CCI Hotelvalues.com review: Defrauded/overcharged on hotel reservation

Hotel reservation website (hotelvalues.com) overcharged for hotel reserved online, and then had excessive cancellation policy ($634 cancellation on a $900 total price). Hotel has no record of the reservation. They refuse to waive the cancellation fee, and Discover card did not approve dispute because there is a written cancellation policy on reservation. The website doesn't even exist, and if you google it, there is hundreds of victims with the same story.

My wife made reservation online (thinking it was with hotel directly) on 4/11/23 for a hotel stay at "Chesapeake Beach Resort" from 12/9/23 - 12/11/23. She thought she was just paying the $608.00 for the hotel (including resort fee of $50), but once she got the confirmation by email there was a service fee of $291.49 added for a total of $899.49.

She called back immediately (within 5 minutes) and was told the cancellation fee of $634 is non-negotiable. We even got the hotel itself on the line, but the 3rd party refused to speak to the hotel directly.

We filed a dispute with DIscover, but that was eventually denied because the company provided a copy of the email showing the cancellation fee on the booking confirmation.

Fast forward to today (7/30/23), and the hotel still does not have any record of the reservation. The hotel phone # is [protected].

I called the company again today @ [protected] and spoke to the same woman (who is off-shore), and again said nothing they can do.

www.hotelvalues.com doesn't even have an active website, and if you google this or CCI as it shows up on the credit card statement, you'll see hundreds of victims telling the same story.

I'm out at least $634 unless someone else can help. We have another hotel booked, because we thought Discover approved the dispute (they came back after and applied the payment again a month later). We don't want to cancel the other hotel reservation, because we need a place to stay and we're not sure that this $900 reservation even secures us a room! The hotel said they had no record of it.

Please help!