Booking.com review: Customer service complaint handling process

If you are or ever plan to be a User of Booking.com platform for either your travel or lodging accomodations, I hope you never experience an issue that requires Booking.com Customer Service assistance particularily with their lodging Partners.

I had a terrible experience with a 2 night Lodging booking made on Booking.com on July 25, 2023 with an Ontario private partner. The dates for the lodging were for August 4 and 5, 2023.

Because of the planned activity dates being changed we subsequently had to cancel the booking on July 27, 2023, We received confirmation from Booking.com that our Cancellation was successfully completed and was Free as it certainly was completed well within the stated policy outlined for this property.

In checking my Credit Card I did find that the Booking,com property had already billed the full amount for the lodging. As per Booking.com process any billings were the direct responsibility of the Property and they provide contact phone number and email address. Well this was a major problem as they never replied to my email follow ups and also you cannot reach the property at the phone number as "mailbox is full" and remains this way weeks later.

This is when I attempted to obtain the assistance of Booking.com Customer Service. It turns the process to do so is extremely difficult and is certainly not user friencly and for that matter appears to me set that way purposely.

When you follow what system they have in place, it does not allow for a real person to respond. It is all electronic communications and I have had to send the same requested information multiple times. Each time you are electronically informed that you will hear back in 24-48 hours. Good Luck on that. And if you do hear back, it requests the same information you have previosuly supplied, or request further information which is still the same previously supplied but simply worded slightly different.

Well weeks have gone by and I have with no Customer satisfaction and frankly it will be my last use of Booking.com.

I am being charitable in stating that Booking.com has a Customer Service department. From what I have experienced they simply have an electronic process with FAQ prompts, and well names appear on their electronic replies requesting information, it is just a name. The reason for this is that none of them are tasked with your case, because any follow up when you get no reply starts the process all over again. So it is designed as a system to not only not service real customers, but to just have customers spinning their wheels in an effort to get real service. We have all experienced such frustration with being put on hold for extended periods of time, only to give up or get disconnected.

So for those that have great experience with use of Booking.com, congratulations. And well I too had not experienced issues previously, this specific issue with Booking.com lack of real life customer service, is that they are not the Company I wish to work with in future.