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CB Travel and Vacations Review of Hotels.com and Marriott Hotels
Hotels.com and Marriott Hotels

Hotels.com and Marriott Hotels review: Failure to provide a prepaid room

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5:12 pm EDT
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My daughter, her husband, two children and a family friend had plans to fly to Ecuador for a week’s holiday down in an apartment we own there. The original plan was to fly on Allegiant Airways from Asheville, NC to Fort Lauderdale on the first flight of the day on Friday March 11 around 7:30 a.m. and then to transfer to Miami Airport by train to take an Avianca flight at 3:55 p.m. to Guayaquil. Unfortunately early in the week Allegiant canceled their flight from Asheville and as neither of the other two flights that day would make the connection they booked on the last flight out of Asheville the day before, March 10. This meant that they had to stay for a night before traveling on to Miami. Consequently I booked two rooms for them at a cost of $382.92 at the Four Points by Sheraton in Dania Beach, FL for March 10 to March 11 using hotels.com. The rooms were at a non-refundable rate and my credit card was charged immediately. On the evening of March 10 the Allegiant flight was delayed by an hour due to traffic congestion in Fort Lauderdale delaying the incoming flight to Asheville. Consequently my daughter and her party arrived at Fort Lauderdale at 1:17 a.m. instead of 11:35 p.m. They took an Uber car to the hotel and were informed by the staff that there despite the prepaid room there were no rooms available as they were overbooked. They contacted hotels.com who tried to find alternative accommodation but could not do so. Finally my son-in-law found rooms at Home 2 Suites by Hilton, also in Dania Beach, but at a cost of $515.54, and they did not get there until 3:22 a.m.

Next day when we learned of this we contacted both hotels.com and Marriott Hotels. The front desk at Marriott said that the rooms had been canceled and resold but why would anyone cancel a prepaid room? The lady concerned, Martha, told me that she did not know why the rooms had been canceled and that the manager, Carlos, would contact me by phone or email – though of course that has never happened. I also contacted Marriott Hotels as a Lifetime Titanium member of their loyalty program. The lady did raise an incident report #[protected] but did say that since the room was booked by a third party they may not be able to do anything. Having heard nothing from hotels.com I used their chat feature online to complain about what had happened. Basically they said they were sorry and would refund the charge. I told them that was inadequate compensation for the extra $132.62 my son-in-law paid along with the extra Uber charges for the second hotel and the time in the middle of the night this party had been inconvenienced. They initially offered a $25 voucher at hotels.com and when pressed said the maximum they could offer was a $50 voucher which again I told them was inadequate. I have all the supporting documentation for this complaint. I have the initial booking, the credit card statement, the receipts from the second hotel and the transcript of the chat session with the hotels.com agent. This entire incident says nothing for the integrity of either hotels.com or Marriott Hotels and feel their behavior was despicable.

Desired outcome: Compensation for failure to provide contracted service

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