Hotels.com review: Accommodation cancelled our booking on day of arrival

I am writing to you to express how upset I am over the extreme failure of this weekend.

I made the booking on 28th September through ‘Hotels.com’ for a house available on 14th - 15th October 2023 for my family to celebrate my daughter's birthday.

I received confirmation and was told that I would soon receive a link to complete a form and pay a security deposit. I never received this email and on the day of the booking I emailed the Berkshire Residence to find out the details of how to access the property. I did not receive anything back all day. We obviously had a weekend of activities planned. However, we had to leave the Lego discovery centre early as we were all starting to panic, as we would have nowhere to go after. We did not get to enjoy the full experience as we were constantly checking the emails.

I am sure you can image with 5 children, 3 of which are under 5 and for my eldest daughter who suffers from anxiety this was extremely stressful as it was for all of us.

We tried to call the owner of the property 3 times, left a voicemail, emailed and tried to contact them through ‘WhatsApp’ we were getting no answers. We then called ‘Hotels.com’, you said that you would try to contact him as well and if you cannot you will find us something similar or better.

After waiting around in the car park as we had nowhere else to go, we then got a call to say that you had contacted him and he would send us over the link to complete the safety deposit within the hour and we could get in the house. We were also told that if we do not receive the link within the hour we should call an American number.. Which I find extremely strange.

At this point we thought we would head in the direction of the house so that the children would stay calm and would not realise the panic.

After 5 minutes I received an email from Berkshire residence saying that the booking had been cancelled due to maintenance work.

At this point we did not know what to do. We had tickets for Warwick castle the next day so did not want to travel the 2 hours home. The kids were getting tired and hungry. We had already brought food and a cake for the evening as we knew we would have somewhere to cook. This was starting to look like a waste and we would have to spend more money on fast food.

We had to pull over in a Tesco car park to try and sort out this absolute mess. Which I cannot believe an established company would ever leave its customers in.

We tried to call the owner again with no luck and then tried to call ‘Hotels.com’. We explained everything to them and after being told we would be called back; we were not and had to call back once again.

Hotels.com had tried to contact him and they could not either. They said that they would find us somewhere else to stay. All the children where now getting very scared and upset. We were trying to keep them safe in the car park but obviously they needed to get out and stretch their legs as we were stuck here for nearly 2 hours. During this time my 2-year-old niece fell over and bumped her head really badly. I appreciate that children have accidents but this would not have happened if we were not stuck here with nowhere to go.

After waiting we were told that you could not find us anywhere else to stay and that was final and that we would be sent a refund! However, the refund only covered the amount we paid by debit card (£132.50) and did not include the amount we paid by Clubcard vouchers (£70). Please inform me how I will receive this refund? As this was such a massive mistake by both companies this should have been checked that the right amount should have been returned then another mistake would not have possibly been made.

At this point the children were crying thinking we had to go home and my daughter's birthday had been completely ruined. All the fun that they had had in the day had been completely over shadowed and forgotten because of the distressing situation we were put in and no one could seem to rectify this distressing situation.

We finally found somewhere to stay which was not in our preferred location, only had 2 bathrooms. With 6 adults, a teenager and 4 small children this was not ideal and to be honest an absolute nightmare. We also had to pay an extra £360. That did not include that fact I had to pay full £120 (per couple) as I did not receive my vouchers or money back for what I had contributed. This is among the added of expense of driving around, buying snacks for the children and the phone bill.

When we finally got there everyone was so tired, fraught and deflated that we could not enjoy our night as we should have done. My eldest's anxiety had got so bad she could not socialise and went straight to a room to try and regulate herself.

We all had a dreadful night’s sleep, as the children were so upset, they were not able to have the sleeping arrangements that they had all planned and were so excited for but could just not settle.

The next morning, we checked the property we were originally meant to stay in and it was still saying that it was available to rent for that evening. If there was maintenance work being carried out, how can it still be available? I do not believe that any work was going on and the fact that ‘Hotels.com’ would work with such unreliable, unprofessional and incompetent people is a discredit to the company.

I truly hope that we are compensated fairly for such a disaster of a weekend and you can restore some credit to the company

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