can say is dont use booking. com. Use trip advisor very good and trustworthy. Booking>com sharks ! Sharks! Watch out

I have made a free cancellation for 7 nights for our Rome visit between 26th of March-2nd of April 2016 at EXE Hotel Della Torre Argentina via Booking.com on 30th of November 2015. In around 10 hours I have cancelled the reservation and the cancellation confirmation has come right away from Booking.com. After a few days I have realized that the hotel has charged the total fee (€1085.20) from my credit card that day! My reservation Nr. is: 888.385.082. I have sent e-mails to both Booking.com customer service and the hotel and received no feedback. Then I have called Booking.com and the personell told me I have right and he would talk to the hotel. Then he called again and said that I am absolutely right and they will do their best to solve the problem as soon as possible. Then I have recieved an e-mail stating that together with the hotel, they will solve the problem and I will definitely get my money back as soon as possible. The nexd day they have sent an e-mail demanding the document showing that the hotel has charged me. I have sent it in a few minutes. After that nothing happened and on 10th of December a Booking.com staff has called me from Berlin (+44-[protected]) and told me that they are trying to solve the problem with the hotel. He said that my free cancellation reservation is seen as a final reservation at the hotel's systemand the hotel is trying to solve why such a thing has happened. I have told him that I don't understand why I have to wait for them to solve their problem, they may at the same time pay me back and continue searching the causes. The Booking.com personell told me that if the hotel won't pay the money back in five days, Booking.com will pay me the amount and it will take 3-7 days because of some bureacratic operations. Today is 21st and nothing happened. I have sent e-mails asking about the situation and got no answer. I have read many similar complaints about booking.com and I now understand that we have to sue Booking.com for its illegal actions to get our money back. I hope the problem will be solved in a short time because I am a retired person and fell in a bad situation financially. Aysegul Pamukcu

Earlier today i made a booking through this site for my Prague visit. Then i wanted to check other prices to be ready if i decided to stay longer. While i was surfing through booking com i cliked a hostel and changed the visiting days and suddenly received an email for booking conformatin for this new hostel! I neither confirmed nor entered my card details again! So i had to cancel this new one and guess what there was a cancelation fee of 15 euros! ı sent them 3 mails via their customer service and reminded that it is illegal to use ones' credit cart without their permission! But recevied no answer. This is basicay pulling out money from peoples' pocket. I dont recommed using this site, they are not trustfull. They dont even send an automatic received mail for the ones you sent, they might even say that i never contacted them about this situation.